ColumnWomen Against Feminism is proof that feminism has a branding problem.

Back in the ‘60s, it was often assumed that if you identified as a feminist, you hated men, loved armpit hair and liked to sleep with the ladies. Fast forward to 2014 and the stereotypes are largely the same.

Briefly, Riot Grrrls made feminism cool in the ‘90s, and there’s now a new wave of toys for girls that are clearly inspired by the radical idea that girls aren’t born hating math and science. But, for the most part, those things haven’t done anything to change the warped vision of a feminist in the minds of the average American.

I’ve said it before and I am sure I will say it again: Damn you, average American!

What bothers me most about Women Against Feminism is that the women with their handwritten signs declaring their ignorance are mostly young.

If the next generation is willing to accept this as women having achieved equality in our society, we’re all in trouble. You can’t see me, but I am looking around in disgust and thinking about Hobby Lobby, the pay gap,  rape on college campuses and the danger inherent in simply being a girl or woman in this world.

One of the most disturbing trends in the misguided declarations of self-hatred on the site is the idea that being a feminist has something to do with being a victim. That’s a dangerous message of false empowerment. It’s not empowering to accept the status quo. It’s not self-victimization to look at injustice and demand better.

Feminists demand equal pay, we demand control over our bodies and we demand that laws protect those rights. We live in a society built on the idea that everyone is equal—and thankfully the definition of “everyone” has evolved over the years in most people’s minds. As such, when we see inequality, it’s our job to say something. The Women Against Feminism participants are willfully ignorant if they think we live in a just society.

The debate over the word feminist comes up over and over. Should we use humanist? Womanist? What word can we use to help people embrace the concepts behind feminism if they don’t resonate with the word?

Yes, the word feminist is culturally coded, but I would argue that today, those who steer the conversation toward the word do so to shift the focus from the reasons we need a word to describe the rights women in the country do not have. Oh look, now we’re arguing about semantics.

I think we stick with “feminist,” and its long, powerful history from the suffrage movement to Gloria Steinem to the Notorious RBG. It’s a word that, at times, has caused divisions of race and class—and that’s not good. I’m not suggesting we ignore that part of feminist history, I am suggesting that we look forward and do the hard work of uniting those of us with feminist beliefs. I am pushing for a makeover.

Can we take the word feminism—with all of its power to spark feelings, and with all its focus on constitutional rights—to help people feel connected to it? And by “people” I mean men, women of color, LGBTQ people, poor women, politicians, and basically everyone who knows that inequality is alive and picking up steam every time some stupid site like Women Against Feminism pops up.

Rebranding is tough, but totally possible. As an example, let’s think about yoga. Back in, oh say, the ‘90s, did you know people who did yoga? Did you think they were patchouli-wearing hippies? How about today? Take a look around any urban area and you’ll see yoga studios, yoga pants as work pants and those ubiquitous Lululemon bags. Yoga, for good or bad depending on whom you talk to, got a makeover. And good or bad, it’s still yoga.

In some ways, Sheryl Sandberg has given feminism a corporate makeover. But, while “Lean In” brought the conversation to the mainstream in a big way, it also served to divide us and reinforced the idea that feminism is for rich white ladies.

But don’t let images from the past or a distaste for one person’s experience with feminist thinking turn you off the idea that women’s rights are important and worth fighting for.

If the things that feminists believe in resonate with you, try to let the issues with the  word g0. Find the arm (hairy armpit or shaved) of the feminist branch that appeals to you, because proudly identifying as a feminist matters. There is power in a collective identity and change comes when a critical mass of people demand equality.

Related on EcoSalon

Gratitude and Feminism: That Happened

Foodie Feminism: Foodie Underground

Hobby Lobby Is a Person, but You? Not So Much

Feminism According to Sheryl Sandberg

Image: Women Against Feminism

The post Women Against Feminism: That Happened appeared first on EcoSalon.

10 American women we owe everything to.

Even slavery, religious oppression and complete isolation due to deafness and blindness couldn’t stop these 10 remarkable American women from standing up and speaking for what they believed in. Each of these female political activists changed the course of history as advocates of equal rights for all, including women, racial minorities, immigrants, LGBT people, the poor and the disabled. As founders and key players of some of the nation’s most enduring movements and organizations, these activists broke through the social, economic and religious restrictions of their time to amplify the voices of those who had previously been ignored.

Sojourner Truth

Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth was born into slavery with the name Isabella Baumfree in New York in 1797. After escaping to freedom with her infant daughter and then going to court to recover her son, she became the first black woman to win a case against a white man. Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army during the Civil War and tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants for former slaves from the federal government. She joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, which was founded by abolitionists and focused on women’s rights, religious tolerance and pacifism, and gave a famous speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851 entitled “Ain’t I a Woman?”

“I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now.”

Susan B. Anthony

After taking a prominent role in anti-slavery movements during the lead-up to the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony attended a Women’s Rights Convention in Massachusetts that changed the course of her life, leading her to become a crucial figure in the fight for women’s suffrage. Working closely with fellow activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony published the women’s rights weekly journal The Revolution, which had a motto that read “The true republic – men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”

Anthony was arrested for voting in the 1872 Presidential Election and convicted despite pointing out in her arguments that the privileges of American citizenship contained no gender qualification, giving women the right to vote; she was fined rather than imprisoned. Along with Stanton, Anthony went on to found the National Woman Suffrage Association.

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

More radical than Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton aimed to take women’s rights beyond suffrage, freeing half the population of the religious and social restrictions placed upon them due to gender. Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments, which she presented at the first women’s rights convention in 1848, is credited with launching the women’s rights and suffrage movements in the United States. The Declaration of Sentiments was based on the United States Declaration of Independence, and according to Frederick Douglass, who helped pass the resolutions contained within it, the document  was the “grand basis for attaining the civil, social, political, and religious rights of women.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”

Margaret Sanger

After watching her mother endure 18 pregnancies in 22 years and die at age 50 of cervical cancer, Margaret Sanger became a pioneer birth control activist, sex educator and nurse. Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in 1916, leading to her arrest for distributing information on contraceptives; five years later she founded the American Birth Control League and opened the first birth control clinic staffed by all-female doctors as well as a clinic in Harlem with an all-African American staff. The American Birth Control League later became Planned Parenthood of America.

“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

Jane Addams

The first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Jane Addams was a social and political activist, community organizer and one of the most prominent reformers of the Progressive Era. Addams co-founded the first settlement house in America, where middle-class volunteer “settlement workers” would assist and live alongside low-income neighbors in an effort to relieve the tensions of the economic class structure. Residents at the house studied the problems that plague poor urban areas including overcrowding, drug use, infant mortality and literacy.

An outspoken pacifist during World War I and tireless defender of immigrants’ rights, Addams was elected national chairman of the Women’s Peace Party and president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Helen Keller

Despite the limitations of being both deaf and blind, Helen Keller managed to achieve much more in her lifetime than most of us who have all of our senses intact. The first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, Keller was an outspoken anti-war activist, an advocate for people with disabilities, a member of the Socialist Party of America and a campaigner for women’s suffrage and labor rights. Though best known for her remarkable ability to communicate – often giving speeches and lectures – Keller was also a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and actively campaigned in support of the working class.

“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all… The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.”

Rosa Parks

Called “The First Lady of Civil Rights” by the United States Congress, Rosa Parks was an African-American civil rights activist who famously refused to give up her seat in the “colored section” of a public bus to a white passenger, when the white section was full.  At the time, parks was secretary of the NAACP and had recently attended a Tennessee training school for activists in workers’ rights and equality. Her arrest cost her her job, but led to a lifetime of involvement in the modern Civil Rights Movement, leading her to collaborate with other leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, and was the first woman to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda after her death.

“I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”

Betty Friedan

Once women’s suffrage was won, the fight was hardly over. Betty Friedan‘s 1963 nonfiction book The Feminine Mystique is widely credited for reigniting American feminism in the 20th century, with many a housewife seeing her own domestic and social repression reflected all too clearly within its pages when it was excerpted in McCall’s and Ladies’ Home Journal. It became a bestseller, helping to launch the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s. Betty Friedan served as the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and founded the National Women’s Political Caucus along with Gloria Steinem. Under Friedan’s leadership, NOW lobbied for enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963. She also organized the national Women’s Strike for Equality, and led a march of 50,000 women in New York City.

“The problem that has no name – which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities – is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.”

Gloria Steinem

Perhaps the best known American activist for women’s rights, Gloria Steinem has been a prominent political figure since the early days of the modern women’s movement in the 1960s. A writer, journalist and activist, Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine as well as Choice USA, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the National Women’s Political Caucus and the Women’s Media Center. Her first article for Esquire magazine, which focused on the choice that many women have to make between a career and marriage, preceded Freidan’s book, The Feminine Mystique by a year. She actively campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on its behalf, and earned national fame as a feminist leader after publishing the article “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation” in 1969. Steinem is also active in civil rights, animal rights and LGBT rights.

“There is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.”

Dolores Huerta

Labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farmworkers Association, which later became United Farm Workers (UFW). An avid campaigner for workers, immigrants and women’s rights, Huerta is a recipient of the United States Presidential Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In addition to her work as an organizer and advocate, Huerta has helped to pass a number of California and federal laws including the 1960 bill to permit people to take the California driver’s examination in Spanish, and 1963 legislation to extend Aid to Families with Dependent Children to California farmworkers. Huerta stood beside Robert F. Kennedy as he delivered a victory statement to his supporters just after winning the California Democratic presidential primary election, moments before he was assassinated.

“Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk.”

The post Stand and Speak: 10 American Female Political Activists appeared first on EcoSalon.

Women like sex.

I’ve been thinking – buried under the crushing, exhausting weight of all the assorted indignities of the current war on women, maybe it’s time to flip the script and go back to the basics. My theory about why all of this inane madness is happening is this: elite white men are afraid that their god-given power is disappearing. After all, we have a black president, we’re on our third female Secretary of State, and apparently, women no longer “need” men.

I have a proposition: maybe what we do need is to get in touch with our most instinctual, sexual selves, the selves that could potentially make Rick Santorum’s head explode.

So what do women want? And why is it so necessary to ask that question right now?

The short answer is that women’s desire is a massive threat to men insecure about their own masculinity. Consider asking the question –  “What do I desire?” – and then pursuing the answer in the most pleasurable way possible. This may be more than just a fun, enlightening exercise– it may in fact be revolutionary.

Women who want to get inside their own desire must start by shredding some prevailing myths, beginning with the one about men wanting sex more than women. It’s been ingrained in us to accept that men are so man-like that they can’t help but stare at every pair of breasts within a one-block radius, watch porn in every free moment, and masturbate like monkeys. Then there’s the trope about how men cheat because they “can’t help it.”

Part exaggeration, part truth, but what’s true is that they have license to do this, and women culturally don’t.

There’s no shame in wanting sex, but women who express their desire at an early age are shamed as sluts. The only women who have the ability to not enter almighty slut-dome are those who are happily married, actively procreating, and (hopefully) have no desires whatsoever. Women are not allowed pleasure in this worldview, one that’s on the GOP platform in 2012.

Let’s tell Paul Ryan, Todd Akin, and their pals that we like sex and we don’t apologize for it. It’s not just for making babies. That if they want to take away our birth control, they’ll have to wrest it out of our cold, dead, hands. We’re not making more babies for them to recruit.

Feminist History 101

Women were literally property not that long ago. If you’re coveting or already have an engagement ring, note that it essentially evolved as a husband’s down payment on his soon-to-be-wife. Not only did we belong to our husbands like cattle or guns, we were not allowed to own any property, because we were not considered human beings. Since then we’ve gotten the vote, have been allowed to work outside the home, been set free by the pill, and presently find ourselves in a fraught conversation about what it means to “have it all.”

Second wave feminists did some great work, but the anti-porn bit missed one important fact: women like sex. Going all Lysistrata on men isn’t going to solve much except making us all really sexually frustrated. At the same time, we have to push back. We are not Eve, or Pandora, or some other hypersexual goddess seducing men to eat our poisoned apples. Nor are we their Virgin Mary. We need to be allowed to simply be women, and not be shamed or idealized for wanting what we want, when we want it.

Even though we’ve made ridiculous amounts of progress (and fought like fierce warriors for every victory) we’re still so very far from where our feminist forebears had hoped we’d be. And I think it’s because we haven’t allowed ourselves to have enough, desire enough, experiment enough with sex. There’s still too much shame. Many women who have a lot of sex are doing so without pleasure. It’s still in service of the ideal of wanting to be wanted – rather than understanding what we truly want.

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Ten Speed Press/Crown Publishing, 2010) and eight other books. Stefanie keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more for many publications. Learn more about her at ecosex.net, follow her eco-sex exploits on Twitter or join her on Facebook.

Image: Je@n

The post For 2012, Pleasure is the Revolution We’ve Been Waiting For appeared first on EcoSalon.