Once a concept is established it becomes harder for opponents to mansplain it away
id you know that “grooming” only began to be used in courtrooms in the 1990s? Before then, the word was “seduction”. And did you know that the term “revenge porn” was only coined in 2007? “Over a decade too late,” writes Sarah Ditum in her– I was struck by a recurring theme. Of the many forces that helped push us out of that particularly misogynistic decade, a non-trivial element, I think, was the invention of new phrases to describe what was happening to women.
But the notion that this was a feminist issue – a sort of insidious claim that women are less competent than men – only really took off when someone came up with a catchy name for it. This happened about a month after a now famous essay by Rebecca Solnit,, went viral. The portmanteau word showed up in the comments section of an online message board, and quickly started to appear in feminist blogs. Suddenly it was everywhere.
Or take “mental load” and “weaponised incompetence”, phrases that now speckle feminist discourse. The idea that household labour is unevenly distributed between male and female partners has of course been kicking around for decades. But these new terms seem to have reignited debate – not only in public but between couples themselves. Lawyers say they have even been cropping up in divorce proceedings this year.
Several things are happening here, I think. One is that activist movements are helped by novelty. In order to draw public attention to a social issue you must first make it seem fresh – and a trendy new name does the job.
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