"Women are still choosing to opt out of work and stay at home to raise children, and women are still taking pole-dancing classes, saying it is good exercise. Women are still painfully removing all of the hair from their bodies and pretending to be morons so as not to threaten their male suitors. They are still giving their money and attention to musicians who tell them they are worthless pieces of ass. Women are still watching blockbuster films and aspiring to be the supportive wife or the sexy girlfriend who needs rescuing, rather than the one (man) saving the world. Women in Hollywood are still producing films where men save the world. They still love and support and marry wife-beaters, rapists, and misogynistic trolls. Women are still voting Republican.
You can, they insist, still be a feminist and shave your legs, fuck men, consume misogynistic culture. Look, we’re doing it, we call ourselves feminists, you can too. The political and sociological understanding of the pressures under which women attempt to live their lives is replaced with personal choice. For example, everything about our culture may be pushing women toward marriage—from romantic narratives in movies and television to health insurance policies and tax benefits granted by the government. And marriage has historically been a way to control women and reduce them to being property—the visuals in marriage ceremonies and the words of wife and husband are still heavy with this symbolic meaning. Yet, if you want to get married and you choose to get married, and you identify as feminist, then your getting married is automatically a feminist act.
So we have books called Sexy Feminism, scientific studies about whether feminists have a more satisfying sex or romantic life, personal essays about how feminism helped me get that promotion/have better orgasms. And while there is a vague notion that there is something called the Patriarchy keeping you down, there are few ideas of how to counteract it, except through individual achievement.
Now that we have removed all meaning from the word feminism, our ranks have swelled. A woman can now take up the feminist label without any true political, personal, or relational adaptations whatsoever. It’s just another button on her jacket, another sticker on her bumper."
- Why I Am Not A Feminist by Jessa Crispin
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