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Jousting with King CanuteJune 16, 2006 Anyone else remember the ads that Xerox Corp. used to run (maybe still does, I don't know; I don't get out much, and I rarely pick up a newspaper) on the op-ed page of major newspapers? The gist was that "Xerox" was its tradename; it should not, repeat not, be used to refer to just any old photocopier, or any old photocopy. And it went without saying that "Xerox" should not be turned into a verb: one did not "Xerox" (or "xerox"); one photocopied. Recall, if you will, King Canute. King Canute raised his arms and commanded the waves to stop moving, the tides to stop going in and out. King Canute was not (repeat: not) a buffoon so enthralled with his kingly powers that he thought he could halt the sea in its tracks. No no no: King Canute was demonstrating the limitations of his powers, and his perfect awareness of those limitations. Some of my editorial colleagues carry the torch for Xerox, and Band-Aids, Dumpsters, and Rollerblades. These are tradenames: they must always be capped; they must never be verbed. In my newspaper days I once changed a reference to young people rollerblading on the bike path to young people inline skating on the bike path. My heart was not in the change. The writer phoned me after the paper came out: Why did you do that? I explained, sort of. She bought it, sort of. I was mortified. I repented. I've never done it again. I might cap the "R" in "Rollerblading," but then again I might not. "Dumpster" looks positively foolish with an initial cap, unless of course it's at the beginning of a sentence. "The homeless man rummaged through the Dumpster in search of his supper"? If I had to cap "the President" every time I referred to him, I would say he was putting on airs. Ditto that Dumpster. I can't wait for the legal department of Dumpster Inc. to call me on the carpet: Are you sure that was a Dumpster the homeless man was rummaging through, not a generic large trash receptacle? Are you perhaps endeavoring with malice aforethought to associate our product with depraved homeless individuals? Do you have a lawyer, Ms. Sturgis? Some of my editorial colleagues believe that if one values the intellectual property rights of starving but brilliant writers and artists, one must honor the intellectual property rights of humongous corporations who feed their CEOs well but don't care if most everyone else starves. Non sequitur, I say; in other words, crap. However, today I looked into my heart. What I found was a word whose misuse I so loathe that, if it were my tradename, I would sue the hell out of anyone who misused it. The word is "feminist." The catalyst was an article by Caryl Rivers in the online Boston Globe, headlined "A feminist success story." The piece was about Ann Coulter. Yeah, that Ann Coulter. A feminist success story? Have I been warped to the Bizarro World? Toward the end of the piece, the author -- Caryl Rivers, a professor of journalism at Boston University -- wrote: "Certainly, when we feminists were marching in the 1970s trying to knock down doors barred to women, we never imagined that one person who would follow us through was Ann Coulter. But, hey, everybody can't be Gloria Steinem." When I marched in the 1970s, it was less to "knock down doors barred to women" than to flatten, circumvent, and otherwise hamstring the institutions that oppressed women. I did not for a minute think that my efforts were giving Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant license to speak. Phyllis and Anita got their licenses without my help. If Ann Coulter has a relationship to feminism, it is the same relationship that Darth Vader bears to the Force. The Force is not responsible, and neither is feminism. If Feminism™ belonged to me, I might be buying tacky ads on the op-ed page, pointing out that Feminism™ means certain things; that just because a person of the female persuasion grabs the limelight, she is not necesssarily a feminist. The word "feminism" is not a trademark. Not only can any of us use it in any way we please, we get to define what it means. You're a feminist if you say you are. This is the only way to go, in my thoroughly unhumble and unreconstructed feminist opinion, but it has a big drawback: many of the people who get to define "feminism" for the biggest audiences have at best a rather limited idea of what feminism is: it supports reproductive rights and equal pay for equal work; it opposes violence against women. At worst, and all too often, they're actively hostile to the very idea of feminism. Unfortunately, and not at all coincidentally, their license to speak gives them access to CNN, the New York Times, and Clear Channel Communications. My license doesn't extend much further than the range of my voice. Xerox did not allow Canon to write its op-ed ads. Democrats and Republicans do not script each other's campaigns. (Or do they?) Non- and anti-feminists, however, regularly get to define what feminism is. What's wrong with this picture, and how do we fix it?
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