Word: label
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...label "acting white" and the dismissal of white values are bound up in questions of black identity. "If you see a black girl," explains Kareema Matthews, a street-smart 14-year-old from Harlem, "and she's black, not mixed or anything, and she wants to act like something she's not, in these days nobody considers that good. She's trying to be white. That's why nobody likes her. That's how it is now." But when asked what it is to be black, Kareema pauses. "I don't have the slightest idea...
...question remains of why so many women with firsthand experience of discrimination still refuse to call themselves feminists. There is something in the label that a lot of women, especially young ones, reject even as they acknowledge how much the movement increased the opportunities available to them. Younger women "think of feminists as women who burn bras and don't shave their legs," says Pat Schroeder, dean of Capitol Hill's 29 Congresswomen. "They think of us as the Amazons of the '60s. The facts have no relation to it, but it's become conventional wisdom...
...rejection of the label may, as Faludi argues, demonstrate the insidious effects of the backlash. But it may also reflect the failures of the movement. Paula Kamen, 24, author of Feminist Fatale, is a fan of Faludi's. But she urges that "in this age, the women's movement has to look in the mirror." Like some other critics, Kamen thinks that Backlash lets the women's movement off too easily. "It isn't all media conspiracy...
...Since most women today embrace the goals of the women's movement, why are so many of them reluctant to embrace the feminist label...
Steinem: Women have two problems with the label. The first is that people don't know what it means. If they look it up in the dictionary and see that feminism just means the full economic, social and political equality of women, they'll agree. But the second is that people do know what it means. If you say, "I'm for equal pay," that's a reform. But if you say, "I'm a , feminist," that's equality for all females -- a transformation of society. As you get older, you realize you might as well say "feminist." Any term...