FuzzBeast: "The use of this spelling, while not only being a reactionary idea, also shows a great ignorance to the Germanic origins of the English language." You know, I'm aware of the etymology you're mentioning. (I'm also aware that "history" comes from ἱστορία not "his-story," etc.) But it is not clear to me that the meaning of the parts of the words in 9th century England must necessarily be more important to radical feminists than what the structure of the word may suggest to people who are using the language in January 2011, in a linguistic community where we don't have any wer-men and the root "man" is decidedly *not* gender-neutral. Re-spelling "women" as "womyn" is not intended to raise the consciousness of the author of Beowulf or give Alfred the Great a poke in the eye; it's intended, first, to make a point about how deeply embedded sexism is in structures of thought and action that we use, today, and second, simply as a signaling device to indicate something about the writer's gender politics. FuzzBeast: "however the word woman is not a pejorative" I'm pretty sure it has been, in some contexts. But anyway I think the point of "womyn" was to make a point about the way in which women and femininity had traditionally been defined in terms of deviations or defects from normative masculinity, whereas masculinity had simply been treated as the default condition for humanity. Not to reclaim a term which had previously been pejorative. FuzzBeast: "a great way to present oneself in a manner wherein one would be taken less seriously" I think someone who would zero in on the spelling of "womyn" rather than anything the feminist in question is saying about gender politics -- and who would actually take the speaker, or her substantive claims, less seriously because of this purely orthographic issue, was probably already not the most receptive audience for the substantive feminist claims that the writer was aiming to make.

And why do so using the word “anarchy” with an obscure and irrational definition, when everyone understands “anarchy” to be the chaos and violence that always accompanies the breakdown of civilization?

The anarchist use of the term “anarchy” (to refer to a peaceful, spontaneous social order without government) is not exactly “obscure.” It is, for example, well known among anarchists. It’s even in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Of course, other people use “anarchy” to mean different things. But many of us think that those common usages are conceptually confused, and part of the aim of using the word (esp. in phrases like “anarchy is order; government is civil war,” etc.) is to help to point out, and clear up, the confusion. Perhaps you think that this kind of dialectical engagement is illegitimate, or needlessly confusing. But then, if you think you have a good reason to use the term “government” unconventionally, so as to include things that are completely contrary to the way that “everyone” uses the word (e.g., “voluntary government,” stateless government, etc., when “everyone” currently uses the word just to mean the specific organization in charge of a political state), in order to clear up the confusions that you think many are carrying around in their heads, I don’t see how you can consistently deny us the option of using the term “anarchy” counter-conventionally instead, for the same purpose.

The only major difference I can see is that our usage of the term “anarchy,” while somewhat counter-conventional in the broader linguistic community, is entirely conventional within an existing, well-established subculture and intellectual tradition (that is, among self-identified anarchists, of whom there have been a few). Whereas your use of the term “government” is, with few exceptions (Albert Jay Nock; Charles Lane; perhaps Gustave de Molinari), almost purely idiosyncratic.

Perhaps, rather than going on the rhetorical assault against anarchists for using the words “state” and “government” differently from the way that you use them, you could provide some explanation of what you find to be specifically useful about your counter-conventional reappropriation of the word “government.” Then we could tell you what we find specifically useful about our counter-conventional reappropriation of the word “anarchy.” And folks can try to figure out what is likely to be most useful to them in the conversations that they have.

Here, just to get things started, I’ll tell you one of the reasons I prefer the “an-archy” counter-convention to the “voluntary government” counter-convention: because an important part of the point I am trying to make is about the act of governing other people — the kind of power relationship that implies — not just the specific institutional arrangement of governing in a modern bureaucratic state. I don’t aim to govern anybody other than myself, and I aim, as far as possible, to bring about social spaces in which hierarchical relationships of governing are replaced by relationships on a footing of mutuality, equality, free association and free exchange.

How about you?

Francois Tremblay (emphasis added):

Why do you sanction that capitalist Catholic scumbag? …

Man. You can take Franc out of Objectivism, but you sure cannot take the Objectivism out of Franc.

... The "sweeps" I was referring above were the mass round-ups and deportations during the "Mexican Repatriation" [sic] of the 1920s-1930s (which began with

... I don't want to be crude, but I think the brief answer, about the prevalence of MLK "revisionism" (*) among movement libertarians during, say, the 1990s,

... each. ... The basic procedure by the immigration cops during the two mass sweeps were (1) to target neighborhoods that were known to have a large Latino

... Well, as many of the "liberals" and "moderates" who nominally opposed Jim Crow, but who preferred more politic means of trying to address it, resented

... I am legally required to show papers to federal law enforcement agents (among others) any time I travel if the traveling involves boarding an airplane.

Well, you do get asked “So what church do you go to?” a lot.

Mostly, though, it depends on how supportive your family and your immediate circle of friends are. It was relatively easy for me; not so much for other kids.

... This surely depends on who you're talking about and when "used to" was. Chinese people, Japanese people, Jews and Anarchists all have considerably more