Atlantic staffers and readers debate the meaning of “feminism” and how it’s changed over the decades. To join in, send us a note: hello@theatlantic.com.
That’s how this reader frames his criticism of contemporary feminism:
Beginning in my late teens and for many years later, I would have called myself a feminist. This was partly due to my passionately left-wing friends, and in part due to the effect of reading literature like Taming of the Shrew and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. I saw the ugliness, the way society had utterly refused to recognize the humanity of women. I saw that gender has been a cage that stunts a woman’s individual life rather than the piece of identity it is and should be. I saw the contempt, the fear, the condescension and repression, and I strongly felt it had to change and has to change more.
So I don’t think Feminism is a dirty word or should be gotten rid of. But I no longer care to describe myself as a feminist. It doesn’t have anything to do with language, and little to do with ideas.
The feminist movement today has startling similarity to religious fundamentalism. There is the same dogmatism, the same zealous fervor, the same fear, the same clinging to certainty and the absolute conviction in one’s own correctness. Dissenters are marginalized, castigated, even cast out. The psychology is identical; all that differs are the goals.
Another striking similarity is the hostility towards science.
One of the cardinal sins is to disagree with the feminist doctrine that gender is entirely a social construction. Anyone the least bit familiar with evolutionary biology and the nature/nurture debate can see that it is not an either/or, and neuroscience has found subtle but interesting differences in the brains of men and women. [See this piece from Olga titled “Male and Female Brains Really Are Built Differently” — C.B.] But for some reason, ideas from the humanities (mostly critical theory) have been pitted against empiricism, and since the former must be correct, the latter can be dismissed.
It’s a shame, since it is due to progress in science (and not to Foucault) that society no longer believes that women have smaller, inferior brains and other such nonsense. But just as with religious extremists, feminists are fearful of what science might do to their perfect tapestry of beliefs, and what it might lead to in society, even if this doesn’t make any sense. It saddens me that friends I grew up with who were negatively affected by this mindset in the context of religion have traded that in for a different version.
What many feminists don’t understand when they complain about people refusing the “feminist” label is that it’s not about the ideas or the history. Most people don’t know much about feminist theory. It is everything to do with the feminists themselves. There is in feminism a tone of relentless grievance and antagonism. (Many feminists would tell me I’m a misogynist—a term bandied about so casually it has become self-parodic—despite the fact that I’d likely agree with them 75 percent of the time.) It is such an insular and dogmatic movement that, as with any similar milieu, people inside it can’t sense what is immediately apparent to others.
Look at the furor that erupted over Women against Feminism [see above for an example via Twitter — C.B.] There were some especially nasty responses to it, but most were the familiar spiel that if only these women knew what feminism actually meant, they wouldn’t say they were against it. What feminists didn’t see were the consistent patterns in what those women were saying.
Common reasons for being against feminism were they had been treated poorly by feminists and did not share the negativity towards men that they felt feminists were full of. They often qualified that their responses were to “modern” feminism, so as to differentiate it from earlier versions. These young women actually knew far more about feminist ideas than the average person, either from college or the internet, and they for various reasons disagreed with it. But the problem must be that they’re ignorant, because if people understood everything about feminism, they couldn’t possibly disagree with it.
Update: A reader pushes back:
The reader critiquing feminism used the fact that male and female brains have biological differences to back up an unfounded claim that citing science of any kind is a “cardinal sin” among feminists. Says who? His letter is full of weasel words—“modern feminists,” “most feminists,” “many feminists”—and these are gestural referrals to a feeling he has, as though it’s observed by evidence.
Then he says he knows feminists will call him a misogynist! What is this, Reddit? It’s not even a good critique, and “gender is a construction” isn’t only feminist territory! (Radical Feminists, proper noun, think men and women are an unchangeable biological binary and that transgender women aren’t women or feminists.)
It’s irresponsible to fuel the fire of something like the debate over feminism without questioning the claims or lack of evidence in such a long reader letter.
Another reader absorbs the debate thus far:
Reading through responses to Sophie’s note, it seems the main issue here is simply one of miscommunication. It sounds like there are mainly two distinct understandings of what you focus on when you talk about “feminism.”
The first camp talks about it like a tribal identity marker. The reader described as “firmly siding with Sophie” talks about wearing feminism as a badge of honor and traces her affiliation to the word itself to a long and continuing history. This is a textbook example of an “imagined community,” similar to nationalism, where people identify with a broad family of people they will never meet based on an idea that they have a common history and a common future destiny. To people thinking this way, identifying yourself as feminist is less about your concrete beliefs and more about a general declaration of fealty and respect to the tribe. It sounds similar to when people identify themselves as Jewish because the community identity matters more to them than the concrete theological underpinnings of Judaism.
A second camp talks about it like an ideological descriptor. This was exemplified by the summary of Charlotte Proudman’s comments, where she lays out the philosophical positions and whether she agrees or disagrees with them. In this sense, it sounds more like being a Utilitarian or a Modernist. The focus isn’t on the people who hold the belief; it’s on the details of the beliefs themselves.
The disconnect seems to be that people in the second camp are making what they believe to be innocuous statements about which values they prize more highly, and people in the first camp are interpreting these as explicit rejections of a deeply held part of their identity.
See anything important missing from this debate? Drop me an email and I’ll post.
A reader responds to our previous reader roundup, which emphasized poll numbers showing that the vast majority of Americans say they believe in “equality for women” but only a small percentage of Americans identify as “feminist”:
I’m rather surprised you didn’t mention Christina Hoff Sommers’s useful, if controversial, distinction between “equity feminism” and “gender feminism.” (Her 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? goes into great detail, but here’s Wikipedia’s synopsis.) Most everyone is an equity feminist and believes that men and women should have (and do have) equal rights under American law. However, very few are gender feminists—who believe that men and women are physically, psychologically, and mentally equivalent in every way (and if they’re not, then that’s a result of evil patriarchal heterosexist culture, not nature). Very, very few women and almost no men (outside of academia, anyway) are gender feminists.
Another reader also mentions Sommers:
She was recently invited to speak at Oberlin, an event which was vigorously protested. Sommers is very critical of the last 30 years of feminism in general, but her primary critique is that feminism has relied on statistics that are misleading, such as the study that found one in five female college students have been raped.
I remember how shocked I was when I read that statistic, and I had no reason at the time to question its findings. But on further inspection, the study engineered its own results by expanding the definition of rape to include stuff like sex that was later regretted, or even a guy attempting an unsolicited kiss at a drunken party. Some of those interviewed in the study did not think they’d been raped or abused, but that didn’t matter; the imperative was to stir up outrage over the genuinely serious problem of campus rape, and in this it was successful.
Sommers included that rape statistic in a video on “the top five feminist myths of all time.” (Slate’s Emily Yoffe, who is to the left of Sommers, tackled that statistic in greater depth.) However, it’s important to note in the context of this discussion that Sommers still considers herself a feminist. Watch the video embedded above for her lengthy response to the “Are you a feminist?” question.
Unlike Sommers, another reader—a “credentialed teacher and homemaker with a Stanford B.A.”—no longer considers herself a feminist. Here she addresses Sophie’s note directly:
If your goal is to engage those who think differently, quoting a woman, Caitlin Moran, who accuses her fellow females of being too drunk to respond to a survey in the manner she would prefer is not, perhaps, the best strategy.
In college I identified as a feminist for the simple reason you state:
I know that women have historically had fewer rights than men, and I believe that they are absolutely deserving of equal rights and opportunities (as opposed to outcomes). Now, I don’t identify as a feminist, and in a nutshell, the reason is that the feminist movement espouses a particular set of leftist political beliefs that I don't share. If feminism could accommodate multiple political viewpoints, perhaps I could rejoin the bandwagon.
I don’t know any women who oppose the right to vote, equal access to healthcare (distinct from “my employer must pay for my abortion or contraceptives”), or greater freedom to make whatever sort of life choice she should so desire. I know plenty of women who don’t want to have to pay (with tax dollars) for the lifestyle choices of others (particularly wealthy others with plenty of life opportunities anyway). That would result in a greater tax burden on my family, which would jeopardize my ability to stay home and have the quiet domestic life I desire at this juncture. I take no issue with women making their own choices about careers, sex, or anything else; I just don’t wish to subsidize it, and all too often “feminism,” on this score, seems to call for public funding, or at least expensive regulation.
I also know women who are somewhat weary of being called names because they want to be free to choose conventional lifestyles that prioritize marriage and family, or because they value the lives of unborn children over the license to have no-strings-attached, consequence-free sex. Getting married and staying home to raise children is as valid an option as becoming a CEO. Yet much of the rhetoric I’ve read from self-labeled feminists seems intent on making women the same as men, rather than equal to them.
Worse, some of the proudest “feminists” I know are quite vocal about their disdain for partnership with men. I quite enjoy the complementary features and qualities of the sexes, and whether feminism claims misandry as its own or not, there is a definite correlation between the two in my acquaintance.
So no, I don’t identify as a feminist anymore. If feminism means I have to support a particular political platform that includes permitting the murder of unborn children and paying for universal childcare at the expense of raising my own child, count me out. This isn’t a matter of “misinformation,” as you say, but a matter of experience.
The dictionary definition may be simple, but this is what I have seen from the movement. We may agree on points, and I thank the movement for some of its historical legacy, but its core values and methods differ from my own. As a believer in women’s equality, I will continue to work toward acceptance of women as equals, but I will do so on my own terms, with my own solutions in mind, and not those of the feminist brand.
On the other hand, this female reader declares, “I’m an ardent feminist”:
When I say that out loud, or write it in a comment, I know how it sounds to most people: harsh and persistent. It implies that I might be, in some abstract way in the distant future of a conversation, a difficult woman. I want that harshness to sink it, because my propositions are so reasonable.
What better way to prove that sexism truly exists than to self-identify as someone who is adamant in the fight against its tangible harms (for both men and women) and have that self-identification make most people uncomfortable, if not downright angry? What is up with that cognitive dissonance? I want people to push back against it and examine why they feel it, so I drop this “F word” as much as do the other “F word,” as often as I can without being opportunistic.
Truly great feminism requires an emphasis on the “equality” part. It’s not always that women have to “catch up” in some way to men; it’s that those tangible harms I previously mentioned hurt both sexes, all genders, and feminism aims to make sure that no male, female, or agendered person is hurt because of a set of hate-inspired beliefs.
More of your emails soon. If there’s an aspect of this debate you haven’t seen addressed yet, let me know.
Many readers are emailing about Sophie’s frustration that a growing number of female celebrities are shirking the “feminist” label:
I’m male, and I used to think feminism was outdated, since women already achieved the right to vote and work. As time passed I came to realize feminism is still important, particularly in fighting sexual assault and slut-shaming … but am I a feminist?
There are some people who think, as Sophie implied in her note, that being a feminist just means general support of gender equality in the home, the workplace, the public sphere—so it would be crazy not to identify as one. But some other feminists believe that feminism requires commitment to a pretty specific political agenda, and I can’t honestly say I agree with all those policies. For instance, while it’s ideal for women and men to be paid the same for the same work, I don’t believe the government should police salary negotiations.
So whether or not I’m a feminist depends on your definition. I would like to be, but I’m not ultimately the one who gets to define the word.
Another reader doesn’t want anyone to define it:
The reason why everybody opposes feminism isn’t because of its message; it’s because it’s akin to a religious ideology. You do not decide for me, or anybody, that they are a feminist if they agree with a certain ideal or ideals.
Another is on the same page:
How words are defined is fluid and quite individualistic. It is part of the reason why there is so much miscommunication. Clearly there is something to the definitions these various female celebrities have offered if so many of them share similar views.
Several more readers sound off:
One of the main barriers to more people identifying themselves as feminists is a lack of clarity on what the term actually means. Not all feminists agree that gender equality is the ultimate aim of Feminism. Charlotte Proudman, the British barrister at the centre of the recent LinkedIn sexism controversy [which Sophie covered here], is a self-identified radical feminist who strives for liberation, not equality. She explains her rationale as follows:
The equalist debate is one way of preserving patriarchy, whereas feminism seeks to give power to women on their own terms—not mens. This is why I am a feminist, not an equalist. Equality is harmful to women and most men, as they are required to replicate behaviours that are degrading and dehumanising. Once women buy into the masculine terms of society, our civilization will become crueler than ever expected.
Another issue for many is the persistent infighting. Today, the prevailing feminist ideology is Intersectionality. Those who call themselves feminists but do not demonstrate sufficient familiarity with this concept are branded apostates. High profile examples include Lena Dunham, Caitlin Moran, and Taylor Swift.
And then of course, we have the accusations of misandry. Even when it’s claimed to be ironic, the tone doesn’t sit well with many women.
These are some of the reasons why I do not identify myself as a feminist, despite supporting gender equality and being pro-choice.
Another reader:
When a large share of your natural allies—younger educated women in particular—reject what they perceive the term has come to mean, and you tell them that they’re wrong because it means only this other thing (that you know they support), you have to realize that the word no longer means only what you’d like it to mean.
It has also come to mean which side you’re on in the war of men vs. women, especially in an online context. (At least “feminism” hasn’t accrued a penumbra anywhere near as toxic as the equally innocuously-named opposition, “Men’s Rights Advocates”!) This idea, that language is not rule-bound but is inseparable from its lived use, is basically the realization Ludwig Wittgenstein came to later in his career. As I’m not a Wittgenstein scholar, I’ll just drop a quote from someone who (readably) is:
...Wittgenstein pioneered the controversial linguistic conception of meaning-as-use, or the idea that the meanings of words, relative or not, cannot be specified in isolation from the life practices in which they are used. Instead, language should be studied from the starting point of its practices, rather from abstractions to syntax and semantics. As Wittgenstein put it, “Speaking a language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.”
This reader firmly sides with Sophie:
I read her piece and I died a bit inside. I’m emphatically a feminist and I hate to see other women, who have a platform, denounce feminism. They do so because they worry they will be targeted by those who have co-opted the term and turned into code for “I hate men.” Just as “Black Lives Matter” does not mean that those are the ONLY lives who matter, advocating for equality between men and women does not make one a “man hater.”
I have considered myself a feminist since I learned what the word meant, and I know I have benefitted from the generations of feminists who came before me.
Does feminism have problems? Absolutely—the biggest being the exclusion of women of color by mainstream white feminists. But I will always proudly wear the title of feminist as a badge of honor.
To throw some statistics into the mix, the above chart from the Public Religion Research Institute finds that, in 2015, “Less than half of millennial women identify as ‘feminist.’” And from a Vox poll, also this year:
[C]onducted by research and communications firm PerryUndem, [it] shows that a strong majority of Americans agree on gender equality. Eighty-five percent, for example, say they believe in “equality for women.” But many fewer want to put the feminist label on their beliefs. Eighteen percent of poll respondents said they consider themselves feminist.
[J]ust 20 percent of Americans -- including 23 percent of women and 16 percent of men -- consider themselves feminists. Another 8 percent consider themselves anti-feminists, while 63 percent said they are neither. … But asked if they believe that “men and women should be social, political, and economic equals,” 82 percent of the survey respondents said they did, and just 9 percent said they did not.
You have to wonder if that 3 percent bump in 1992 was due to Hillary Clinton coming on the national scene and winning the White House with her husband.
More of your emails to come. If you’d like to counter any of these readers, email hello@theatlantic.com. Also be sure to check out Becca’s note wishing more male politicians and other powerful figures would get asked the “are you a feminist?” question. If you know of any examples of the press doing so, please email the hello@ address.
Sophie writes forcefully of the “long list of female celebrities who’ve declined to identify themselves as feminists out of an assumption that the word implies widespread rejection or dislike of men.” She laments, as do I, that many people embrace the ideas of feminism but nevertheless recoil at the label:
Because whatever the history, whatever the nuances, whatever the charged sentiments associated with political activism, being a feminist is very simple: It means believing that women are and should be equal to men in matters political, social, and economic. They should be able to vote. They should have equal protection under the law and equal access to healthcare and education. They should be paid as much as their male counterparts are for doing exactly the same job. Do you believe in these things? Then, you are a feminist.
These seem like the kinds of things that women are likely to support. They also seem like the kinds of things that men are likely to support.
And I’d like to know when men do. It’s a shame that famous men (not only entertainers, but CEOs and politicians too) are so rarely asked whether they are feminists.
Has anyone asked Mark Zuckerberg whether he is a feminist? What about Barack Obama? What about Bill Gates? I cannot find many examples of men in power being asked how they feel about this label, but if you know of some, please give a shout at hello@theatlantic.com. (Bernie Sanders, to his credit, says he is.)
It’s my hope that just asking this question of men would go a small way to diminishing the stigma that’s attached to this word. (At the same time, I hate the sexism implicit in that belief—that it will become more acceptable to women once men have given it their stamp of approval—but I’m willing to hold my nose to get to my goal.)
But there’s another reason that I think it’s time for reporters and activists to ask men whether they are feminists, and that’s because failing to ask suggests the assumption that they’d answer no. But this is 2015, and these are smart, forward-thinking, and caring men. Let’s give them a chance to claim the feminist mantle, and to use it to champion the women they work with and admire.
The French actress Marion Cotillard recently gave an interview to Porter magazine in which she said, “I don’t qualify myself as a feminist.”
We need to fight for women’s rights, but I don’t want to separate women from men. We’re separated already because we’re not made the same, and it’s the difference that creates this energy in creation and love. Sometimes in the word ‘feminism’ there’s too much separation.
Cotillard joins a long list of female celebrities who’ve declined to identify themselves as feminists out of an assumption that the word implies widespread rejection or dislike of men.
I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from power’ is never going to work out … We have to have a fine balance. My biggest thing is really sisterhood more than feminism.
I am not a feminist. If men were going through the things women are going through today, I would be fighting for them with just as much passion. I believe in equality.
No, I wouldn't say feminist—that’s too strong. I think when people hear feminist, it’s like, “Get out of my way, I don't need anyone.” I love that I'm being taken care of and I have a man that’s a leader.
I’m not a feminist—I, I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars and muscle cars…
You could call this feminism’s PR problem—that people who’ve never thought much about Betty Friedan or the sex wars or women’s suffrage or marital rape understand feminism to be a Political Movement, with all the internal conflict and jockeying for power and us-versus-them that political movements imply. In rejecting the word, Salma and Carrie and Kelly and Shailene and Marion and Gaga are understanding feminism by what they assume it opposes: men.
But it’s hard to solely blame bad publicity (there can be no advocate more powerful than Beyoncé, who literally stood in front of the word “feminist” spelled out in six-foot high letters) when the real issue seems to be a profound degree of misinformation among women and men as to what feminism actually means.
Because whatever the history, whatever the nuances, whatever the charged sentiments associated with political activism, being a feminist is very simple: It means believing that women are and should be equal to men in matters political, social, and economic. They should be able to vote. They should have equal protection under the law and equal access to healthcare and education. They should be paid as much as their male counterparts are for doing exactly the same job. Do you believe in these things? Then, you are a feminist.
Or, as Caitlin Moran puts it in How to Be a Woman:
We need to reclaim the word ‘feminism.’ We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist—and only 42 percent of British women—I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?
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