Thread by @ProfessorMaven

According to a 2013 survey, only 20% of Americans consider themselves feminists (word-only). But asked if they believe that “men and women should be social, political, and economic equals,” (definition only) 82% of the survey respondents said they did, & just 9% said they did not

In another study in 7 European countries, the vast majority of people in the Definition-Only group (80-91%) say that they believe men & women should have equal rights & social status. The Word-Only group sees fewer respondents saying that they are a feminist – between 8-40%.

The results of Definition+Word come in between the first two groups: having seen feminism defined, 42-70% of respondents say that they themselves are feminists.

Perhaps Feminism has a branding issue or people are ignorant or both?

Regardless, when we ask people “are you a feminist?” and they say “No”, we shouldn’t jump to criticize. It is actually far more likely that they implicitly support feminist ideals than not.

Very often self-identified feminists get agitated when people say they do not consider themselves feminists.

Should identifying with the word-only label (feminist) be as important or more important than identifying with the definition? If so, why?

If feminism has a branding issue, are people rational in avoiding the label? Even if feminism does not have any serious branding issues, and people were just irrational in avoiding the label, should we care if people eschew the label but support the ideals?

If we need people to identify with the label, we need to ask why? Does it benefit them (do they get any benefit from identifying as a feminist as opposed to saying “I’m not a feminist but I believe in gender equal etc?) What is the benefit?

Or does it benefit us (self-identified feminists). Do we believe the more numbers we have identifying under the label, the better our chances at influencing policies?

Maybe, but policies don’t have movements names appended to them, instead, they are offshoots of ideals.

What this might mean is that people who support ideals even if they do not identify with the “feminist” label will still vote in favor of feminist policies? Right? Is that not more paramount than self-identification?

Or is self-identification useful to us as a heuristic to know who really supports gender equality without always asking the explicit definition question?

Perhaps, but that carries a risk. If people realize that identifying as a feminist carries some benefit, they might

take on the label but not really embody the definition.

Like asking if a person loves you - they might say yes, but Love might mean “take a bullet for me” to you, it might mean “give you my last piece of chicken” to them. But if you ask “will you take a bullet for me”, you

have a better understanding of their belief and commitment.

Or like asking a person if they are Christian, they might say yes because they were raised that way, but asking if they believe Jesus died for their sins & rose from the grave and if they go to church every Sunday, you

might get a different picture.

So is asking for the definition question more beneficial to members of the group?

To me, it seems like if the surveys depicting the reluctance of people to identify indicate that “Feminism” has a bad reputation like “socialism” or “communism” used to, we should be sticking to the definition question. And we’ll see that there are more feminists than we think.

Except feminism is not simply socio-political-economic equality of the gender. And if it’s not. We just need to explain what it means clearly and ask people if they support that.