I think the conflation problem also shows up even in putting the words into use in categoricals. E.g., the double use of “animals” doesn’t cause much trouble in being able to understand that “No animal can speak for itself” has a (true) exclusive interpretation and a (false) inclusive interpretation, or in accepting statements like “Some animals can fly aeroplanes” or “Some animals are human.” Supposedly “All men are created equal” should be just as flexible in interpretation, but the same people who would accept “Some animals (viz., us) can fly aeroplanes” are far less likely to be willing to accept “Some men can give birth” or “Some men are women,” unless they are defending a thesis.

But I suspect the interpretive stickiness in the “Some” categoricals has something to do with cognitive stickiness that probably also shows up in the “All” categoricals — that there’s some reason to think that the meaning is not really reliably being switched over to the inclusive meaning in the universal claims, either. If they are being understood to include women, it’s generally only going to be done by some considerable act of will, against the cognitive grain (the same act of will it takes to read “Some men are women” as a true existential claim), or else is being done only as an afterthought, which is easily forgotten when you start reasoning from the statements that you’ve accepted as true.

... Sure; neither can I, but I think that we're not the sort of prospective customers Steve Jobs intends to sell iPads to. (Speaking for myself, if I had the

... All contracts foreclose on other options, by definition. If they didn't, they wouldn't be binding contracts. But I think Kevin's point is that that, just

Anon73: My understanding is the term ‘man’ originally meant humans …

Around the time of Beowulf, sure. (*) But by 1952 the primary use of “man” was “an adult human male,” and any educated writer who decided to use it in the allegedly gender-neutral sense would be aware of the distinct possibility of conflation between the exclusive and inclusive meanings. (It’s just that, in 1952, cultural politics were such that most male writers didn’t particularly care about that possibility.) The gender-exclusive primary use of “man” had been well established since “wer” disappeared in Middle English, and in fact the 19th century had seen a series of public controversies in English-speaking countries as to whether or not the use of “man,” “he,” etc. in traditional laws, charters, by-laws, etc. should be construed to include women, or to include men only — with a number of schools, courts, professional associations, etc. specifically deciding that it should be read to exclude women from admission. (**)

Of course, if the title is read as “Males Against the State,” that’s mostly an accurate description of the contents of the book. Angela Heywood, Voltairine de Cleyre, Gertrude Kelly and Emma Goldman are all mentioned in passing only; the folks whose expositions of individualist Anarchism get significant discussion in the book are one and all dudes. Which is a problem in itself, aside from any problems with word choice.

Anon73: If you’re absolutely opposed to it then what do you propose to replace with ‘man’ for a gender-neutral term? “Humans against the State”?

Enemies of the State would have made a good, equally-provocative title. Individuals Against the State would be clunky but prefigure the individualist content of their opposition to the state. There are of course lots of other titles you could choose that couldn’t be carried out by a simple search-and-replace operation on the title. The fact that anti-sexist language sometimes makes one particular phrase awkward or unwieldy doesn’t mean that a talented writer can’t come up with some other arresting phrase to put in its place, if she simply goes back to the blackboard and thinks it through a bit.

(*) “Man” in Old English was inclusive, like “homo” in Latin or “anthropos” in Greek. If you needed to specify gender, you said “wer” or “werman” for an adult male and “wifman” for an adult woman.

(**) In the U.K., the Interpretation Act of 1850 was passed to require gender-neutral constructions of “he,” “man,” etc. in acts of Parliament, apparently mainly to allow more succinct writing; but that bill was also a response to existing legal controversies, and meanwhile in the U.S. a number of schools, courts, and professional associations were insisting on males-only readings in order to exclude women from admission to a number of institutions and professions.

“Man” in Old English generally functioned like “homo” in Latin or “anthropos” in Greek. Of course, people talking about homo in Latin often implicitly had a male in mind, but
If you needed to specify gender, you said “werman” for a male adult and “wifman” for a female adult.)

... Well, so is a paperback book, but I buy a fair number of those anyway. A tablet makes a poor option for your only computer, if any substantial amount of

Couldn’t he have just whistled it?

Lorraine: Of course I'm aware that's advertised-as-free-market not principled-free-market. Surely you're aware that mentions of the free market in the former context far outnumber the latter.

No doubt, but when people associate crazy and contradictory things with a label (*), I think it helps to point out that they are contradictory, and to encourage people to get clearer on the terms that they use.

(*) A fate in which the label "free markets" is not alone; for example, I just read a news story in which I was informed that the Republican candidate for Senate in my state is "practically an Anarchist" (!)).

Lorraine: I'd describe the ideological agenda of the World Bank/IMF not as free market or free trade but 'separation of economy and state.' ... But I think it's an accurate description of what these institutions are trying to force on the human race.

That seems like a very odd description of institutions whose activities consist of governments loaning money to other governments so that the latter set of governments can then transfer it to large corporations, including both local capitalists and MNCs, along with all kinds of government land seizures and government-backed monopoly concessions. Whatever that may be (and it's a lot of things), it's certainly not a separation of economy and state.

Lorraine: The result is of course obvious to all left tendencies; a market economy in which capital has practically friction-free mobility, while the mobility of labor remains very tightly constrained. I'm not ready to attribute all the unfairness built into the actually-existing market economy to the deck being stacked in favor of capital over labor, or to statist manipulations in general, ...

Well, O.K., I don't disagree with you about any of that. (Of course, as an Anarchist I think the statist stacking of the deck is really, really important. But I don't think it's the end of story.) However, I don't think my point had much to do with any of that. It was simply that it seems like there are important points at which your views happen to overlap with the views of professed free-marketeers -- not only the views of mutualists/free-market anti-capitalists like me, but also even with the views of creepy conventionally pro-capitalist smaller-government types. The point is not that you have the same reasons for coming to those conclusions, or that you should like or even want to associate yourself with the latter. It's that it would be strangely self-limiting to swear off an important position (like, say, opposition to the IMF/World Bank, or support for decriminalizing immigration) simply because your views happen to overlap, on that particular point, with folks who you "tribally" feel uncomfortable with. Presumably they like breathing, too, but that's not a reason to give up on it.

Lorraine: ... partly because it's a big leap of faith, and partly, admittedly, because of my tribal distaste for certain parties who would be (arguably) vindicated by such a finding.

Well, um, O.K., that's perhaps an explanation for why you might hesitate to come to a particular conclusion, but is it a good reason for you to do so?

... For my own reference, by "scientific" here do you mean anything stronger than "systematic" or "methodical"? If so, what else do you mean? In any case: do

Lorraine: And I'm considerably more uncomfortable about being on the 'free-market' side of any issue.

Really? Isn't that a really self-limiting sort of position to take? I mean, the free market position, even from the most vulgar capitalist sorts of pseudo-free-market small-governmentalist "libertarians," include opposition to government bail-outs for failing capitalist banks, opposition to politicized neoliberal government loans and "development" projects by the IMF and World Bank, principled opposition to the Drug War, support for free immigration, support for the complete decriminalization of sex workers, etc. etc. Do you let that stop you, or make you feel uncomfortable, with coming out against bailouts, or for immigrant rights? If so, why? If not, isn't that a good example of letting your own commitments drive your politics, rather than accidental overlaps or associations with free-market thinking?

Organism and RadGeek: Both of you are appealing to the belief that we are judged by the company we keep.

Maybe that's how we are judged, but I don't think that's what I was appealing to. People who take my (traditional Anarchist) use of the word "libertarian" to mean that I'm on some kind of Libertarian Party tip; they just haven't been educated about what the word "libertarian" means, and so they think I'm talking about a different kind of company than the company I actually do keep. (Remember, I came to this market Anarchist gig through social Anarchism, and the folks I hang out with are generally fellow (A)s or other radical leftists -- not LPers.) Of course, the word "libertarian" is what throws folks off; but there's a reason why the common usage of the word has become so confused, and I have reasons for wanting to stick to something like the traditional Anarchist usage of the word, and to disabuse people of those confusions insofar as I can.

Same deal for "Anarchist," except that the associations people have with that aren't so much systematically wrong, as just completely random and out of left field. Some people think it means I'm a punk rock scenester (I'm not, although I got nothing agin' 'em), or a Black Blocker (ditto); others seem to think that it means I'm a primitivist; others that I'm some kind of hermit opposed to human society as such; others that I'm basically one step away from being in an al-Qaeda sleeper cell; others that I'm a closet Marxist-Leninist; others that I'm five steps to the Right of Sarah Palin or some kind of closet corporate-fascist; etc. etc. etc. Typically, they look at the word "Anarchy" and they see in it, not "the company I keep," but whatever political outcome they happen to fear the most, and take that to be what I'm for.

The solution, I think, is not to avoid the label, but to make productive use of the confusion that it provokes -- by taking it as a "teachable moment," if I may apologize for the pat phrase, and just give the quickest pitch I can about the difference between lawlessness and disorder, and why I, as an Anarchist, am not looking to replace order with violence, but rather to undermine a violent coercive order, and build up an alternative, consensual social order in its place.