As a high school student I was very often surprised at how many women did not call themselves feminists. Most of those who didn’t seemed to think that feminism had an awful lot to do with body hair-feminists were those lumberjack-like women who would shave their heads instead of their armpits and legs. Bra-burning was conspicuously absent from definitions of a feminist. Maybe it was too passe for the modern woman, or perhaps present day feminists are simply too preoccupied with coping with memories of early childhood razor trauma. No, wait, feminists never owned bras in the first place. My simplistic concept of “equal work, treatment, and pay” was rejected. Surely feminism was more threatening than that.

Thankfully, college is different-in this particular discussion unshorn legs were mercifully absent. The discussion centered around stagnation-where the feminist movement has been derailed, and who has been responsible for this. It is my opinion that the feminist movement has been lightly tossed aside by modern society. The stereotypes reign supreme-you have the lesbian, the woman in a power suit, and the hippie whose only functional relationships are with her therapist and a spice rack. They seek castration of men and removal of privilege, glorify in hypersensitivity, and spell woman incorrectly. They are what has been deemed “feminazis.”

These women do exist within feminism, of course. I get emails from them occasionally-the “wymmyn’s spiritual meeting” meets once a week and goes through a lot of candles. They are unfortunate pariahs-what work they do is often eclipsed by how negatively they are perceived. I will admit that the minute someone pulls “women with a y” on me I immediately become skeptical of their priorities and resentful of radicalism’s tendency to alienate.

Alienation is, I think, one of the largest reasons why so many women do not identify as feminists. Most people are not radicals and do not want to be branded as such, and this fear is crippling. Equally crippling is the idea that one will be seen as, or accused of being, politically correct. The concept of political correctness and how it has been made into a negative thing is one of the great weapons of sexism. Political correctness is always “going too far”-a man fired for using the word “niggardly”, a compliment on a dress leading to a lawsuit, yet another list of groups that should never be offended. Being politically correct is seen as ridiculous, and those who fight against it by asserting their right to play religious music or wear shirts with sexist slogans are seen as freedom fighters standing up for traditionalism and the right to free speech.

My favorite fight on political correctness and terminology is again found at my college. The room that queer people keep resources in, as well as the dean who is our advisor, are labeled as serving the “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and ally” students. The words “questioning, curious, closeted, and intersex” were recently added, and after a few times of saying “LGBTQACIA” students began complaining that the acronym was too long and a bit ridiculous. One student proposed “Etcetera” as a name which was considered too marginalizing, and various other names have been bandied around with little success. Some of us have taken to calling the resource room the Soup Room (as in alphabet.) My proposal to collectively call all of the queer students on campus “Sylvia and Burgess” seems unlikely to pass at this point, but one can never tell. And certainly infighting over names doesn’t detract at all from actually serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and whatever population, right?

To hear some women who do not consider themselves feminists talk, they might not know what a feminist is but they know full well what one isn’t. Feminists are not girly, nor do they like sex. They don’t like men or other women. They are not any number of things, and it is truly a marvel of propaganda that a movement based on the concept of “all women” can have become so fragmentary and shunned by those considered to be its benefactors.

We have yet to arrive at a “how do we fix this” discussion, if there is indeed any way to change opinion that doesn’t involve decades of fighting that precious few seem to want to do. Who knows if feminism will dust itself off, though? Perhaps equality will be more than a pipe dream in time, and the feminist movement will be seen as accepting of every woman. After all, we deserve equality because we are human, not because anyone among us is quiet or promiscuous or doesn’t shave her legs.