{"id":65423,"date":"2015-12-28T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T13:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=65423"},"modified":"2016-02-13T22:32:16","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T03:32:16","slug":"where-do-negative-stereotypes-about-feminists-come-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/12\/28\/where-do-negative-stereotypes-about-feminists-come-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Where do negative stereotypes about feminists come from?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2<\/a>Television evangelist Pat Robertson once described feminism as \u201ca socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.\u201d His comment is frequently used as a particularly extreme version of the feminist stereotype, but how far are his sentiments from those of the general public?<\/p>\n

A more systematic investigation<\/a> into what people think about feminists found that many people think that feminists are ugly, uptight, angry, aggressive, harsh, strident, demanding, dogmatic, man-hating lesbians\u2026 or think other<\/em> people think they are. Only 26 percent of people say<\/a> that feminist<\/em> is a positive term.<\/p>\n

This suggests that actual feminists have lost control over their own reputation. It would be counterproductive, after all, for feminists to portray themselves<\/em> as unlikeable. Negative stereotypes about feminists, instead, are likely spread by anti<\/em>-feminists.<\/p>\n

Anti-suffrage campaign material is one example. The images below — from the collection of Catherine\u00a0Palczewski<\/a> — tell a story about who the feminist women fighting for suffrage are and what they want. It\u2019s all pre-1920s, but the stereotypes and fears are similar.<\/p>\n

Feminists are ugly:<\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Feminists are manly:\"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Feminists neglect their natural role as a mother\/are uncaring toward children:\"13\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They’re angry:\"12\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They want to emasculate\u00a0men\u00a0and take their role:\"1a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They’re mean to their husbands, if they can get married at all:\"2\"<\/a>\"OLYMPUS<\/a><\/p>\n

They don’t want equality with men, they want to dominate them:\"1a\"<\/a>\"11\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next time you hear that feminists are ugly or hate men\u00a0— or any number of stereotypes about women who seek equality —\u00a0remember that this is exactly what anti-feminists have wanted you to think for the last 200 years.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Jay Livingston for the tip! Postcards from:\u00a0Palczewski, Catherine H. Postcard Archive. University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls, IA.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Television evangelist Pat Robertson once described feminism as \u201ca socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.\u201d His comment is frequently used as a particularly extreme version of the feminist stereotype, but how far are his sentiments from those of the general […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,55,2089,2096,2095,2102,2088,2087,2090,253,272,868,133],"class_list":["post-65423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-feminismactivism","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-gender-violence","tag-history","tag-marriagefamily","tag-power","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/212.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65423"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68597,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65423\/revisions\/68597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}