Reclaim Feminism As A Noble Cause--Leonard Pitts, Jr.

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Brace yourself. I'm going to use a word that offends folks. I'm talking the "F" word.

Feminist.

This woman sent me an e-mail Monday and it got me thinking. See, in describing herself, she assured me she was not a "women's libber" — the late 1960s equivalent of feminist. She also said she was retired from the U.S. Navy. There was, it seemed to me, a disconnect there: She doesn't believe in women's liberation, yet she is retired from a position that liberation made possible.

Intrigued, I asked my 17-year-old daughter if she considers herself a feminist. She responded with a mildly horrified no. This, by the way, is the daughter with the 3.75 GPA who is presently pondering possible college majors including political science, psychology and ... women's studies. I asked her to define "feminist."

There began a halting explanation that seemed to suggest shrillness wrapped around obnoxiousness. Abruptly, she stopped. "It's hard to explain," she said.

Actually, it's not. Jessica Valenti, author of "Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters," calls it the I'm-Not-A-Feminist-But syndrome. As in the woman who says, "I'm not a feminist, but ..." and then "goes on to espouse completely feminist values. I think most women believe in access to birth control, they want equal pay for equal work, they want to fight against rape and violence against women."

"Feminist," it seems, has ended up in the same syntactical purgatory as another once-useful, now-reviled term: liberal. Most people endorse what that word has historically stood for — integration, child labor laws, product safety — yet they treat the word itself like anthrax. Similarly, while it's hard to imagine any young woman really wants to return to the days of barefoot, pregnant and making meatloaf, many now disdain the banner under which their gender fought for freedom. They scorn feminism even as they feast at a table feminism prepared.