Feminism is no longer working.
We know this because our current president has over 15 sexual assault allegations, and even scarier, the American majority voted for his leadership. So, there must be a reason why most Americans seem to detest the idea of gender equality.
The word “feminism” itself has always been aversive.
Meenakshi Gigi-Durham, a professor at the University of Iowa, has decades of research in gender and sexuality. She has also noticed an anti-feminism pattern from the general public.
“‘People will agree with all the work that feminists do, and then turn around and say, ‘But I’m not a feminist,’” she said. “The label has continued to have very negative connotations. Feminism is seen as man-hating, angry, and hostile. And yes, there are things to be angry about and that we should be angry about, but feminism is not motivated by anger or hate.”
So what if it’s motivated by anger, anyway? Maybe not hate, but women are allowed to be angry. Do we need to be even angrier?
In the 1980s, talk show host Rush Limbaugh coined the term “femiNazis.” In 2018, President Donald Trump said, “You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to push back hard. You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you,” in reference to the #MeToo movement.
That all sounds pretty angry to me.
“Instances like this are weapons that target feminists. Our patriarchal media always portrays feminism negatively,” Durham said.
Like all things, anger is under the ownership of the patriarchy rather than the general public. That is the core of patriarchy: ownership, possession, and entitlement. Sexist men are obsessed with owning and having things.
Linda Kerber is a feminist historian and a retired professor and lecturer at the UI. She has seen the many waves of feminism that have pushed back against patriarchal hate.
“Back in my day, we picked up that men resented feminism because they believed women were taking places that men would otherwise have had easier access to,” she said. “There are a lot of men, and Trump is a good example, who believe they are entitled to power over women — to sexual power over women.”
I want to say his loud and proud critiques of feminism and just women, in general, brought these power-hungry men out of the dark. But the truth is people had already made Andrew Tate successful, and this is Trump’s second term.
It is clear our society has not become more progressive over the years. In fact, the UI seems to be a little behind, too.
“Iowa legislature is asking us to teach bad history. American studies and women’s studies are leaving, but feminism starts with the Civil Rights Movement. And the basement of our law school has a handful of notable women. None of them are Black,” Kerber said.
Our authority figures who don’t care to represent us just became a little more vocal, waiting for a figurehead to come out and say what they’ve been holding back for years. They don’t need to do it through subtlety anymore, like excluding portraits of important women of color.
But it’s not just patriarchal men; it’s the women who choose to support Trump despite him denying their reproductive or legislative rights.
“If you have a happy marriage and you’re comfortable being straight with a traditional family and husband and children, you may not see any reason to push at the edges of what you inherited,” Kerber said. “But wait until he divorces you, or loses his job and you don’t have a job, or you get pregnant once too often and you want to quietly have an abortion.”
“Feminism,” at the end of the day, has become a trigger word to the public due to its angry connotations, but especially to sexist individuals. Anything that’s not about these individuals, or threatens their security that is so reliant on the struggles of marginalized peoples, is unnecessary and distasteful. Stick the “fem-” prefix in front of a social movement, and it’s almost guaranteed Trump and his followers are going to turn away from it.
Trump doesn’t need “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” because he’s a white, male billionaire. He also has a hot wherever-thou-goest wife, so he definitely doesn’t need feminism, either.
For that reason, I honestly don’t see the word feminism getting better reviews any time soon. That doesn’t change the fact that both women of color and white women cannot afford to go back in time.
We need to rebrand like we’re having to do with DEI. “Access and Support” is a lot less threatening than “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Everyone needs support, and inclusion implies people are being excluded by some oppressor, and ignorant people hate feeling ignorant.
The difficult part is finding a new name. “Womanism” had its run in the ‘80s, but that’s even less inconspicuous. “Women’s liberation” dates back to the 1960s, but that term is not as inclusive to other gender identities.
Sure, you could say it’s deception — hiding the same movement under the guise of something else. To that I say, if Trump can call himself “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln,” for example, I think we can get away with calling ourselves whatever we want.