Why I Hesitate To Tell People That I Am A Feminist

As a woman I can vouch that there plenty of women who would sooner have their pictures taken while wearing horizontal stripes than be defined as a feminist. Stacy McCain explains why:

Every so often, some feminist writer will come out with an essay bemoaning the fact that, despite all that The Sisterhood claims to have done for womankind, most women don't identify themselves as feminists.

Why is this? I would suggest it's because any woman who has set foot on a college campus during the past 20 years automatically identifies "feminist" as a term synonymous with "maladjusted, overprivileged, angry, ugly Women's Studies major."

Stacy is being kind. I would say the term feminist is synonymous with "dour, sour, humorless, bitch." No offense.


In 1976, when I started college, we were told that we could be and do anything that we put our minds to. Nothing was "off the table", the world was our oyster. Well, that was then.


Want to get a degree AND be a wife and mother? No way, chickie. If you have those kinds of aspirations, you are taking a college slot from a woman who would take their degree and do something "meaningful" with it. Blah, blah, blah.

A narrow, small-minded cabal of women have hijacked feminism and redefined it in their anti-vibrant image. We have gone from "be all you can be" to "you can be all we tell you is acceptable." Thanks but no thanks. I'm just fine.