Thanks for speaking up, S. Appreciated. I also appreciated your note on "tactics": about the way some mainstream journos goad their interviewees by making them jump through select 'politically-correct' hoops before allowing them to speak.
At the same time, I feel I should explain again why I made a brief mention on those gender threads about my sensitivity to certain terminology. I don't want special pleading: surviving a home robbery with armed, volatile characters - and knowing how I actually managed that - has made me stronger, in some respects. I'm not a unique 'victim' either: every third or fourth South African can tell you some similar story: according to UN figures, certain areas in SA (now one of the world's most unequal countries due to unfettered neoliberalism, post-Mandela) have a crime/murder rate comparable only to armed conflict zones.
Compared to this, aggressive exchanges on message boards should be small fry. But I notice I've got less tolerance than before for violence and violence-evoking terminology. In this respect, when Walter introduced the term "class warrior" to the gender threads, I reacted by explaining to him that (whatever his interpretation of that word), I was uncomfortable with it. I'm not sure he got that. "Warrior", to me, implies a person ready to use violence ... In SA, what we call 'class warriors' now sabotage highways with burning tyres in the small hours, set fire to train carriages and lob petrol bombs at motorists. Lives are being lost. On the gender discussion threads, I noted that Walter used the word "class warrior" ... but didn't talk about "gender warriors". The disparity bothered me from a semantic/category p.o.v. It also disturbed me for another reason: in this surveilled environment, is it OK to introduce the "class warrior" term (with its violent connotations - at least to me) into a message board debate? A potentially-labelling term which could attract security interest?
Note: Lest I get painted as being anti-feminism, anti gender, etc, etc: issues to do with gender/race disparities and inequalities are obviously important. My interest lies in watching how media report - and don't report - these issues: the ironies, double standards and selective attention are revealing.