Soraya says hell yes she’s a feminist.
Remember the woman who asked Romney about the wage gap?
You know what she got for her efforts? A good and proper Slutshaming 101 from conservatives who dug up her Facebook page and her Twitter account to reveal that she has in the past used alcohol and maybe suggested her interest in sex. Like Sandra Fluke, she’s a whiny, entitled trollop who should shut up and go home. Now, Fenton might not have memorized the Slut Manifesto, but she sure as hell knows that a man asking this exact same question would not be treated this way. Just like Jim Lehrer’s weight hasn’t become an Internet discussion point, while Candy Crowley’s has. As Chloe Angyal so succinctly put it earlier today in Feministing, “This shit is sexist, and feminism is the fight against sexism.”
Furthermore, sexist shit is everywhere, so the fight against it is needed.
When people say “I’m not a feminist” or “I’m a feminist, but…” they invariably imply that it’s undesirable error made by an unhinged fringe. This is a testament to the success of at least 40 years of conservative backlash branding feminism the devilish work of man-hating, barren, aggressive, ugly (no greater sin), humorless, lesbian, she-devils.
Fucking fools who call people like me and my colleagues and friends “radfems” for example. This? This isn’t radfem, you clueless goons. It’s just fem. You sound like people who scream that Obama is a communist. Obama! For crying out loud.
…we don’t have one easily recognized national celebration or public marker of any kind testifying to the sacrifices made in the movement to secure women’s civil rights or to celebrate its achievements. Instead this history is buried under a thick tome of historical denial. We’ve left an entire generation bereft of the knowledge of a powerful legacy and sedated by the idea that, as XOJane put it, “anti-feminist behaviors are feminist because feminism is about choice.”
They think it’s all done and dusted. That’s so sad. They’ll learn better, but it will be sad.