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Here’s the gist:
- “Feminist,” in the most basic sense of the word, refers to a person who advocates for and supports women’s rights.
- There’s a circulating myth that feminism has become a dirty word, but it’s always had negative connotations.
- That said, the newer negative associations with the word “feminist” might be a good thing.
No one likes the “F” word and by “F” word, I don’t mean “fuck” because people love that, asexuals notwithstanding. It’s not even the anti-gay “F” word either because you know someone’s just itching to say it when they start with an “I’m not against gay people, but I think they shouldn’t [insert a literal human right].” No. It is neither of those “F” words.
By “F” word, I mean “feminist.”
Le gasp.
In many countries and even the oh-so-sanctified and enlightened first world, “feminist” is a word used almost as a slur against women who think they should have rights. Rolled up in “feminist” are allegations of ugliness, manliness, lesbianism, and concealed carry of misandric beliefs.
And sure, nothing’s wrong with any of those, but the entire point behind the weaponization of the term “feminist” against women is to alienate us from our own best interests. In a culture where women are valued for being the exact opposite of the traits assigned to the conceptual feminist, to be called one, much less to apply the term to yourself, is equivalent to marking oneself out as a damaged woman.
So let’s backtrack for a bit and figure out what it means to be a feminist in the first place.
What Does It Mean to Be a Feminist?
Let’s begin with something simple: the basic meaning of what it means to be a feminist. For now, just push whatever disagreements you have with third-wave feminism, upper class White Anglo-Saxon Protestant feminism, and TERFS. We don’t have all day to get into the nitty-gritty of the entire feminist movement. Seriously, people, let’s move.
At its most basic, a feminist is someone who thinks women should be equal to men and enjoy the same legal rights. You might not think of yourself as a feminist or you might have issues with the label, but if you can at least agree that women should have the same legal rights as men then you already believe in the same thing that feminists do.
Onto the next part.
I’m not saying this is you, but some people who think to themselves that everyone should be equal under the law will tack on a “but” statement. It’s basically a Twitter meme now that someone will say “I’m not [insert]-ist but I [says something conveying that exact way of thinking].”
One of the most common ones is the queer version (“I’m not a homophobe but I wish gay people wouldn’t do gay things in public.”), but there’s also the African-American and feminist versions which typically boil down to “I support their rights, but not the right to protest and advocate for their rights.”
There’s a reason one of the “negative” traits assigned to the conceptual feminist is that she’s “loud” and “opinionated.” A lot of people are fine with marginalized groups advocating for their rights as long as they’re not doing that advocating in front of them.
Out of sight, out of mind. That said, despite the recent trend of articles that talk about how “feminist” is becoming a dirty word, it honestly always has been since the days of first-wave feminism.
And believe it or not, there’s another reason for the negative stereotypes of “feminist” that isn’t plain old sexism.
Feminism Has Always Had a “Dirty” Connotation
If you’ve been reading Power Struggling for a while, you’ve probably noticed how often I hedge my statements the moment a conversation shifts to the purely ideological realm. It’s not that I don’t believe in the ideals I make a pretense of believing in, it’s just that, as Obi-Wan Kenobi put it, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”
Kidding. Here’s the real reason, though: everybody hates activists. Seriously. Our brains are wired to hate activists because of the destabilizing effects they can have on a group, likely because the survival of our species depends largely on our ability to play nice.
In a study aptly titled “The Ironic Impact of Activists: Negative Stereotypes Reduce Social Change Influence,” researchers found that people are less likely to accept certain ideas and beliefs if it’s coming from people who appear to fit the bill of a “stereotypical activist.”
Participants were divided into three groups who were all then given a profile of someone who was pro-environmentalism. The first profile was from someone who participated in rallies, the second raised money for environmental organizations, and the third one wasn’t explicitly involved in any form of advocacy at all, aside from plain believing in the cause.
The researchers found that people were most likely to listen if they felt someone wasn’t an activist because activists, whether they be feminists or pro-environmentalists, were perceived as abrasive and militant.
While I get to enjoy playing keyboard warrior now to give a softer, friendlier voice to the –isms, this was a luxury few women had in the early days of the feminist movement. Because there’s a second layer of irony to that study: activists who aren’t active aren’t able to make massive systemic changes. You have to get loud if you really want to be heard now.
The first-wave feminists understood this when they took to the streets with their signs to rally for the most basic right a citizen of democracy gets to enjoy: the right to vote. For most women of the 19th century, being a woman meant not having the right to own property, vote, file for divorce, or petition for custody of children.
In a world where the avenues for gradual change were completely barred to you (because duh, you can’t even vote, how are you running for office?), what other option was there for early feminists to be, well, feminists.
Of course, they weren’t quite well received. Like the feminists of today, the first wave feminists — who seriously just wanted to vote and not be legal chattel, you guys —were seen as unruly, masculine, man-hating loudmouths who would bring about the end of civilization as we know it.
Though the word “suffragette” has a positive connotation now due to its use by early feminists advocating for the right to vote, it was initially coined as an insult. The affix “-ette” was a diminutive that was meant to diminish the women’s suffrage activists.
But the suffragettes were masters of rebranding. They fully embraced the term, turning it into a pun: “suffra-get.” The Women’s Social and Political Union began publishing a magazine called The Suffragette and, in it, would write: “We have all heard of the girl who asked what was the difference between a Suffragist and a Suffragette, as she pronounced it, and the answer made to her that the ‘Suffragist jist wants the vote, while the Suffragette means to get it.'”
A Feminist by Any Other Name
These days, things are a bit better. I’m not deluded enough to say there are no people in the world who think women are inferior to men and shouldn’t enjoy the same rights and privileges. Because in the same way that many of us don’t realize we believe in what activists stand for, many of us also don’t realize that we actually are [insert]-ist.
People who don’t realize they’re ascribing to misogynist beliefs aside, there’s a growing dislike within the feminist community of the image of the feminist as a first-world, upper middle-class white woman.
For so long, the feminist narrative and mythology have been dominated by those who, whether they mean to or not, cannot fully consider what it means to be a feminist for women who are not them. That’s nothing against first-world, upper middle-class white women. For some women, they were the ones who put a face and a name to the raging fire that lights in a little girl when they realize that the world is not fair to them because they’re a girl.
But that’s also a byproduct of the fact that white women have monopolized what it means to be a feminist for so long. Early white feminists and the well-meaning ones that followed may not have realized it, but their privilege as white women from well-off backgrounds has led to them becoming the main voice of feminism.
Think about why some non-misogynistic people ridicule feminists and you’ll notice that most of the time, it has to do with feminist problems being frivolous in their eyes because who cares about seeing powerful women in movies?
The women that these pro-women’s rights advocates claim to be supporting go unnoticed when they’re racial minorities in their countries. Even more so if they’re women abroad, living in countries where they still don’t enjoy the same legal rights as men.
Rafia Zakaria, the writer of Against White Feminism, points out how white feminism’s problems and its hyperfocus on sex-positivity has detracted from the serious problems that women today still face.
Zakaria was brown, a Muslim, and an immigrant. White, sex-positive focused feminism tends to see her as repressed; a downtrodden sister who needs to be liberated into the same openly sexual feminist ideal.
“I had broken every gender norm I had been raised with, had chosen education and independence — and all the struggles that came with it — with little support. The seminar’s preoccupation with sexual pleasure instead of sexual politics seemed so disconnected from the feminism I was trying so hard to model for my daughter,” Zakaria wrote.
If consideration for intersectionality and passing the megaphone to women of color, no matter where they are in the world, is going to be what makes “feminist” a dirty word in the future…
By all means.
Note: I’m aware that there are arguments for keeping the name “feminist” to highlight the experiences of women with sex and gender-based discrimination. But that’s a story for another time, or for the comments!
Let us know your thoughts! I’m sure inviting internet strangers to talk about sensitive issues definitely won’t escalate into a dirty fight /s.
