(from: http://tinyurl.com/yey35nv)

Recent events in Malaysia has been really got me won­der­ing on how words evolve, their usage, and how pow­er­ful the mean­ing of some words, that it can evoke such strong emo­tions in peo­ple. Cur­rently in Malaysia, there has been great dis­putes over the usage of the word “Allah”, the issue being whether or not Chris­tians are allowed to use it. Read the arti­cle here.

How­ever, I’m not going to get into all of that today, as what it really got me won­der­ing about is: The F-Word.

No, not the four let­ter one! The other one.

Fem­i­nism. Feminist.

It has been a word that has been widely dis­puted, cam­paigned for, ide­olo­gies have been formed around it, move­ments have been cre­ated, con­cepts of anti-;black-;post-;pro-; have been formed, and its mean­ings often con­tested. It’s a word that we don’t hear very often these days. Often replaced with an increas­ingly pop­u­lar­ized term: women empow­er­ment. I don’t blame this trend. It doesn’t have asso­ci­a­tions of a strong ( per­haps even neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion) past and it has the word “power” in it. Always a good bet But to under­stand why the increas­ing dis-popularity in the word, here’s a brief time­line of fem­i­nism (start­ing from where it really began to pick up):

Mid-1800s: Used to refer the “qual­i­ties of females”

1892: First Inter­na­tional Women’s Con­fer­ence, Paris: Start reg­u­lar usage of term for a belief in and advo­cacy of equal rights for women based on the idea of the equal­ity of the sexes.

Early 20th: Term rooted in the mobi­liza­tion for women suf­frage in Europe and US

1920s: First Wave of fem­i­nism: To achieve basic polit­i­cal rights

Late 1960s — Early 1970s: Sec­ond Wave of fem­i­nism: Fight for greater equal­ity across the board — in edu­ca­tion, work­place and home.

Early 1990s: Third Wave Fem­i­nism: Arose as response to cri­tiques of the 2nd wave. Empha­sized “iden­tity” as a site of gen­der strug­gle with a post-structuralist take on gen­der and sexuality.

Source: Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Philosophy

As his­tory has gra­ciously shown, the con­cept of fem­i­nism itself has evolved from as sim­ple descrip­tion demon­strat­ing fem­i­nine qual­i­ties to a full blown move­ment. The term began to pick up when it tried to cap­ture the com­mit­ment to wom­ens’ equal rights. But is it really suf­fi­cient enough to cap­ture women’s oppression/position that cur­rently extends into the struc­ture of our soci­eties, cul­ture and perceptions?

I believe that given the con­tro­ver­sies of the term, and con­tro­ver­sial social move­ments, the usage of the word has either taken a very taboo or pow­er­ful con­no­ta­tion. Taboo in a sense that women organization’s do not call them­selves fem­i­nist ( often replac­ing it with empow­er­ment) but pow­er­ful, in a sense that when used, the usage is noticed. For exam­ple, the Dalai Lama in the recent Van­cou­ver Peace Sum­mit call­ing him­self a feminist.

“I call myself a fem­i­nist. Isn’t that what you call some­one who fights for women’s rights?” — Dalai Lama

It is tempt­ing to think that in order to avoid the “some­what” neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions with the word “fem­i­nist”, we try to best artic­u­late our beliefs in women, with other buzz words like “empow­er­ment” to cap­ture the range of mean­ings fem­i­nism brings.

The truth is, fem­i­nism has taken on a term to cap­ture views on jus­tice for women, and fem­i­nists are com­mit­ted to bring­ing about social change to end injus­tice against women.

So, what does fem­i­nism mean to you? 

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.  I found it was dif­fi­cult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.  When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town.  I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my fam­ily.  Now, as an old man, I real­ize the only thing I can change is myself, and sud­denly I real­ize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my fam­ily.  My fam­ily and I could have made an impact on our town.  Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.  ~Author Unknown

Good­bye 2009. What a year it has been! Unexpected.

Hello 2010. Here’s to a beau­ti­ful year ahead.

Being a very visual learner, I’m always on the hunt for great con­cepts that enable me to pic­ture sit­u­a­tions bet­ter. I came across David McCan­d­less Infor­ma­tion is Beau­ti­ful blog where ideas, knowl­edge, issues, data are visu­al­ized and he does a heck of a job! He cov­ers a wide range of inter­est­ing top­ics, some which I per­son­ally find very amus­ing. ie. plane sta­tis­tics — how to improve your chances of sur­viv­ing, time travel in movies, cor­re­la­tion of eco­nom­ics and happy marriages.

The visual below is a com­par­a­tive con­cept of the bil­lions that have been spent in our time.

The orig­i­nal post ( and larger/clearer ver­sion of the pic­ture) can be found here.