The meaning of a word is defined by usage. You agreed my usage is common. If you look it up in the dictionary, you'll also find that it is in rough agreement with 3 separate and not fully compatible definitions. Sometimes the colloquial definition of a term does not disambiguate things sufficiently - this is a case of that.
To provide a less politically charged example, is a "sound" "the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing" or "mechanical vibrations transmitted through an elastic medium"? The dictionary provides both of these definitions. It would be pointless to declare one definition "correct" and the other "wrong" if we were discussing a tree falling in the woods, since the important point is the underlying idea. We might call the first one sound[1], the second sound[2], and clearly use these two terms to understand reality: a tree falling in the woods with no one there to listen produces sound[2] but not sound[1].
This is the level of clarification I was seeking with my query. I'm not sure why you and dalke take such strong issue with it.
Now, you should realize that this isn't rhetoric but quite the opposite. It is rhetoric that keeps most of us blind to reality...The reason why feminism is so often concerned with words and rhetoric is precisely this.*
Then why are you arguing so strongly with me when I attempt to get past rhetoric and clarify the underlying concepts? Feminism wishes for multiple different phenomena to be described by the same label in order to help make reality clear?
> Feminism wishes for multiple different phenomena to be described by the same label in order to help make reality clear?
No. The term "sexism" was first coined by feminists in the late sixties, and they defined its meaning to describe, well, sexism, rather than misogyny (the more overt, malicious, form of sexism, or the analogous to murder in your example), which is a far older word (misogyny appears in Webster's, while sexism doesn't).
There's something else, though, that makes the accepted definition of sexism more "correct", or, at least, more useful, than your one (which is common, but isn't the common usage). Only the accepted definition of sexism describes how women are subjugated by society. Not misogyny, but a well established power structure, precipitated by many means, many of them innocent but certainly far from innocuous (same goes for racism, which is like sexism towards other races while xenophobia is analogous to misogyny). So, we already have a word for your definition, and personally I think that "ism" words are best used to describe social phenomena, or cultural ideas -- not individuals' actions (like murder) whose definition has to do with intent or judgment. "Your" sexism (which is really just misogyny) does not deserve an "ism" word, as it's more an act, or a "crime", than a cultural phenomenon.
True, you are not the only one to use "sexism" colloquially to mean misogyny, but in this case, let's let the meaning of the word be that assigned to it by its inventors, at least while it's still young.
According to the wikipedia article you linked to, the original meaning of sexism is "judging people by their sex when sex doesn’t matter." See also the description "coming to conclusions about someone’s value by referring to factors which are in both cases irrelevant".
Based on the wikipedia article you linked to, my use of the term appears closer to the original than yours.
None of these descriptions seem to encompass the phenomena of women making choices with different probabilities than men. So I'm pretty sure my definition is closer to the original than yours.
Not that it matters, of course - the underlying concepts are the important point. The words used to describe them are simply conveniences to avoid verbose descriptions of the concepts each time.
> So I'm pretty sure my definition is closer to the original than yours.
It is most certainly not. You're free to study this fascinating topic further, or not -- but you're simply wrong about this. When feminists (who coined the term) say sex, they are very particular to contrast it, and its biological meaning, from gender, which is sex's social construction. So when it says "sex doesn't matter" it means "biology doesn't matter".
> the underlying concepts are the important point.
With that I can agree. And the big problem is that of slavery, or the Matrix, or whatever other analogy you want to pick to describe the extant social structure regardless of intent, and not the misogynic acts performed by individuals. The issue of freezing eggs obviously falls under the category of sexism (or not -- you can argue the claim, but not the careful categorization) -- not misogyny.
To provide a less politically charged example, is a "sound" "the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing" or "mechanical vibrations transmitted through an elastic medium"? The dictionary provides both of these definitions. It would be pointless to declare one definition "correct" and the other "wrong" if we were discussing a tree falling in the woods, since the important point is the underlying idea. We might call the first one sound[1], the second sound[2], and clearly use these two terms to understand reality: a tree falling in the woods with no one there to listen produces sound[2] but not sound[1].
This is the level of clarification I was seeking with my query. I'm not sure why you and dalke take such strong issue with it.
Now, you should realize that this isn't rhetoric but quite the opposite. It is rhetoric that keeps most of us blind to reality...The reason why feminism is so often concerned with words and rhetoric is precisely this.*
Then why are you arguing so strongly with me when I attempt to get past rhetoric and clarify the underlying concepts? Feminism wishes for multiple different phenomena to be described by the same label in order to help make reality clear?