Post by Hannah Barath, Access & Diversity Co-op Student Assistant
In November 2014, TIME Magazine posted a poll with a list of words and expressions that they thought should be banned in 2015. Next to sayings such as “bae”, “om nom nom nom”, and “sorry not sorry” one of the words on this list was the f-word. Not that f-word! The other one… feminist.
The magazine faced an immediate backlash following the release of this poll, and before long an editor’s note was added to the article. In this note TIME Magazine apologized for including the word “feminist” on the list but insisted that it was a joke that people had taken the wrong way and that it was intended to start a debate on how the word was used. Notably, it was never removed and still remains on the list today. Listed next to nonsensical words such as “yaaasssss” it doesn’t feel like a criticism on the way media uses “feminist”, rather it feels like they are making light on a social justice movement for equal rights that has been going on for over a century. The suggestion to ban the f-word – jokingly or not – feels, as Robin Morgan puts it, uncomfortable.
Regardless of TIME Magazine’s reasons for including this word in the poll, it illustrates a problem that feminist movements have had and continue to face. Feminists constantly deal with people who refuse to take their cause seriously (often combined with claims of feminists taking everything too seriously) and people who have misunderstood what feminism really is about. This unawareness of what feminism(s) truly stands for, combined with the fact that so many people have very negative connotations with the f-word, is one of the reasons I think people may be reluctant to identify as feminists. Continue reading
Post by Amanda Chiu and Melody Cheung, Equity Ambassadors
