Congratulations, feminists, you just reminded everyone why you have a stigma attached to your movement.
On Saturday, Time Magazine Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs added an apology to the news website’s poll asking readers what word they want to ban. At the time, the word “feminist” was winning the poll with over 50 percent of the vote.
“Editor’s Note: TIME apologizes for the execution of this poll; the word ‘feminist’ should not have been included in a list of words to ban,” Gibbs wrote. “While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice.”
Time’s reason for adding the word to its poll wasn’t because people these days don’t identify the term in a positive way, it was because celebrities now must answer whether they define themselves as a feminist or not.
A YouGov poll from August found that just 25 percent of Americans surveyed defined themselves as feminists based on what they currently think of what the word means. After being reminded that feminism is supposed to be about the “social, political and economic equality of women,” the numbers flipped, with 60 percent then identifying themselves as feminists.
Who are those 40 percent who don’t believe in equality for women? Who knows; some could have said that because they don’t believe feminism means that anymore, or they were trying to be contrarian.
After Time’s banishment poll was released, feminists went apoplectic. Feminist Majority called on Time to remove the word from the list and encouraged supporters to e-mail Gibbs directly with their outrage.
The bullying campaign worked.
This could have been a moment for radical feminists to rethink their tactics, but no, they confirmed everyone’s worst conceptions about the movement and thus set women back yet again.
Update: Feminist Majority is taking a victory lap over Time’s decision to apologize for including “feminist” in its poll.
“At last, TIME comes to its senses,” Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal said in a press release e-mailed to supporters. “Obviously ‘feminist’ is a worldwide movement for equality of women that cannot and must not be trivialized. Too many women’s lives depend on it. It’s very important that leaders from every walk of life not only declare they are feminist, but help to empower women and to end the violence against and exploitation of women.”
