Feminist: It’s Just About the Worst Thing You Could Be

Sorted under media on November 10, 2009

women's liberation movement

Feminism is in the media, you just have to know where to look to find it and even then, chances are you’re going to have to dig pretty deep through your popular publications to find an even so-so assessment of what feminism truly brings to the table and gives us our due hat-tip for our activism and our relentlessness. Feminist media is all too commonly seen as a niche or is marketed as “special interest,” or there’s the proverbial slap in the face when you see a truly important issue that either affects women or it is deemed acceptable to include the feminist population in a piece and it’s shoved in the style section of The New York Times. When you get through the thick of it, in most cases feminism just isn’t taken seriously by the boy’s club, misogynist media.

Two significant publications that recently put feminism in the media spotlight are A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything, written by Maria Shriver and co-written by the Center for American Progress, and Gail Collins’ When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. Both of these publications highlight women’s achievements and victories over the past few decades and from the scope of society as a whole, that is all well and good; women have indeed accomplished a great deal securing the rights necessary for women to live long, healthy and happy lives, but there is still a great deal of work to do. When it comes to a major portion of our reproductive rights, well, there are a great deal of anti-choice, woman-shaming and misogynist people who hold significant power and a political agenda that is always trying to take those rights away. In order to claim victory over our own bodies, life choices, career opportunities, salaries and more, feminism needs numbers within the passionate, activist-driven younger community and sadly, because of how misrepresented feminism is in society, there are an astounding amount of women out there who refuse to go near the word ‘feminist.’

As Antonia Zerbisias recently pointed out in an article for Canada’s The Star, feminists are truly seen as hairy-legged, man-hating, social outcasts and even the enemy in the United States. Her assessment of feminists being seen as man-haters and as “feminazis” is really yet another ploy driven by misogynists in power to keep women in their place and I am inclined to agree.

From personal experience, the moment you tell someone that you are a feminist (and it always comes up eventually,) they usually take two steps back, especially if they are male, or will come out with some sarcastic phrasing like “Oh boy, one of those!” or something of that nature. I realized how deep this hatred for feminists goes when I was on Facebook one night and someone I knew when I was around 14 and 15 years old messaged me. We were catching up and the question of what I’m doing these days came up, so of course I rattled off what I do for work and also the fact that I run a liberal and feminist blog. Within seconds I was sent a reply that said “I hate feminists.” I wasn’t too surprised by this reaction, I’ve gotten it a lot, to say the least and I know the ignorance surrounding the concept of feminism and activism very well, but that didn’t stop me from being sad for this person, especially considering that they had just exited the world of college campuses and the feminist activism taking part on college campuses across this country is amazing and is so needed, especially considering just the one issue of violence against women and date rape that so often occurs on college campuses.

But why does this person hate feminists and feminism? Because the media portrays feminism in such a negative light that it is up to us to set the record straight and hope that the people who don’t know too much about what feminism really is and what feminists really do finds our spaces and delves into our words with an open mind because I’m not giving up the personal identity of being a feminist, regardless of how many times someone thinks they are saying something new or something hurtful when they call me a feminazi. I’ve never been a woman who could be “put in my place.”



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  • Thanks for this awesome post. Very insightful, and very true! I always try to explain to my friends that people don't like feminists/feminism because of the negative connotations that the media/politics have created surrounding it. However, because they are so entrenched with these negative feelings...they rarely take my word for it, or at least they don't admit it anyway!
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  • An excellent blog post! The internet would be a better place if people could write as well as you. Keep it up.
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