What are the historical, ideological, and/or political reasons for the formation and popular adoption of an "ism" around women's rights? Why didn't the social movements of rights for blacks, gays, the disabled, etc create "ism"s? Did anyone advocate for an ism? If someone did try to create an ism, why didn't it become popular? Where there any prominent women's rights activists who wanted to drop the term feminism?
Edit: This question was inspired by an argument (which I am staying out of) going on in my social network about the label of feminist. This bit came up:
"Between 1850 and 1900, when the term "feminism" was rising to prominence, the biggest issues within the movement were women's suffrage and the ability to own property. Solving these issues was as simple as advancing women the same rights as men, and the focus on women made the term "feminism" a natural fit."
This made me wonder why wasn't "blackism" a natural fit for a movement advocating for black people to have the same rights as white people? or why wasn't "gayism" a natural fit for a movement advocating for gay people to have the same rights as straight people?
I'm curious about what activists at the time when these movements were starting up said about what they should call themselves. I see people nowadays arguing about labels all the time. Surely early activists had their own arguments.
Something else mentioned by the same person: "Another reason it's "feminism" is that the name was embraced by those opposed to feminism, too. By obscuring the connection to human rights, the name allowed them to trivialize the movement and paint it as a bunch of silly uppity wimminz who are trying oh so hard to be men or just haz the sads. In fact most of the historic texts that helped establish the term were on the side of the opposition...What do you do when your opponents have turned your name into a dirty word? You don't abandon it, you reclaim it. The LGBTQI community have done an excellent job of scrubbing the negative connotations from "gay" and "queer," turning the tables on the bigots. Inspired by their success, the atheist community has started doing the same over the term "atheist". Feminists beat both communities to the punch, pushing back hard on the term through the 60's."
Can someone knowledgeable confirm or deny these claims?
Are you asking about the etymology of terms, or are you unaware of the Civil Rights movement and all of its spinoffs?
Where there any prominent women's rights activists who wanted to drop the term feminism?
I don't know what you term 'prominent', but this discussion happens every once and a while.
There are plenty of "isms". "Racism" to fight against discrimination based on color--which is more inclusive than any term focusing on one race like "blackism". "Ableism" refers to discrimination based on disability. Anti-semitism focuses on prejudice against Jews.
If you look at the google ngram viewer, you'll see there was negligible use of the word "feminism" and "racism" before the early 1960s. Before that time, it was "women's rights".
"Feminism" - the word - comes from a similar era as the word "Racism". Neither were considered to imply discrimination - they were just descriptors for the scholarly topics of the place of women in society or the characteristics of different races. It was only after scientific racism was thoroughly abandoned that other neologisms with "-ism" at the end started to appear. Before 1945 the ending "-ism" didn't mean "hatred" (and still doesn't in many words).