Feminazi

Feminazi is a pejorative term popularized by politically conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh to refer to feminists.[1][2][3] It is a portmanteau of the nouns feminist and Nazi.[3][4]

Etymology and usage

In his 1992 book The Way Things Ought to Be, Limbaugh credited his friend Tom Hazlett, professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, with coining the term.[5] Hazlett used the term in a 1987 essay for Reason magazine.[6]

In 2004, Limbaugh named feminist activists Gloria Steinem, Susan Sarandon, Christine Lahti, and Camryn Manheim as "famous feminazis"; he has also used the term to refer to members of the National Center for Women and Policing and the Feminist Majority Foundation.[7] According to Limbaugh, feminazis refers to feminists whose goal is to allow "as many abortions as possible".[8][9]

Helen Lewis, deputy editor of the New Statesman, has said of the term, "the idea of conflating a liberation movement with Nazism is just deeply ignorant. It’s self-undermining, because it’s so over the top." Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, has said that "It’s a term that flags something to other attackers [...] I would associate the word feminazi with a mass attack, somebody signalling to their mates: 'I’m having a go, here, come and join in'".[10]

According to The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, feminazi refers (pejoratively) to "a committed feminist or a strong-willed woman".[8] Merriam-Webster defines the term as used in a "usually disparaging" manner, to describe "an extreme or militant feminist".[4] Google Trends shows the regions with the highest relative searches for the term over the past few years are Chile, Spain, Argentina, and Mexico.[11][12]

Cultural impact

In a 1996 interview, Gloria Steinem criticized Limbaugh's use of the term feminazi. According to Steinem, "Hitler came to power against the strong feminist movement in Germany, padlocked the family planning clinics, and declared abortion a crime against the state—all views that more closely resemble Rush Limbaugh's."[13] In her book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Steinem characterised the term as "cruel and ahistorical", and elaborated on the repression of feminism under Hitler, noting that many prominent German feminists like Helene Stöcker, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin and Clara Zetkin were forced to flee Nazi Germany while others were killed in concentration camps.[14]

In his book The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh's Assault on Reason, John K. Wilson cites Limbaugh's definition of the term as meaning "radical feminists whose objective is to see that there are as many abortions as possible" and says "by this definition, there are literally no feminazis".[15]

In 2016, in response to the use of the word as a slur against her, Brooklyn-based singer and songwriter Renee Goust released the song "La Cumbia Feminazi" as an "answer to the abuse we women suffer too frequently when we speak up to defend our rights." Goust says she gets called the slur on various social platforms, such as YouTube. In her song, she sings about "a virtual incognito who is trying to upset [her]" by calling her a feminazi just because she is a woman who is "brave" and "not quite frail."[16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Chapman, Roger; Ciment, James (2015). Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints and Voices. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-31-747350-3.
  2. ↑ Ferree, Myra Max (2005-02-17). "Soft Repression: Ridicule, Stigma, and Silencing in Gender-based Movements". In Myers, Daniel J.; Cress, Daniel M. Authority in Contention. Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change. 25. Emerald Group Publishing. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-7623-1037-1. ISSN 0163-786X. Retrieved 2012-03-03. More recently, consider the term 'feminazi' that Rush Limbaugh coined to ridicule feminists...
  3. 1 2 Katz, Jackson (2006). The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and how All Men Can Help. Sourcebooks. pp. 74–75, 177. ISBN 978-1-40-225376-8.
  4. 1 2 "feminazi". Merriam-Webster.
  5. ↑ Limbaugh, Rush H. (1992). The Way Things Ought to be. Pocket Books. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-67-175145-6. I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. Tom Hazlett, a good friend who is an esteemed and highly regarded professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism.
  6. ↑ Hazlett, Thomas Winslow (December 1987). "H.L. Mencken: The Soul Behind the Sass". Reason. We could really use [Mencken] now, what with Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, Tip O'Neill and Jerry Falwell, Gary Hart and Donna Rice, the Moonies, the feminazis, the Naderite crusaders, and the television evangelists.
  7. ↑ Wilson, John K. (March 1, 2011). The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh’s Assault on Reason. Macmillan. pp. 54–57. ISBN 9780312612146. When asked in 1995 about the term 'feminazi', he declared: 'It's the way I look at the feminist movement'. Limbaugh referred to the National Center for Women and Policing and the Feminist Majority Foundation as 'feminazis'. So it's not just twenty-five individuals, but every single feminist organization, its leaders, and millions upon millions of Americans with the same views whom Limbaugh compares to Nazis.
  8. 1 2 Barrett, Grant (2006). The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang. OUP USA. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-19-530447-3.
  9. ↑ Limbaugh, Rush H., III (1992). "The Limbaugh Lexicon". The Way Things Ought to Be. Pocket Books. p. 296. ISBN 9780671751456. Feminazi: Widely misunderstood by most to simply mean "feminist." Not so, boobala. A Feminazi is a feminist to whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur. There are fewer than twenty-five known Feminazis in the United States.
  10. ↑ Williams, Zoe (15 September 2015). "Feminazi: the go-to term for trolls out to silence women". The Guardian.
  11. ↑ "Chile es el país que más busca la palabra 'feminazi' en Google". Tarreo (in Spanish). Retrieved 2017-06-14.
  12. ↑ "La chilena Mon Laferte está harta del término 'feminazi'". www.univision.com. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
  13. ↑ Steinem, Gloria (1996). "Ask Gloria". Feminist.com. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
  14. ↑ Steinem, Gloria (October 15, 1995). "If Hitler Were Alive, Whose Side Would He Be On? (2nd edition)". Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. New American Library. ISBN 978-0451139986. OL 18320559M.
  15. ↑ Wilson, John K. (2011). The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh's Assault on Reason. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-312-61214-6.
  16. ↑ Martirosyan, Lucy; et al. (3 August 2016). "Check out this cumbia response to the word ‘feminazi’". PRI. Retrieved 13 August 2016.

Further reading

Look up feminazi in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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