The Strident Feminist

Take a moment and think about the word “feminism”.

It is likely you associated it with things such as “humorless”, “hairy legs”, “ugly” and “man haters”. But have you ever encountered feminism and its causes in real-life? Or are you judging the entire cause by what you’ve seen in the media?

As mentioned in previous posts, when we do not encounter a certain type of person in our everyday life (e.g. the Arab), we tend to narrow our opinion on them to what we have seen in media. And when the media only represents this person by a one-dimensional stereotype, we start to identify that particular group of people with those generalizations. The same goes for certain ideas.

Stereotyping can have purposeful intentions and definitely creates funny situations. But although stereotypes may be used for comical sense at the surface, some have much more serious subtexts when we dig a little deeper. One such stereotype is the one of the strident feminist (also referred to as straw feminist).

The strident feminist is mainly portrayed by an annoying, unattractive woman/girl who is unreasonable, extreme and/or ridiculous. Some examples from popular culture:

Jessie Spano in Saved by the Bell

One episode from The Powerpuff Girls features a character named Femme Fatale. She is an obvious representation of feminism (her uniform even includes the female symbol). Throughout the episode, she manages to turn the girls into raging feminists, thereby disturbing the perfect harmony of their town.  

Liz Lemon from 30 Rock uses feminism as an excuse for being single. On Valentine’s Day she hides her insecurity about not having a boyfriend and claims” "I will buy some cookies, but not for Valentine’s Day. Instead, these cookies celebrate the February 14th birthday of Anna Howard Shaw, famed American suffragette. Happy Anna How Shaw Day to you, Evelyn. A happy Anna Howard Shaw Day to us all!"

The movie Legally Blonde includes a character named Enid. She is arguably the most annoying character in the film. One conversation has her protesting against the term “semester” as it signifies the preference of semen over ovaries. She also mentions that she will therefore petition for the next term to be called “ovaster”. Funny, ridiculous, very harmful.

Feminism is about creating equality between men and woman. Nothing more, nothing less. Stereotypical, negative stereotypes that claim to be feminist characters are giving the cause a bad name.

Why is this hurtful? It alienates people from the idea. In the case of feminism, it makes people think that the only people who associate with it are ugly, unreasonable man-haters. Now what woman would want to join that movement? Same goes for other straw stereotypes such as the “religious freak” and the “tree-hugger”. These stereotypes take one single characteristic and blow it up to a very twisted representation of the original idea.

It’s interesting how this misrepresentation can turn:

into:

This only illustrates how influential media is in this age we live in. Now we’re not saying that the media are the reason for every single stereotypical idea in our society, but they do sustain it. Whether a stereotype starts in society or in the media, they complement and reflect one another. What is seen in the media practically always has some origin in real-life. At the same time, the ideas and opinions we have are often influenced by the movies and TV programmes we watch daily. Again, we stress the importance of being critical of what you see in the media.