"Feminazi": a feminist current... Too radical?

The word feminazi has been spreading in recent decades as a way of referring somewhat ambiguously to women who believe in the superiority of their sex over that of men and that they want to impose themselves on them using practice totalitarian.

So far, and regardless of whether there is any person worthy of the nickname "feminazi", this seems like one more word of the many that have recently been invented, but its existence is not casual.

The idea that the word feminazi refers to is made up of a set of topics about feminist people. It is a journalistic invention that responds to a smear campaign directed against feminism from conservative political positions. Thus, an attempt has been made to create a discourse in which feminists remain associated with Nazism.

For this they have the invaluable help of the stereotypes and the heuristic thinking, two elements that are taken into account in political propaganda and Social psychology.

Beyond the specific cases

The meaning of the term feminazi may change from time to time, and what it refers to may exist to a greater extent depending on the context. Are there women who believe they are superior to men? Considering the number of people that inhabit planet earth, it would be risky to say no.

However, before judging positively or negatively the existence of this word, it must be taken into account that if it is used nowadays, it is quite possible that, rather than referring to a specific person, we are referring to an entire movement political... relating it to Nazism. In fact, this word feminazi was devised in the 90s to delegitimize not specific people, but feminism, and the heritage of its meaning lives on today. Why? Because the word feminazi has its roots in a smear campaign towards feminists that is more than 100 years old.

Conservative propaganda

The use of generalizations and topics is constant in our day to day. In addition, it is extremely difficult to detect when we are falling into this type of intellectual lapses because they form part of the realm of thought by heuristics, an automatic mode of thinking that requires practically no effort.

These stereotypes are often due to ignorance or intellectual laziness, but in other cases there are political motivations behind these topics. The case of feminists is a clear example of this.

In western countries, the feminist movement consolidated itself as a political agent at the end of the 19th century to demand the voting rights for women. This is a claim that today seems so legitimate to us that its questioning produces rejection. immediate, but a century ago it was something totally revolutionary that set off all the alarms in a establishment controlled by men. It was at this time that public opinion began to be fed with propaganda against the suffragettes who asked for an equal vote.

Thus, the United States saw the publication of posters and cartoons in which the feminists of the time were described as cruel women with features male, with totalitarian desires whose main aspiration was to subdue man, something that totally coincides with the (somewhat diffuse) concept of feminazi. All this, remember, for campaigning for the right to vote.

Observing carefully the pieces of propaganda that spiced the pro or anti-feminist debate of the time reveals that the stereotypes associated with the idea of ​​what today some people call "the feminazi" they have not changed at all since suffragettes claimed the right to vote in the late nineteenth and early nineteenth centuries. XX.

Stereotypes related to the Feminazi concept

The funny thing is not that feminists were accused of behaving as the men of the time behaved, but that these stereotypes continue remaining in force today, associated with a type of person who is sometimes called feminazi to denote a mysterious connection with totalitarianism and extermination. Here you can see how the posters from the time of the suffragettes show characteristics that are still present in the memes and current comics.

Ugly and cruel women

Associate ugliness with evil It is something so common in propaganda that it is one of the most constant laws in the caricature and discrediting of the political rival. Anyone who wants to communicate low morality has enough to draw uneven teeth, large, bulging noses and frowns.

They want to dominate the man

Of course, an attribute that is implicit in the word feminazi is the will to impose oneself on others. However, this topic has existed long before the invention of the word. One hundred years ago, suffragettes were described as trying to take away gender roles and privileges men, neglecting household chores and, in general, household chores.

Nowadays it is not so common to see such paradoxical critiques of feminism (before they were accused of doing exactly the same thing as men, although emphasis on the unnatural for women to dominate the relationship), but the assumption that feminists are intolerant and authoritarian remains Present.

Male aesthetics

The accusation of wanting to look like men is common in campaigns against feminism. It is understood that feminists transgress gender roles related to the idea of ​​"the feminine", and that is also taken to aesthetics as if it were something negative.

Misuse of sexuality

Traditionally, women who make use of their sexuality similar to that of men have been seen as manipulative prone to use your body to achieve their own ends. From this perspective, almost any characteristic of the woman that can be associated with sex and that has nothing to do with the creation of a family is portrayed as typical of women with a low moral profile, both 100 years ago and today.

It is a logic that is often used to attack feminists, who have a vision of female sexuality that goes far beyond the family.

They are feminists because of their hatred of men

Too often, caricatures about feminist women refer to the central role played by man in the "conversion" of some women to feminism. In this way, the motivations of the activists are attributed to an inability to relate adequately with men. The Feminazi concept fits well with this stereotype, since German National Socialism was fueled by a totally irrational contempt for some groups labeled as races.

These simple examples are part of a much more complex social situation than can be glimpsed in a few simple cartoons, but they can serve to give us an idea about the context in which the term appears feminazi. Its meaning may be totally different in a few decades, but that does not mean that it has been put into circulation with a clear political objective in which psychology and a situation of change in favor of women's rights come into play.