4 ms·

The German pirate party is in the peculiar spot where communists, nazis, feminists, men's rights activists, liberals and conservatives are all convinced they're

• tormeh 12y ago
  Why doesn't men's rights activists call themselves masculinists? Easy way to use language to redefine feminism as a women-only thing. Easy points. And then conventional feminism could be redefined as equalism or whatever and the language pedantic in me would rest easy.
  • innguest 12y ago
    Because that's wrong derivation? pro-woman -> woman in Latin is femina -> feminism pro-man -> man in Latin is vir -> virilism (sounds stupid). That's why.
    • shkkmo 12y ago
      I doubt that's actually why, but it is an interesting fact to know.
    • LukeShu 12y ago
      But "mās" is also Latin for man? We see that used with feminine/masculine. Is there a reason it would be different in this case?
      • innguest 12y ago
        Yes, there is a reason. woman -> femina, related to women -> femininus man -> vir, related to men -> mas As you can see it seems even the Romans did not like to make derivations from the old, old word "vir" (also see etymology for "world"). Feminine is from 'femininus', not 'femina'. Masculine is from 'mas' -> 'masculus' (diminutive of 'mas') -> 'masculinus', not 'vir'. 'Mas' was never used to mean "man", only "male". If instead of "feminism", the movement were called "femininism", then the opposite would indeed be "masculinism" as you suggest. But the opposite of "feminism" must be "virilism".
• 1ris 12y ago
  No, it's the exact opposite. It's a place where all these are welcome. Denie the holocaust, fine you can stay in the party. On the left side, celebrate war crimes? Fine. Which does not leave any potential for voters either.
  • creshal 12y ago
    > No, it's the exact opposite. It's a place where all these are welcome. Yeah, so left-wing voters avoid the party because of the right-wing extremists in it; right-wing voters avoid it because of its left-wing extremists; …
  • ExpiredLink 12y ago
    Denying the holocaust is - literally - a crime in Germany and other European countries.
    • 1ris 12y ago
      Yes. Stresses the point it was almost impossbile to get thrown out. IMO the failure of the pirate party was the result of the refusal to excude anybody. Absolutely no standard of decency or adherence to any kind of policy or political agenda was required. For Mailinglist or webforums that works quite well. But not for a political party, these require some kind of shared values. Not feeding the trolls is pointless if the newspapers are feeding them.