Whipping Girl

I REMEMBER BACK IN COLLEGE—when I was admittedly rather naive with regard to gender politics—someone asked a friend of mine whether she considered herself a feminist. I was surprised to hear her answer “No.” After all, she certainly seemed like a feminist to me. She was independent, intelligent, career-minded, pro-women’s reproductive rights. She regularly stood up for herself and was keenly aware of the disparity between how certain professors treated her and how they treated her male counterparts. When she was asked why she didn’t identify as a feminist, her reply was, “I like being a girl.” She went on to explain that she enjoyed, and even felt empowered by, being feminine. And in her experience, those who openly embraced the label “feminist” often displayed a condescending attitude toward her femininity.

Granted, this idea—that feminism and femininity are in opposition to one another—has often been fostered by those who wish to undermine feminism. For several decades now, feminism’s opponents have attempted to dissuade women from the movement by repeating two (seemingly contradictory) sound bites: that feminists are “man-haters” (read: “homosexual”) while simultaneously “wanting to be men” (read: “masculine”). While one cannot underestimate the negative effect that this antifeminist propaganda has had in turning feminine and heterosexual women away from feminism, we would be doing ourselves a great disservice if we didn’t also acknowledge the fact that many feminists themselves have forwarded the idea that femininity is artificial and incompatible with feminism.¹ This antifemininity tendency may represent the feminist movement’s single greatest tactical error. It’s high time we rectify this mistake by purposefully putting the feminine back into feminism.