Feminist Friday - Words

What a coincidence .. the topic of this week's Feminist Fridays is words! Words. We love them, huh?

We sure do. But what about people who misuse our precious words? Like the word 'feminism'. This week, Sarah Palin took to Twitter to pronounce all of us feminists a 'cackle of rads'. She even went so far as to suggest that we hijacked the word feminism. Oh dear, where do I start?

Well, let's start with the ... ummmmm... dictionary, shall we? Here is how Merriam-Webster defines feminist/feminism:

1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests

So, I'm going to step out on a limb and say Sarah knows nothing about the women's movement. At all. I mean the sheer nerve of that woman to post something as ridiculous as that on the 90th anniversary of U.S. women's suffrage is galling. But, even if I'm wrong about her lack of knowledge/education/thought-processes, how can Sarah not see that using a misogynistic term like cackle to try to denigrate OTHER WOMEN is everything that feminism is not. Moreover, she did not even use the term properly! Ugh. Plus, since when is the notion of equal rights radical? That is what she thinks of feminists? Double ugh.

It probably comes as no surprise that I do not care for Sarah Palin at all. Some readers could argue that I am not being a good feminist in attacking Palin. I would say to you, wrong you are. If a person works toward equal rights for women, both in word and practice, regardless of who that person is, then I will support them. If someone works against these things, then I will criticize them. That is my right, I believe. Sarah is doing more to hurt the cause of feminism than to help it. I am not aware of anything she has done as a half-term governor or as a full-time paid speaker that has furthered women's causes. In fact, she would have done a service to feminists if she had publicly stated that how she was treated as a vice-presidential candidate was related to sexist attitudes, instead of blaming the liberal media or playing the victim all the time. That is anti-feminism, in my opinion.

Even after all these years of the women's movement, many many people think of feminist as a dirty word or at a minimum they misunderstand what feminism encompasses. That is very frustrating to many of us already. Then to have another woman so blatantly misuse it and try to hijack its meaning is so offensive.

Words are powerful. Feminism is powerful. Words matter. Feminism matters.