Bad Feminist: Essays

Through feminism you make sense of wrongs; you realize that you are not in the wrong. But when you speak of something as being wrong, you end up being in the wrong all over again.

to stay on the ethical side, if there is one, of a blurry line between “woman who takes feminism seriously” and “woman selling her feminist personal brand.” I’ve avoided the merchandise, the cutesy illustrated books about “badass” historical women, the coworking spaces and corporate panels and empowerment conferences, but I am a part of that world—

A postfeminist sensibility is one in which feminist ideas are said to have been “taken into account” already, obviating the need for radical social transformation along gender lines.14 In recent years this has mutated from outright repudiation of feminism into something more subtle: a sense of the “obviousness” of the importance of feminism, alongs

Of course much of this was tongue-in-cheek, but what it shows is how that word feminist is so heavy with baggage, negative baggage: