Jane is a butch, hairy-legged, Birkenstock-wearing, lesbian student. She hates men and burns bras. While Jane is imaginary, her image is not.
Jane is what a feminist would look like when constructed with society’s ideas of what feminists are, according to members of a discussion Tuesday at the Women’s Center.
“I know women who aren’t feminists who fit that mold,” said Kristin Hanson, a theater junior.
But stereotypes such as this make females scared to associate with the feminist movement, said Jenny Jones, Ieader of the discussion “Deconstructing the Feminazi.” The event was part of the center’s brown bag lunch series.
The feminist movement is about building community, Jones said.
Dictionary.com says feminism is simply the “belief in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.” But associating it with the Nazi movement changes its image, Jones said.
“It’s a brilliant rhetorical strategy,” she said. “Who would want to listen to a Nazi?”
Jones’ interest in the phrase started with her teaching a course on criminal women. In her class, students would list qualities they associate with different people, and almost every time characteristics of criminal women and feminists overlapped.
In the 1800s and 1970s, fear of female crime rising grew parallel to the suffrage movement and passing of the Equal Rights Amendment, Jones said.
“It’s not as simple as people calling feminists criminals,” she said.
Psychologists’ and sociologists’ studies show people used masculine traits to describe female criminals and suffragettes, but feminine adjectives for noncriminal females, therefore separating being feminine from taking action, Jones said.
“It just seems like a way to describe anyone who pushes any sort of boundary,” said Amber Vlasnik, Women’s Center manager.
Stigmas placed on being feminist form from fear of losing power and cause many people to apologize for it, which adds to the belief it is wrong, Jones said.
“There’s a lot of eye-rolling when I mention feminism, and I immediately get defensive,” said Jennifer Nuernberg, an English graduate student. “When I see misogyny, I point it out and catch myself apologizing, like ‘I’m sorry I keep bringing this up …'”
This is similar to when people say, “Well, I’m not a feminist but …” the group said. One way women can make the term more acceptable to themselves is to stop treating it like a bad word.
“Don’t apologize for it,” said George Juge, a psychology senior.
Vlasnik said she found it also helps to find feminist friends to encourage each other to speak out.
“It was very empowering to come back and tell them, ‘guess what someone said to me and this is what I said back,'” she said. “It’s positive reinforcement that it really is OK.”
Once people can accept labels, such as feminist as positive, they can open the doors for conversation about larger, systematic issues, such as race, gender and class, Jones said.
Jones said she remembers buying a blue tie-dyed shirt that said, “Feminism — the idea that women are people too” because she thought it was cool but then being afraid to wear it. Later, she saw a man with a shirt degrading women and put her shirt on.
“You’re damned if you do [claim feminism], and you’re damned if you don’t,” Jones said. “At some point, you have to bite the bullet and say ‘I engage.'”