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What is Feminism?
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichle"Feminism is a philosophy of knowledge. It is the intellectual understanding of the historical struggle between domination and submission...[It] is the history of what was created both by the dominated and the dominator to sustain or struggle against that domination."
Marilyn Salzman-Webb"Expanding human freedom is the most important goal of feminism."
Lindsay Beyerstein"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."
Rebecca West, British writer, speaking in 1913"Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels."
bell hooks"Feminism is the advocacy of political, economic and social equality between women and men."
Feminist Majority Foundation"We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever."
Susan B. Anthony, 19th- & early 20th-century leader of the Women's MovementWhy not choose a less offensive word?
"Feminism is a social movement whose goal is to eliminate the oppression of women in all its forms."
"A natural response is to change the word feminist to a word with fewer stigmas attached. But inevitably the same thing will happen to that magical word. Part of the radical connotation of feminism is not due to the word, but to the action. The act of a woman standing up for herself is radical, whether she calls herself a feminist or not."
Paula Kamen, feminist
Amy Kesselman, Lily D. McNair, and Nancy Schniedewind