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In light of last week's class discussion about continuing to think about definitions of feminism, when I was reading this essay, I was thinking about how we as a class, or myself personally, can better define feminism after this class.  The authors discuss synecdoche, saying that "the part, or representation, will never reflect or encompass the whole of an event." (9).  Is this true for the word "feminism"?  Is it impossible for one word to encompass everything that feminism implies?  As people suggested in class last week, do we need to expand our definition of feminism, or narrow it?  Do we need to do away with the word all together?

The authors also cite Nassim Taleb, who writes that "this urge to simplify 'rules out sources of uncertainty and drives us to a misunderstanding of the fabric of the world.'" (10).  In trying to define feminism, are we trying to simplify it?  In my experience in this class, the exact opposite has been true. In attempting to define feminism, both for myself and as a general concept, I have come to realize exactly how uncertain the word and concept is, that it has so many angles and aspects.  The authors go on to say that we need "to resist the tendency to make generalization based on limited observations" (10).  To me, this has also been one of the aims of this class.  We cannot generalize about what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a feminist, what is means to have a woman's college, etc.  This class has allowed us to move beyond our "limited observations" - by studying different definitions of gender, by thinking about the links between science and literature, by learning about cultures outside of our own.  In expanding our observations and what we know, we can expand our definitions of feminism.