Why aren't women feminists? Surely no-one thinks all the battles have been won?

[WideWebWitch]

OK, so I don't have any proper evidence to back this up (so don't post I hear you say, oh well, I bet there is some, so I will!) but I gather that increasingly young women aren't feminists and don't believe there's any need for a feminist movement of any kind. They think all the battles have been won. I know for sure they haven't but WHY do they think this? And why would anyone NOT be a feminist? If you're not, why not? I know this conversation has been had before on mn but I'm still interested.

I agree with Janice Turner about New Woman mag rebranding itself because young women don't like the word 'woman' fgs, this is an example of the sort of thing I mean.

"They see feminism as humourless so therefore not to be bothered with. "

Ever wondered why this is the case?

MT - I have wondered and I don't really know but feminism is definitely associated with humourless among many young people. Sad as this is really not true - the humour is just a more female kind. Maybe that is it, young women are more and more appropriating male humour (much of which is anti-woman in my opinion).

I personally was quite proud to call myself a feminist even in the 80's when it was becoming less fashionable even then. I see no problem with the term and I feel sad that many young women nowadays have such negative associations with it.

Have you read Backlash? I think much of the negative attitude has been pushed by the media. Even the whole 'bra buring' thing never happened but was a media invention.

No I haven't read it - I will have to put that on my reading list.

I have got Backlash but read it about ten (or more?) years ago. Is it worth re reading? My memory is so shite I can't remember anything about it.

Well it is still debated just how systematically planned and executed it was but the exhaustive evidence Faludi uncovered undeniably shows that an ideological war of words between what can be loosely termed ?patriarchy? and ?feminism? did take place within the mainstream media, and that the media, on average, tended to inflict a more negative bias on feminism than it did patriarchy. Like I said it's not without it's problems but it's still relevent; I think anyway.