Feminazi is a portmanteau of the nouns feminist and Nazi. According to The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, it refers to "a committed feminist or a strong-willed woman". The American conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who popularized the term, credited the university professorThomas Hazlett with coining it. Limbaugh, who has been vocally critical of the feminist movement, stated that the term feminazi refers to "radical feminists" whose goal is "to see that there are as many abortions as possible", a small group of "militants" whom he characterizes as having a "quest for power" and a "belief that men aren't necessary". Limbaugh distinguishes these women from "well-intentioned but misguided people who call themselves 'feminists. However, the term came to be widely used for feminism as a whole. According to The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Limbaugh used the term "to marginalize any feminist as a hardline, uncompromising manhater", and The New York Times has described it as "one of favorite epithets for supporters of women's rights". Toril Moi writes that Limbaugh's terminology reflects commonplace ideas that feminists "hate men", are "dogmatic, inflexible, and intolerant", and constitute "an extremist, power-hungry minority". The activist Gloria Steinem writes, "I've never met anyone who fits that description , though lavishes it on me among many others". The term is used to characterize feminist perspectives as extreme in order to discredit feminist arguments, portraying feminists as bossy and hating men and femininity. It has been used in mainstream American discourse to erroneously portray women as hyper-vigilant to perceived sexism. In Australia, the term gained wider use following the 1995 publication of the book The First Stone, and has been used in popular media to characterize feminists as threatening, "vindictive", and "puritanical".
Reactions
Limbaugh states that feminazis, as opposed to mainstream feminists, are those "who are happy about the large number of abortions we have" in the United States. The anti-violence educator Jackson Katz argues that "no such feminists exist", and that feminazi is a "clever term of propaganda" that is intended and used to " into complicit silence women who might otherwise challenge men's violence". In his book Angry White Men, the sociologist Michael Kimmel says the term is used to attack feminist campaigns for equal pay and safety from rape and domestic violence by associating them with Nazi genocide. According to Helen Lewis, deputy editor of the New Statesman, "the idea of conflating a liberation movement with Nazism is just deeply ignorant. It’s self-undermining, because it’s so over the top." Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, has said that "It’s a desperate attempt to demonise us, and it’s frustrating, because if it wasn’t such an offensive word, you could actually start to embrace it and own it". Steinem has suggested a boycott of Limbaugh for his use of the term, stating, "Hitler came to power against the strong feminist movement in Germany, padlocked the family planning clinics, and declared abortion a crime against the stateall views that more closely resemble Rush Limbaugh's".
