Should the feminism tag exist on this site?

Question

The feminism tag is apparently unwelcome on this forum. There are only 3 questions tagged with feminism (my own included). One of the other 2 was closed as opinion-based. That leaves a single question related to feminism.

Should this tag even exist on this site?

Answer 1

After a significant amount of consideration of the points raised by other answers to this question (@Jenayah in particular, thank you), as well as constructive feedback from the comments to my question, I have successfully managed to salvage that question from a -6 to a +10, and I'd like to summarize what I've found (from a sample size of 1, mind you) that this community appears to support.

I'm arguing in favor of keeping the feminism tag, but clarifying the tag usage to recommend that questions using it may benefit from considering the specific years of cited works in order to determine the context of feminism at the time the works were produced. I believe this was the critical piece that was missing from my question, which, after adding, gave a commonly understandable point of reference, so that the question and answer can be understood in its appropriate context. My question in particular was related almost entirely to Second-Wave Feminism, however, without that additional information and a common understanding of the term, the question could be easily interpreted differently when interpreted as Fourth-Wave Feminism.

I've done my best to extract some themes that could be easily identified in literature, movies and other published content, as they would be relevant to each iteration of the feminist movements, and, furthermore, mapped to a continuous timeline that covers most if not all of the Science Fiction & Fantasy works discussed in this community. Of course, there were no hard boundaries for the applicable dates, nor were there necessarily any unanimous agreements on these definitions. However, I believe these are appropriate and useful for application to the feminism tag on this site, as well as respectful to the movements. I would sincerely appreciate further discussion on this topic. I hope this helps, and if it doesn't, at least I tried.

First-Wave Feminism (~1871-1960)

• official legal inequalities

Second-Wave Feminism (~1961-1990)

• sexuality
• family
• the workplace (or appropriate trade, profession, or peer group)
• reproductive rights
• de facto inequalities (e.g., physical, biological)
• official legal inequalities

Third-Wave Feminism (~1991-2007)

• abolishing gender-role stereotypes
• expanding feminism to include women with diverse racial and cultural identities
• focus on individualism

Fourth-Wave Feminism (~2008-present)

• oriented around social media for organization and mobilization
• empowerment of women
  • justice against assault and harassment
  • equal pay for equal work
  • bodily autonomy
  • speak against abusers of power
  • provide opportunities for girls and women
• advocates for men in addition to women
  • greater opportunities to be engaged parents
  • free expression of emotions and feelings
  • free to present themselves as they wish

Answer 2

Not on account of the given reason(s)

Unpopularity contest

You have determined that this tag is unpopular, however, an unpopular tag can still be useful. It may become more popular, or widely-used in time.

Besides, you said it yourself, there is already a post that uses the tag, and is actually using it correctly and successfully. Are you saying that post not longer deserves to have that tag?

Jerk that knee

It seems to me that you've had an unpleasant experience using this tag on a post, and consequently knee-jerk reacting.

Let's not dummy-spit, let's work to improve what's here. There are some related questions that could potentially benefit from this tag, and in fact might even improve the site's searchability if we did add them, for example:

• Do Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion pass the Bechdel test?
• Is there significance to the all-female main characters in Annihilation?
• A (very sexualized) women controlled world, where the main character joins the resistance

Not to mention that we have the bechdel-test and the female-characters tags that could work to compliment to each other.

Answer 3

We should get rid of it, although as the previous answer said, not on account of given reasons but per the burnination criteria listed on When to burninate on main Meta:

1. Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied? and is it unambiguous?

The contents, I guess... But unambiguous? Definitions of feminism vary almost with every person, so yes, it is ambiguous.

2. Is the concept described even on-topic for the site?

Not really, no. Admittedly this criterion is a bit more relevant on technical sites like SO (see original meta post), but no, feminism isn't, overall, especially SFF. We do have ambiguous but on-topic tags elves, [tag: androids]...

3. Does the tag add any meaningful information to the post?

Kinda? Actually, probably more than elves; on non-ID stuff at least. That criterion is probably a pass.

4. Does it mean the same thing in all common contexts?

Back to #1: no, it doesn't. And this ambiguity does cause closure, because "feminism", unless very explicitly defined in the question, is often unclear and POB.

Furthermore, like Möoz pointed out, surely female-characters can take care of whatever feminism would leave out. I think the former is also a crappy tag, but that's a discussion for another day.