16 ms·

Am I the only one who thinks "sexism" is overrated? It's misinterpreted by so many and I'm not sure I understand what it means most of the time. I think humans

by sktrdie 11y ago

Am I the only one who thinks "sexism" is overrated? It's misinterpreted by so many and I'm not sure I understand what it means most of the time. I think humans are prejudice about so many things that it's hard to keep track and "give a name" to every single prejudice. Obviously "sex" does set us apart much more strongly than, say, race, or probably any other thing, so I really find it normal that there are stereotypes and prejudices about "sex" specifically. Obviously there's a problem if your stereotype, whichever it may be, becomes offensive and disrespectful. But I mean -- " I noticed for the first time that day that I was the only woman in the room. His effort to be courteous made me feel that I was different, the odd one out" -- there's no way you can label this "sexist". It's just a dude who probably thinks a girl is cute and is therefore a little awkward around said person. I guess what I'm trying to say is that labels can mean different things to different people and I really hate using them to express my specific situation.

blowski 11y ago
Exactly. Sexism is not identical to misogynism. Where the latter is about being nasty, sexism is believing something about somebody solely based on their gender. So if I assume you don't like pizza and football because you're female, so instead buy you frozen yoghurt, I'm being sexist even if it's with the nicest of intentions. We're all human and we all make mistakes, but sometimes people blow those mistakes out of all proportion. We just need more understanding and patience on both sides of the fence.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >So if I assume you don't like pizza and football because you're female, so instead buy you frozen yoghurt, I'm being sexist even if it's with the nicest of intentions. If I'm buying my young niece a toy, and see two otherwise equal toys except one is blue and one is pink, is it sexist to choose the pink one? I have to make a choice, there is no non-colored toy. I only think it crosses into sexism if my niece told me she likes blue better and I still pick a pink one or if there is some reason that the pink option is objectively worse (say if I was buying her a Bumblebee transformer, picking the pink one instead of the yellow one would qualify because the yellow one is the canonical color).
  - blowski 11y ago
    > If I'm buying my young niece a toy, and see two otherwise equal toys except one is blue and one is pink, is it sexist to choose the pink one? It would be sexist if you bought the pink one thinking "She's a girl, she'll prefer pink to blue" because you would be assuming something based solely on her gender. The best course of action might be to ask her "Do you want the blue one or the pink one?". But maybe you couldn't, and so you used your knowledge of your niece and of little girls in general, and you go with the pink one. Sometimes we have no choice but to use our stereotypes, but whenever possible we should get more data rather than just making assumptions.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      >It would be sexist if you bought the pink one thinking "She's a girl, she'll prefer pink to blue" because you would be assuming something based solely on her gender. What if I think "she is a girl, which means that, given I do not know her preference, she is more likely to prefer pink to blue"? Is using averages sexist/racist/*ist? Would it be genderist to assume someone who displays all the signs of a guy is a guy?
      - blowski 11y ago
        The logic of averages works like this: Girls are more likely to prefer pink than blue. My niece is a girl. Therefore she is more likely to prefer pink. So it seems to stand. However, my niece is also Italian, and Italians are more likely to prefer blue to pink. She is also vegetarian and vegetarians are more likely to prefer green to either blue or pink. (I'm making all these stats up in case that wasn't obvious). So which colour toy should I buy for my niece? Humans are complex. They can't be reduced to simple 'this one or that one' probabilities based on a single factor.
  - newscracker 11y ago
    > If I'm buying my young niece a toy, and see two otherwise equal toys except one is blue and one is pink, is it sexist to choose the pink one? I have to make a choice, there is no non-colored toy. This is where knowing how these associations came into being could also help you and also help educate others (including your young niece). Several decades ago, the colors promoted were blue for girls and pink for boys. Today people would be surprised to know this, but what's important is realizing that this was all created by a group of people saying "this color is what is appropriate for this gender because...(prejudices)", which basically sounds ridiculous. Here's an excerpt from an article [0] on Jezebel (I found it by searching for "girls blue boys pink"): > From Smithsonian.com: > Ladies' Home Journal article in June 1918 said, "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti. > In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene's told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle's in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago. ---------- Here's an excerpt from a similar article [1] from BBC that explains that there are no gender specific differences in babies/kids and that in adults blue is the most preferred by men and women: > Various studies have looked at colour preferences in different age groups. In the US most have found that babies and toddlers, whether male or female, are attracted to primary colours such as red and blue. Pink doesn’t feature high on the list, although it is more popular than brown and grey. Some studies of this age group have found blue is favoured, others red, but they rarely find any gender difference. > In 2007, research conducted at Newcastle University in the UK asked adults for their favourite colour. Did most of the women choose pink, or even red? No. The colour which came out top, for both men and women, was blue. [0]: http://jezebel.com/5790638/the-history-of-pink-for-girls-blue-for-boys http://jezebel.com/5790638/the-history-of-pink-for-girls-blu... [1]: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141117-the-pink-vs-blue-gender-myth http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141117-the-pink-vs-blue-ge...
- charlieflowers 11y ago
  > So if I assume you don't like pizza and football because you're female, so instead buy you frozen yoghurt, I'm being sexist I don't think so (if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I'd like to hear your thoughts). I think to be sexist, it must be (1) based on gender and (2) assume something _disparaging_ about the individual. Getting them yoghurt might get you laughed at for being silly, but it doesn't seem sexist to me. Assuming they might need some additional explanation of the algorithm you're discussing because they are female (or male) is sexist. Thoughts?
  - blowski 11y ago
    > (2) assume something _disparaging_ about the individual. The problem is that "disparaging" is in the eye of the beholder. What you think of as silly might be really offensive to another person. What was harmless 30 years ago - say, pinching a female colleague's bum - could today be considered beyond the pale. It's better not to assume anything about anybody unless necessary. I'm sure you've been in a situation where somebody has assumed something about you, and it can be really annoying.
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      If you'd allow me to rephrase, "It's better to treat people as individuals first and part of a demographic second."
  - mlajeunesse 11y ago
    I disagree, I don't think you have to think something disparaging. I think often acts of sexism are not intentional and are deeply engrained in us. Here is an example that happened to me last night. I walked into a small startup pitch event, approached a group of older men and said hi. They barely reacted to me. Not 30 seconds later a man of my age (who I happen to know) walks in and this group of men all turned and shook his hand. To be clear they did not previously know each other. I don't for a second think that any of these men saw me and thought to themselves "She's a woman, I'm not going to bother saying hello or introducing myself" I just think that on instinct they saw a man and decided to introduce themselves. This happens all the time to women. I can't count the number of times men have skipped over shaking my hand. It's a small thing, it's more than likely not intentional, but it is a bit sexist. Sexism isn't always a big evil act, it can be a lot of small things that add up to make it harder for women to succeed.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Is it sexism to make assumptions that are probabilistically correct? Consider the following procedure: 1) For a woman I don't know, I buy her frozen yogurt. 2) For a man I don't know, I buy him pizza. Now suppose my stereotypes are actually accurate - i.e., P(likes froyo > pizza|woman) > 0.5 and P(likes pizza > froyo | man) > 0.5. This procedure, based purely on stereotypes, will make everyone happier than flipping a coin. It's actually the best possible way to allocate pizza and frozen yogurt if the only information I have is gender. Are you really saying that to not be sexist, I need to ignore information and make worse decisions? (My supposition that stereotypes are accurate has actually been studied: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20of%20stereotypes.pdf http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20o... )
  - blowski 11y ago
    > Is it sexism to make assumptions that are probabilistically correct? Yes it's sexist, because assuming something about somebody based purely on their gender is precisely what sexism is. However, sometimes, in the face of limited data and limited resources to gather more data, being sexist might be the best possible course of action. The problem with the stereotypes of gender is that you are dealing with huge numbers of people. Even if a well-conducted survey reveals that 99.9% of women prefer frozen yoghurt to pizza, then there's still around 3.5 million women in the world that prefer pizza to frozen yoghurt. So the best possible way to decide whether to buy pizza or frozen yoghurt for a woman is to ask her. However, if you had to make a snap decision then, yes, you should go with the statistically more likely option and if you get it wrong then she should understand why you did it.
    - humanrebar 11y ago
      > ...assuming something about somebody based purely on their gender is precisely what sexism is. I'm going to challenge that definition. There are absolutely biological difference between men and women. When I offer to help a young woman carry her suitcase up stairs, am I being sexist because I assume she would appreciate the help? The definition of sexism needs to have room for some reality or the definition is useless or even harmful.
seivan 11y ago
There is also those who see vulgarity as a form of Sexism/racism. It only helps alienating people if you brand anything as sexism.
StavrosK 11y ago
I agree, pretty much our every interaction is full of biases. Not only that, but "bias" is just what we call wrong guesses! We go through life assigning likelihoods to things, because it's useful to know that a stove is more likely than a kitchen counter to burn you (even if it's not on), a road is more likely to require caution than a pavement, men are more likely to be able to lift heavy weights than women, etc. I still haven't been able to pin down what bias is, but I'd say preliminarily, "adhering to the initial judgement for someone even after getting evidence to the contrary". I can't rationally discount that X group of people is more likely to do Y (it would be irrational to claim that all groups of people have exactly the same statistical properties), but if you think that a specific person does Y just because you think their group does Y, even after you've seen that they don't, then you're biased.
pron 11y ago
Sexism is not stereotypes or personal feelings or attitudes (although those can by misogynistic). The academic (and consistent) definition of sexism is a property of a society where one of the sexes has less power than the other, and the mechanism by which that imbalance of power is perpetuated. Of course, sexism occurs because of internalized biases that are very hard counter unless people actually seek them out, and try to change the ones that cause an imbalance of power. Because those biases are internalized and widespread, it is very hard to find someone who isn't sexist. Being sexist doesn't imply blame, just like you couldn't blame someone three hundred years ago for not washing their hands and spreading disease, because they didn't know that diseases are caused by microbes. Just as observing disease-causing microbes requires study -- and in particular, distinguishing between disease-causing microbes and harmless or even helpful microbes -- so too does noticing sexism, and learning to distinguish it from harmless forms of non-uniform behavior towards others. But in both cases, the harm caused is real, and it is our duty to learn its mechanism and do our best to fight it.
- forgottenpass 11y ago
  No. I'm sick of this game. You clarification of the definition isn't clarification. It's unnecessary linguistic prescriptivism. If you want to talk about the type of sexism also often refereed to as "institutional sexism" then that's fine. If you want to call it just "sexism" thats fine too (but puts an unnecessary complication on the reader). But "sexism" is an overloaded term whether you want it to be or not. Just like I can't say "Bi-monthly now and forever forward only means every other month, and never means twice a month," you can't just wave away the regular-prejudice definition of sexism just because you want to. Also, this "academic definition" meme is bullshit. Academic writing is about clarity and making sure the reader understands the author's meaning. So, if at the beginning of the paper the author clarifies when they use "foo" they only mean one of the 3 possible definitions of foo, that's just good writing. But if they say "definition 2 of foo isn't actually foo, it's just bar. For any and all uses of foo, including outside this paper" they're a hack.
  - pron 11y ago
    > If you want to talk about the type of sexism also often refereed to as "institutional sexism" But I was not talking about institutional sexism. Sexism can be individual (and often is), but unlike misogyny it does not imply disdain towards women; simply behavior (that can feel neutral or even positive) that results in increasing the imbalance of power. > But "sexism" is an overloaded term whether you want it to be or not. OK, but it also a term that was coined by a feminist professor fifty years ago and considered a well-accepted academic term regardless of its colloquial meaning(s). > Academic writing is about clarity and making sure the reader understands the author's meaning. Academics seem to understand that writing just fine. You can't claim that physicists' definition of energy is unclear merely because it is also used colloquially to mean other things, and you can't expect an academic to clarify what they mean by "sexism" just as you can't expect them to explain what they mean by "energy", because those are well-established, commonly used academic terms. If you find them confusing, you can either learn the relevant subject or choose not to. Unlike energy, the word sexism started with its academic definition and was only later overloaded (due to confusion) by laymen, rather than the other way around. > But if they say "definition 2 of foo isn't actually foo, it's just bar. For any and all uses of foo, including outside this paper" they're a hack. I didn't say that. I just clarified the original and academic definition of the term, because it is the colloquial term that causes confusion. The academic term is quite clear. Do with it as you like. You're obviously very angry about something.

by sktrdie 11y ago

blowski 11y ago

Exactly. Sexism is not identical to misogynism. Where the latter is about being nasty, sexism is believing something about somebody solely based on their gender. So if I assume you don't like pizza and football because you're female, so instead buy you frozen yoghurt, I'm being sexist even if it's with the nicest of intentions. We're all human and we all make mistakes, but sometimes people blow those mistakes out of all proportion. We just need more understanding and patience on both sides of the fence.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>So if I assume you don't like pizza and football because you're female, so instead buy you frozen yoghurt, I'm being sexist even if it's with the nicest of intentions. If I'm buying my young niece a toy, and see two otherwise equal toys except one is blue and one is pink, is it sexist to choose the pink one? I have to make a choice, there is no non-colored toy. I only think it crosses into sexism if my niece told me she likes blue better and I still pick a pink one or if there is some reason that the pink option is objectively worse (say if I was buying her a Bumblebee transformer, picking the pink one instead of the yellow one would qualify because the yellow one is the canonical color).
- blowski 11y ago
  > If I'm buying my young niece a toy, and see two otherwise equal toys except one is blue and one is pink, is it sexist to choose the pink one? It would be sexist if you bought the pink one thinking "She's a girl, she'll prefer pink to blue" because you would be assuming something based solely on her gender. The best course of action might be to ask her "Do you want the blue one or the pink one?". But maybe you couldn't, and so you used your knowledge of your niece and of little girls in general, and you go with the pink one. Sometimes we have no choice but to use our stereotypes, but whenever possible we should get more data rather than just making assumptions.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >It would be sexist if you bought the pink one thinking "She's a girl, she'll prefer pink to blue" because you would be assuming something based solely on her gender. What if I think "she is a girl, which means that, given I do not know her preference, she is more likely to prefer pink to blue"? Is using averages sexist/racist/*ist? Would it be genderist to assume someone who displays all the signs of a guy is a guy?
    - blowski 11y ago
      The logic of averages works like this: Girls are more likely to prefer pink than blue. My niece is a girl. Therefore she is more likely to prefer pink. So it seems to stand. However, my niece is also Italian, and Italians are more likely to prefer blue to pink. She is also vegetarian and vegetarians are more likely to prefer green to either blue or pink. (I'm making all these stats up in case that wasn't obvious). So which colour toy should I buy for my niece? Humans are complex. They can't be reduced to simple 'this one or that one' probabilities based on a single factor.
- newscracker 11y ago
  > If I'm buying my young niece a toy, and see two otherwise equal toys except one is blue and one is pink, is it sexist to choose the pink one? I have to make a choice, there is no non-colored toy. This is where knowing how these associations came into being could also help you and also help educate others (including your young niece). Several decades ago, the colors promoted were blue for girls and pink for boys. Today people would be surprised to know this, but what's important is realizing that this was all created by a group of people saying "this color is what is appropriate for this gender because...(prejudices)", which basically sounds ridiculous. Here's an excerpt from an article [0] on Jezebel (I found it by searching for "girls blue boys pink"): > From Smithsonian.com: > Ladies' Home Journal article in June 1918 said, "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti. > In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene's told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle's in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago. ---------- Here's an excerpt from a similar article [1] from BBC that explains that there are no gender specific differences in babies/kids and that in adults blue is the most preferred by men and women: > Various studies have looked at colour preferences in different age groups. In the US most have found that babies and toddlers, whether male or female, are attracted to primary colours such as red and blue. Pink doesn’t feature high on the list, although it is more popular than brown and grey. Some studies of this age group have found blue is favoured, others red, but they rarely find any gender difference. > In 2007, research conducted at Newcastle University in the UK asked adults for their favourite colour. Did most of the women choose pink, or even red? No. The colour which came out top, for both men and women, was blue. [0]: http://jezebel.com/5790638/the-history-of-pink-for-girls-blue-for-boys http://jezebel.com/5790638/the-history-of-pink-for-girls-blu... [1]: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141117-the-pink-vs-blue-gender-myth http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141117-the-pink-vs-blue-ge...
charlieflowers 11y ago
> So if I assume you don't like pizza and football because you're female, so instead buy you frozen yoghurt, I'm being sexist I don't think so (if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I'd like to hear your thoughts). I think to be sexist, it must be (1) based on gender and (2) assume something _disparaging_ about the individual. Getting them yoghurt might get you laughed at for being silly, but it doesn't seem sexist to me. Assuming they might need some additional explanation of the algorithm you're discussing because they are female (or male) is sexist. Thoughts?
- blowski 11y ago
  > (2) assume something _disparaging_ about the individual. The problem is that "disparaging" is in the eye of the beholder. What you think of as silly might be really offensive to another person. What was harmless 30 years ago - say, pinching a female colleague's bum - could today be considered beyond the pale. It's better not to assume anything about anybody unless necessary. I'm sure you've been in a situation where somebody has assumed something about you, and it can be really annoying.
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    If you'd allow me to rephrase, "It's better to treat people as individuals first and part of a demographic second."
- mlajeunesse 11y ago
  I disagree, I don't think you have to think something disparaging. I think often acts of sexism are not intentional and are deeply engrained in us. Here is an example that happened to me last night. I walked into a small startup pitch event, approached a group of older men and said hi. They barely reacted to me. Not 30 seconds later a man of my age (who I happen to know) walks in and this group of men all turned and shook his hand. To be clear they did not previously know each other. I don't for a second think that any of these men saw me and thought to themselves "She's a woman, I'm not going to bother saying hello or introducing myself" I just think that on instinct they saw a man and decided to introduce themselves. This happens all the time to women. I can't count the number of times men have skipped over shaking my hand. It's a small thing, it's more than likely not intentional, but it is a bit sexist. Sexism isn't always a big evil act, it can be a lot of small things that add up to make it harder for women to succeed.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
Is it sexism to make assumptions that are probabilistically correct? Consider the following procedure: 1) For a woman I don't know, I buy her frozen yogurt. 2) For a man I don't know, I buy him pizza. Now suppose my stereotypes are actually accurate - i.e., P(likes froyo > pizza|woman) > 0.5 and P(likes pizza > froyo | man) > 0.5. This procedure, based purely on stereotypes, will make everyone happier than flipping a coin. It's actually the best possible way to allocate pizza and frozen yogurt if the only information I have is gender. Are you really saying that to not be sexist, I need to ignore information and make worse decisions? (My supposition that stereotypes are accurate has actually been studied: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20of%20stereotypes.pdf http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20o... )
- blowski 11y ago
  > Is it sexism to make assumptions that are probabilistically correct? Yes it's sexist, because assuming something about somebody based purely on their gender is precisely what sexism is. However, sometimes, in the face of limited data and limited resources to gather more data, being sexist might be the best possible course of action. The problem with the stereotypes of gender is that you are dealing with huge numbers of people. Even if a well-conducted survey reveals that 99.9% of women prefer frozen yoghurt to pizza, then there's still around 3.5 million women in the world that prefer pizza to frozen yoghurt. So the best possible way to decide whether to buy pizza or frozen yoghurt for a woman is to ask her. However, if you had to make a snap decision then, yes, you should go with the statistically more likely option and if you get it wrong then she should understand why you did it.
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    > ...assuming something about somebody based purely on their gender is precisely what sexism is. I'm going to challenge that definition. There are absolutely biological difference between men and women. When I offer to help a young woman carry her suitcase up stairs, am I being sexist because I assume she would appreciate the help? The definition of sexism needs to have room for some reality or the definition is useless or even harmful.

seivan 11y ago

There is also those who see vulgarity as a form of Sexism/racism. It only helps alienating people if you brand anything as sexism.

StavrosK 11y ago

I agree, pretty much our every interaction is full of biases. Not only that, but "bias" is just what we call wrong guesses! We go through life assigning likelihoods to things, because it's useful to know that a stove is more likely than a kitchen counter to burn you (even if it's not on), a road is more likely to require caution than a pavement, men are more likely to be able to lift heavy weights than women, etc. I still haven't been able to pin down what bias is, but I'd say preliminarily, "adhering to the initial judgement for someone even after getting evidence to the contrary". I can't rationally discount that X group of people is more likely to do Y (it would be irrational to claim that all groups of people have exactly the same statistical properties), but if you think that a specific person does Y just because you think their group does Y, even after you've seen that they don't, then you're biased.

pron 11y ago

Sexism is not stereotypes or personal feelings or attitudes (although those can by misogynistic). The academic (and consistent) definition of sexism is a property of a society where one of the sexes has less power than the other, and the mechanism by which that imbalance of power is perpetuated. Of course, sexism occurs because of internalized biases that are very hard counter unless people actually seek them out, and try to change the ones that cause an imbalance of power. Because those biases are internalized and widespread, it is very hard to find someone who isn't sexist. Being sexist doesn't imply blame, just like you couldn't blame someone three hundred years ago for not washing their hands and spreading disease, because they didn't know that diseases are caused by microbes. Just as observing disease-causing microbes requires study -- and in particular, distinguishing between disease-causing microbes and harmless or even helpful microbes -- so too does noticing sexism, and learning to distinguish it from harmless forms of non-uniform behavior towards others. But in both cases, the harm caused is real, and it is our duty to learn its mechanism and do our best to fight it.

forgottenpass 11y ago
No. I'm sick of this game. You clarification of the definition isn't clarification. It's unnecessary linguistic prescriptivism. If you want to talk about the type of sexism also often refereed to as "institutional sexism" then that's fine. If you want to call it just "sexism" thats fine too (but puts an unnecessary complication on the reader). But "sexism" is an overloaded term whether you want it to be or not. Just like I can't say "Bi-monthly now and forever forward only means every other month, and never means twice a month," you can't just wave away the regular-prejudice definition of sexism just because you want to. Also, this "academic definition" meme is bullshit. Academic writing is about clarity and making sure the reader understands the author's meaning. So, if at the beginning of the paper the author clarifies when they use "foo" they only mean one of the 3 possible definitions of foo, that's just good writing. But if they say "definition 2 of foo isn't actually foo, it's just bar. For any and all uses of foo, including outside this paper" they're a hack.
- pron 11y ago
  > If you want to talk about the type of sexism also often refereed to as "institutional sexism" But I was not talking about institutional sexism. Sexism can be individual (and often is), but unlike misogyny it does not imply disdain towards women; simply behavior (that can feel neutral or even positive) that results in increasing the imbalance of power. > But "sexism" is an overloaded term whether you want it to be or not. OK, but it also a term that was coined by a feminist professor fifty years ago and considered a well-accepted academic term regardless of its colloquial meaning(s). > Academic writing is about clarity and making sure the reader understands the author's meaning. Academics seem to understand that writing just fine. You can't claim that physicists' definition of energy is unclear merely because it is also used colloquially to mean other things, and you can't expect an academic to clarify what they mean by "sexism" just as you can't expect them to explain what they mean by "energy", because those are well-established, commonly used academic terms. If you find them confusing, you can either learn the relevant subject or choose not to. Unlike energy, the word sexism started with its academic definition and was only later overloaded (due to confusion) by laymen, rather than the other way around. > But if they say "definition 2 of foo isn't actually foo, it's just bar. For any and all uses of foo, including outside this paper" they're a hack. I didn't say that. I just clarified the original and academic definition of the term, because it is the colloquial term that causes confusion. The academic term is quite clear. Do with it as you like. You're obviously very angry about something.