In my American Studies class, we've been moving into gender studies lately and today as a conversation starter, my teacher asked "Who would consider themselves a feminist?" Literally NOBODY raised their hand. No boys and not even any girls. The one super smart kid who knows literally everything about everything (literally a cliche movie nerd, he sometimes even knows more than the teachers) kinda gave a half raise. When my teacher asked who knew what feminism meant (after realizing that nobody raised their hand and then mentioning how BEYSUS identifies as a feminist), the responses were "It means that anytime anyone says something negative about a woman, you jump to her defense", "It means you want women to have more rights than men", "You're biased in favor of women" etc etc. This takes me back to about a week ago when I said in here that most people don't identify as feminists because of the media perception and the fact that most people don't even know what it means and y'all tried to act like I didn't know what I was talking about
just like with everything else in the world, it's the radicals of any given group that get the most media attention. IS casts a shadow over islam, westboro baptist church makes christians look bad, tumblr sjws who want to kill all white men makes feminism look intimidating. that's what people want to read about, they don't want to read about peaceful muslims, non-gay hating christians, reasonable feminists who are just fighting for women to get the same treatment as men in all aspects of life and not just "wage equality!1!!"