A general semantics glossary.

extensional devices applied, part two. In the eighth installment of our Glossary I wrote that I would discuss applications "to such engaging subjects as the Holocaust and feminism." (1) I addressed the Holocaust (i.e., ways of talking about the Holocaust) in Glossary (IX). Here I would like to honor my commitment to indexing and dating 'feminism', 'feminists', etc. And, I may say, here I will address my own capacity for facing up to things: what is sometimes called guts. I expect (as has happened before) that I will hear from some of you.

Let me begin by saying that, though much of what I write here derives from my own living and observations derived therefrom, and from my intense study of Korzybski, I owe a special debt to two people.

The first was the first 'feminist' I ever knew, namely, P. Edward Pula: master printer, voracious reader of the Encyclopedia Britannica (all of it), excellent pianist, occasional composer, talented artist (primarily drawings of horses, which he also bet on), and prolific co-maker of babies - including me. Aside from certain special considerations regarding females (e.g., I was not allowed to punch my sisters), my father's expectations of his children were across the board, equal: you will study; if you do and work hard, you may accomplish something worthwhile; and you must tolerate my aphorisms, quips, improvised jokes, lectures at the dinner table, etc. Among the women of that family we were eventually able to count a chemist, an office manager, an elementary teacher/consulting reading specialist, a bacteriologist, another office manager and real estate professional, and another teacher (high school and college) who is also a noted Conrad scholar.

My second benefactor in formulating is Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women. (2) She has provided me with my first two differentiating (and therefore extensional) terms: "equity feminists" and "gender feminists." She enabled me to realize that my father and mother were "equity feminists." But, through her book she has done much more. She has provided me and, potentially, you with a balanced, scholarly, thoroughly documented discussion of one of the elements of the cultural disarray that seems to afflict the United Sates in 'the nineties'. (Is this decadism so prevalent in our society's popular 'historiography' an unnoticed expression of neuro-cultural elementalism? Probably. In any case, comes the millenium) ....) I will credit her often in this glossary entry.

I wish to make clear my operating assumption that the fact that a significant minority of formally educated women have self-appointedly declared 'gender warfare' in the name of more than 50% of our population constitutes a deep socio-biological pathology, probably (and sadly) expressive in many cases of deep individual pathologies. If I am correct, the matter is a serious one. The need for us to distinguish individual and positional 'feminists' seems vital for our societal and individual relations - for the health of our society, and for the humaneness of our personal evaluations.

Dr. Sommers introduces the 'two feminisms' in the first chapter of her book. She says that "Sex\gender feminism ('gender feminism' for short) is the prevailing ideology among contemporary feminist philosophers and leaders." (3) "They see themselves," she says, "as the second wave of the feminist movement, as the moral vanguard fighting a war to save women." (p. 21) She characterizes them variously as "angry," "well-favored" but "aggrieved," "prone to self-dramatization, and chronically offended." And, most thoroughly throughout the book, she details the aggressive duplicity, poor scholarship and outright fraud committed by some of their leaders in academia. At no point, however, does she show any inclination to engage in the kind of evaluational extremism that allows a Rush Limbaugh to refer to "Feminazis." Sommers summarizes "First Wave" feminism on page 22:

Most American women subscribe philosophically to that older "First Wave" kind of feminism whose main goal is equity, especially in politics and education. A First Wave, "mainstream," or "equity" feminist wants for women what she wants for everyone: fair treatment, without discrimination. "We ask for no better laws than those you have made for yourselves. We need no other protection that that which your present laws secure to you," said Elizabeth Cady Stanton, perhaps the ablest exponent of equity feminism, addressing the New York State Legislature in 1854. The equity agenda may not yet be fully achieved, but by any reasonable measure, equity feminism has turned out to be a great American success story.

Hooray for my parents, both of whom were first-generation (children of immigrants) American equity feminists - my mother the politically active one.

I urge readers to study Christina Hoff Sommers' important book, and the equally tough and balanced pronouncements of such stalwarts as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, the later Betty Friedan, and the, perhaps, less balanced but charmingly unique scatter-shot formulations of Camille Paglia. And to hark back, you older ones, to the steely, curiously class-driven yet democratic oracles of Claire Booth Luce.

In any event, to remember that [feminist.sub.1], Bob Pula is not [feminist.sub.2] Gloria Steinem is not [feminist.sub.3] Christina Hoff Sommers is not [feminist.sub.4] the presumed reader of this glossary.

ADDENDUM

My use of quotation marks in this glossary is in conformity with the conventions of the General Semantics Bulletin. To wit:

SINGLE QUOTES (Extensional device)

1. To mark off terms and phrases which seem to varying degrees questionable for neuro-linguistic, neuro-physiological, methodological or general epistemological reasons.

2. To mark off terms used metaphorically, playfully, etc.

a. 'mind,' 'meaning,' 'space,' or 'time' used alone, etc.

b. "...the semantic reaction formulation could serve as a 'bridge'... between Pavlovian classical conditioning and Skinnerian operant conditioning." (Silverman)

SINGLE QUOTES (Standard usage)

To indicate a quote within a quote.

DOUBLE QUOTES (Standard usage)

1. To indicate a term or phrase used by some referred-to person but not necessarily indicating a direct quote. Example: What Korzybski referred to as the "semantic reaction."

2. To indicate a direct quotation from a named source.

General Semantics Bulletin, Nos. 44-45, 1978, p.8

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Robert P. Pula, "A General Semantics Glossary (Part VIII): Extensional Orientation as Orientation," ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 51, No. 2, Summer 1994, pp. 224-226.

2. Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.

3. Sommers, p. 22.

Robert Pula edited the General Semantics Bulletin from 1977-1985 and served as Director of the Institute of General Semantics from 1983-1986. He has recently written the Preface for the Fifth Edition of Science and Sanity.