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This article was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 17 August 2011 with a consensus to merge the content into the article Ad hominem. If you find that such action has not been taken promptly, please consider assisting in the merger instead of re-nominating the article for deletion. To discuss the merger, please use the destination article's talk page. (August 2011)

An ad feminam is an ad hominem attack, used in attempt to defeat a woman's argument. An example would be the response "Is it your time of the month?" to a woman making an argument. The term is most frequently used in this sense in feminist philosophy, to note systemic tendencies to discredit opinions of women. As such, it is similar in nature and purpose to such feminist neologisms as "herstory". The term was coined in 1963 and is modeled on the much older ad hominem, but takes into account the genderised nature of the rhetorical and dismissive gesture.

• "Ahmad's characteristic method here of reductive ad hominem and ad feminam critique subverts his accompanying claim to Marxist subjectivity..."
• "Almost any ad hominem (or in this case, ad feminam) response such as this one invalidates the content of the patient's viewpoint"

In Latin the word homo (of which hominem is the accusative case) has the gender-neutral meaning of "a human being", "a person" (unlike the words in Romance languages it gave rise to, such as French homme and Italian uomo). A translation of ad hominem that preserves this gender-neutrality is "to the person". In contrast, ad feminam is gender-specific and used to describe attacks on women as women or because they are women.

See also

• Womyn
• Gender-neutral language

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References

1. dictionary.com see "Usage Note"
2. Robert Young (2001). Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell... 413.
3. Marcia Linehan (1993) Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. Guilford Press. p. 223
4. "ad hominem". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth ed.). 2000 (updated in 2009). {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

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