Feminist Terms

      The terms used when describing or discussing feminism may be influenced by society, perceptions, stereotypes, and time periods. Or they may have been derived from a specific feminist or activist throughout history. The term feminism is generally used to describe the advocacy of equality among genders, or women's rights in social, political, and economical equality to men. Unfortunately, some people may assume the word has negative connotations, leading to some believing feminists are man-haters (very wrong). The term feminist may also vary between the waves of feminism. The first wave feminists were involved in the women's rights movement in the 1960s, while the second wave feminists developed forms of feminist theory based on the first wave's work. These variations and misunderstandings of the terms "feminist" and "feminism" show how important term usage can be in feminism. Of course other terms such as "girl power" may be intermixed with women's rights and such, but the vocabulary used can change the perspective of the movement by weakening or strengthening it.

      As mentioned before, many of the terms used in discussion today were derived from feminists themselves. The term "womanist" came from Alice Walker who wanted to move away from the term "feminist" because it once ignored different races. A Womanist is obviously geared towards all women. Betty Friedan developed the concept of "Feminine Mystique" to describe how women have been limited to having only a role of a mother and wife due to a patriarchal society. Other authors elaborate on terms that directly relate to feminism such as Chandra Mohanty. She defines colonization as "a relation of structural domination, and an often violent suppression of the heterogeneity of the subjects in question". She believes that colonization has lead to the categorization of third world country struggles, which may limit some women to help based on whether they are living in a third world country, instead of depending on if they are suffering from "third world problems" such as genital mutilation. Obviously, terms used in feminism vary and change greatly through history, and may have been affected by stereotypes, decades, or feminists themselves.