Editorial: What does being “Feminist” mean to you?

What do you think of when you hear the word feminist? Do you picture an angry, man-hating lesbian woman, with unshaven armpits and no job? Or do you think of your mother, sister, professor or doctor? The reality is that anyone can be a feminist regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. The only requirement to be a feminist is to believe in equality of the genders.

However, recently the term feminist has become a slur used to degrade women who claim the title. The connotation of the word has become negative, enforcing ridiculous stereotypes and attempting to discredit the entire feminist movement. We at the Independent Collegian believe that the actual meaning of the word ‘feminist’ needs to be reclaimed.

Regardless of your personal beliefs and whether or not you personally claim to be a feminist, the use of this term as a slur is degrading to all women. To take a movement whose sole purpose is to say that men and women are equal and to use that label as an insult is saying that a person’s attempts at equality is what you hate. It’s sexist. No one accuses a man of being a feminist as a slur. It’s only used to demean women who stand up for themselves.

A lot of the time people will argue that it is just a joke, and some would even say that there’s nothing wrong with using the term because the stereotype is true. Both of these arguments seem to be completely absurd.

How do you make a joke out of an entire movement attempting to gain equality for 50 percent of the population and expect everyone to just take it lightly? You’re insulting over half of the people on earth. And by the way, “meninism” is not a real thing. It’s a mockery of feminism and proves that we can’t work for equality without white men making everything about themselves.

Secondly, the argument that all feminists are radical is the same as saying all Christians are members of Westboro Baptist Church. We all understand that, sometimes, there are radicals in social movements, religions and other kinds of organizations. The feminist movement, just like many other social movements, has its radicals. But overall, chopping up the entire movement to one or two extremists is just another lame excuse to hate women and their success. Just like it has been used to hate Muslims unjustly for unrelated radical terrorists.

To us, being a feminist means something completely different than burning our bras. Feminism means that men and women are equal in all facets of life. Women can go out and fight for their freedoms just like men have been doing so since the beginning of time. Women are just as strong as men in every way. It may not be that way genetically, but would you tell your mother that she is not as important as you are just because of a difference in chromosomes? Of course not. By using the word ‘feminist’ as a slur, you are belittling every woman that you come across.

We as a society need to realize that while slipping into the same speech patterns we have always had, we need to be more aware of our choice of insults and what they mean. Feminist should mean so much more than being a negative term. How can we achieve equality when one side is always trying to tear the other down? You don’t need to be a feminist to have respect for women, and reinventing the feminist label as a more positive term could not only help the movement itself but help the culture as a whole shift closer to complete gender equality.