Infighting within a movement seems inevitable in a culture worshiping violence, but it need not degenerate into backstabbing tactics. Reasonable people can agree to disagree peaceably. Disagreements can be relative, mild, vitriolic, explosive. Sometimes they occur over meanings of critical words. Any word takes different meanings depending on context, including bias of the interpreters. Meanings are malleable especially for politicians and pundits. That could be a point of Lewis Carroll creating that Humpty Dumpty character, who told Alice when he used a word, it meant just what he wanted it to mean, no more or less, since he is the master of words. This sounds like spin doctors twisting words into mind games tailored for the dumbed down masses.

The writer editor team of the Free Soil Party is familiar with disagreement first hand, idealistic feminist theorist working out a political philosophy with down to earth attorney. Some issues arising in this maelstrom passing for political reality are so complex, the best we can hope for is to agree to disagree, at least for the moment. As long as mutual respect is sustained, argument need not get vicious or demoralizing, but can be a means to understand the points of contention from other points of view, though consensus may be elusive or infeasible.

The meanings of words can contribute to infighting because people have reasons to disagree on how to define terms, ranging from cultural distortions to conflicts of interest to the inherent ambiguity of language. One exasperating example is the word woman getting clouded by impostors. This is an odd issue. It cannot be taken seriously, this idea of a man thinking he has become a woman. All women are born with ovaries, a womb, a birth canal, and no Y chromosomes. None of these can a man possibly duplicate, no matter how he alters his body. There may be confusion about true hermaphrodites or XXY syndrome, but otherwise this idea of becoming a woman is meaningless. Men can approximate the common female stereotype, take on enough aspects of that outer configuration to cause people to treat them as women, but that is as far as that can go. Altered man is more like extreme transvestite than woman.

No male can learn to understand, in the ways any woman naturally understands, how a woman feels or what it means to be a woman. Her biology and experience combine to shape her in ways that man can only dimly comprehend or imagine. This does not stop anyone from defying common preconceptions about character or activity. Those can remain unquestioned by default, stereotypical roles biased to keep people in line with the program of a few rich influential men. There may be valid arguments over scattered shards of value in the glass house of traditional concepts, but contention over what makes a woman seems counterproductive at best. What keeps women out of power is at issue when transformed men make trouble for women by turning anti-discrimination laws against them. Men, leave it to women to define what makes a woman or feminist. A man can be a variety of feminist, but as for being a woman, he cannot qualify, no matter what he has done to his body or mind. He can act out his interpretation of being a woman, but should keep in mind that being a woman is not an act.

Biology influences but does not determine destiny or experience. Female biology is a necessary element of being a woman. This has some important implications, but life in general is more influenced by choice and local culture. If the culture did not value men over women, it would be unrecognizable, opposed at the root level to what we all know as mainstream culture.

The meaning of feminist is also a major bone of contention, enough so that many young women accept the basic principles of feminism but not the name, since the picture media paints is so unrepresentative. Some feminists are so infuriated with men, they might seem to justify the caricature, but men twist this into a trick to dodge all the issues feminists raise. Male feminist is another confused concept. If a man is genuine, not pretending to feminist interest to score points, the concept could be meaningful. Men can have their wing of feminism, if they observe it is for women to define the terms, theories, and practices of independent women. Still always lurking is male capacity for self-delusion, thinking he understands enough while understanding little of relevance. Male feminist should carry some kind of qualifier: male, pro, supporter, defender, studying, partner, bro, trans, since male experience of feminist issues has to differ in certain significant ways.

The meaning of radical has been diluted by all sorts of strange associations, both by those who claim the word and those trying to demean it. Free Soil philosophy uses the word to mean going to the roots, beyond any preconceptions, surface manifestations, and defense mechanisms covering up the real agendas. This does not mean finding all things man has created to be worthless junk, but preferring to create unfettered by stifling philosophy as much as possible. Free Soil aims to radicalize people, or at least to get some to think of possibilities beyond mainstream drear. If the mainstream notices Free Soil, it might get called feminazi, man-hating, environmentalist wacko. Shrug. Radicals ought to know how defenders of the status quo operate. They prefer to dodge important issues, so they ridicule the messengers. Radicals are likely angry, but anger need not flow from hatred or wackiness. Men in power are ruining life for everyone. That is one example of something bad enough to provoke an anger that cannot be reasoned away. When reasons for opposing the status quo are abundantly more persuasive than the defense, why should any woman not be angry? The culture frowns on angry women, and depression ravages women. Their powerlessness breeds despair to feed a colossal legal mind-altering drug market.

The meaning of terrorism is so twisted by patriotism, it might as well be in the eye of the beholder. Israel and Arabs accuse each other of terrorism, denying the accusation and slinging it back. War crimes usually get revenged out of court. International law is almost reduced to a bad joke for practical purposes, but that may be because American politicians frown on rational limits on their options. The argument nominating America for the worst war criminal, terrorist, rogue nation is ignored at its peril, at least if one values rights or life. America and its cohorts usually do whatever the top dogs feel like, scoffing at contrary opinions. It may be debatable whether America tops that list, but it must be close. Pundits conveniently redefine war crimes and terrorism to exempt their crowd, national security forces, allies, client states. This shallow distortion seems to fool a good number, if one gives any credence to polls. The point that one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter gets lost in simplistic warmonger hysteria, whipping up war fervor over terrorism and the axis of evil. But that is good for promoting Big Brother, shredding liberty for the illusion of better security.

The meaning of free speech is always an issue, especially since people contorted its constitutional umbrella to cover just about any form of expression. Some men who get off on sexual violence against women call pornographic pictures of such activity free speech. If encouraging violence is not protected free speech in cases of yelling fire, child pornography, supporting terrorism, inciting a riot, why is it different when the victims are only women? Is this the boys will be boys myth winking at itself again? Violence against women is still a huge problem, defying some better laws and attention from authorities. It is so blatantly self-serving for men to defend this vicious imagery as a form of art that should be protected by the First Amendment.

Unfortunately the issue is muddled by religious fanatics opposed to pornography for the wrong reasons, fearing the power of sexual attraction. Women are indeed sexually attractive to most men, and this allure gets portrayed as women’s power over men, which men may deny, fear, and retaliate against. Regardless, pictures produced to make money by appealing to vicious male fantasies are in no way art, speech, or honoring female sexuality. This travesty of free speech hides in the argument that unpopular free speech especially has to be protected; also in the arguments that there is no way to draw a objective line of artistic value between obscenity and erotica, or prove cause and effect. Some pornographic forms may be able to hide in such arguments to satisfy courts, but explicitly appealing to men getting off on violence against women should be a relatively easy target. This gets to the logical extreme of women’s traditional role, serving at the pleasure of master, no doubts on power dynamics here. Defenders can lamely cite freedom of expression, but are really defending freedom of oppression.

While this argument could stretch to any depiction of women as subordinate sex objects, artistic value could be raised as an issue in some cases, and legally that is a wider and harder case. Long term an ideal solution is to remove the supply by empowering women to desert the profession. In the meantime, pornography could also be attacked as hate speech, or taxed into oblivion as a costly polluting luxury. Encouraging men to look at women as sex objects is far from harmless, but since the culture is replete with that influence, pornographers find it easy to dispute cause and effect. Pornography is a blatant symbol of the disease of male contempt for women, which itself must be defeated to end the plague of violence against women.

Confusing the meanings of words is sometimes a substantial issue, sometimes a matter of deliberate obfuscation of semantics. In the service of typical politics, words degenerate quickly, into hollow slogans and rhetoric disguising the real agendas. Distortion of language is all too easy, and commonplace. People react by getting cynical, desensitized, resigned. Yet language has power and beauty, which can be harnessed in ways far transcending anything political machines are generating. Political language is typically tightly confined to avoid offending the old boy network. So it might be feasible for a computer to emulate a politician, but not a creative writer, for instance.

Words can be interpreted in so many ways, it should be no surprise it is hard for people to agree on anything, let alone mobilize effectively to oppose the powers that be. Yet unity is vastly overrated, especially now when people around the world are supposed to unite behind America in its war against terrorism. You are either with us or with the terrorists, says the President. No, it makes more sense to oppose both sides in this battle.

International law and diplomacy have problems and limitations, especially as practiced by belligerent males, but this undefinable war on terror is much worse and more dangerous. No leader has the right to declare another government evil to justify conquering it, but the ramifications of that curse word evil could go on forever. There are good reasons for separating church and state. This war on evil terror is a diversion to keep the President popular. It is hard to imagine anything else could. Evil is a word loaded with heavy emotions, hatred, revenge, the worst of humanity. The word should be used with extreme care, only when clearly warranted. The President throws it around like cracking a whip, warning misbehaving children of impending punishment. The opposition may seem demoralized, mired in factional infighting, but that is a matter of perspective and will depend on developments.