Today let’s talk about Feminazis.
We all know the word, it’s often used against feminist to shut us up and make us feel like we belong in a hate group.
Once feature only in online debates and sketchy forums, the word has gained more and more traction as words tend to do. It’s now finding it’s way to more and more mainstreamed forms of media. It’s become a word slung among women to distinguish themselves from ‘the others’ and cause division among one another.
But the thing about the word is not a lot of people know where it comes from.
The word was coined in 1989 by Rush Limbaugh, a conservative talk show host who spent his professional career criticizing ‘pervasive liberal ideas’ His definition of the word was “a feminist to whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur”
From then on the word has evolved and resurfaced and is now defined in Urban Dictionary as a woman who “ believe that all men are idiots, wearing a bra is a symbol of oppression”
While I scoured the internet trying to find proof that feminists like this were really out there, the evidence to their existence eluded me. What I did find when I looked this up were portrayals of women who were associated with the term. They were usually ill-kept and were usually depicted atrociously.
There is so much wrong with this picture
And that’s the first thing to really know about the term feminazi. It’s undoubtedly a pejorative term. It’s used to demean and devalue people with feminist views. And while feminist will join in and claim to ‘not be like them’ the line that will get you labeled as a feminazi can be blurry at best.
It’s a word that exists simply to divide us and to undermine the fact that there is still a pay gap and 99 and a half other problems that we as women have to face in society. One of those problems should not be infighting among us. It also associates if not equates wanting to express distaste for those aforementioned problems with..mass genocide
A feminist is not a nazi. A feminist should not be equated with a nazi.
She know’s what’s up
This isn’t to say that there isn’t a word for prejudice against me. There is. It’s called misandry. If the case arrives where you need to use such a term, that’s the word you use. Feminism isn’t about hating men, it’s about bringing women up to a point that they’re treated as their equals. It’s about erasing the idea that men who cry or like romance flicks or aren’t physically strong are ‘girly’ or any of the many terms that have their roots in misogyny and that compare weakness to anything related to women. Feminism fights misogyny, and in doing so fights the parts of it that afflict men too.
That perhaps is the kicker of it all. Feminism helps men too. and feminazis, a term coined by a man to undermine feminists, is not a word that should exist. It’s not real.