Rex Kerr
1 min readAug 26, 2024

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If this is true, but so many people hear whatever-it-is-that-you're-replying-to instead, and react negatively, why are you asking people to follow you in communicating poorly?

I do understand the "we say black lives matter because all lives matter and it's the lives of black people most under threat" argument. That's fair. You can try to make that argument with feminism, but if there were a decade of black supremacist (not equity, but full-on supremacy) rhetoric given under the "black lives matter" label, with little to no pushback from non-racial-supremacist "BLM"-phrase users, the argument wouldn't work any longer. It's not quite that bad with feminism, but there has been a lot of pretty hostile rhetoric under that label.

What is missing in your piece is a defense of the terminology. You've said in comments that you have no time and energy to guard the term against misuse. But you want us to expend the time and energy to say it?

I'm your kind of feminist, but I am not so unaware of social trends to think that saying "I am a feminist" has, at this point, the meaning you wish it would. I want to be understood. I'm not willing to compromise that.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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