In her brilliant response to Glenn Beck’s attacks on progressive politics, Newsweek‘s Raina Kelly makes it clear why language matters and what is at stake.
The slow degradation of the word “feminist” continues to be one of the most powerful weapons in the backlash against the women’s rights movement. How better to diminish the cause than to create an atmosphere where young girls believe that to be a feminist is to be a loser, where women feared that speaking their minds made them a bitch? It opens the door to tainting and tarnishing any issue, like the rape shield laws or the Fair Pay Act, that promised to make the country a better, safer place for females.
Print it out for the next time someone says “I’m not a feminist, but….” It works better than throwing drinks or yelling. Not that I ever do those things.
