i must have missed that memo: in which a feminist ponders the "agenda"

while watching mona lisa smile for the hundredth time, i stumbled on a review of the film that claimed it was solely a vessel for the...dunh dunh dunh..."feminist agenda." i have called myself a feminist for as long as i can remember. i think i may have carried from birth the impulse to correct the imbalances and wrongs women deal with everyday. one of my majors is women's studies, whose main purpose is the study of just that. so imagine my surprise at the rumors of an "agenda."

as long as there has been any sort of women's rights movements, there have been people claiming that there are nefarious plots to destroy the family and the world underlying everything. any movie or book or anything really that appears to even slightly support a feminist idea is immediately labeled a part of our insidious plot to warp the minds of all in our path and generally create chaos. this has lead to the demonization of feminism as a whole, to such an extent that women are loath to use the word let alone use it to describe themselves. frankly, i'm tired of it. i may have made the decision to pursue religion instead of women's studies as a career, but that has its owns reasons, which do NOT include not wanting to be known as a feminist. this is not to say that women's studies and feminism have their problems; they certainly do. it is these and not some desire to distance myself from feminism. but that is a topic for another blog...