I always wanted to burn bras. It seemed like a good way to keep street people warm in the cold MN winters.

Second, it pains me to say, but this perspective is not limited to Indiana college girls. The east coast undergraduates I teach are constantly prefacing comments with phrases like “I’m not a feminist but…” and “not to sound like some man-hating feminist but.. [insert mainstream and completely un-feminist sounding thought about “men” and “women” here]”

I would not be at all surprised if their definition of feminism revolved around body hair and burning bras.

Actually, the depression I was suffering as a result of enduring all this was what sent me searching for Twisty in the first place. I’ll have to remember to thank them.

Second, it pains me to say, but this perspective is not limited to Indiana college girls. The east coast undergraduates I teach are constantly prefacing comments with phrases like “I’m not a feminist but…” and “not to sound like some man-hating feminist but.. [insert mainstream and completely un-feminist sounding thought about “men” and “women” here]”

I would not be at all surprised if their definition of feminism revolved around body hair and burning bras.

Actually, the depression I was suffering as a result of enduring all this was what sent me searching for Twisty in the first place. I’ll have to remember to thank them.

Actually, I guess it was more “singed” than “burned,” per se. I mean, most of the ashy stuff came off in the wash. Yeah, I still wear it, so what?

I pluck my straw eyebrows (when I notice and feel like), and the occasional moustache or chin hair, and I shave my legs sometimes (again, when I feel like it).

But, seriously - what is going on with all this Brazilian-waxing?!?!? WHY would anyone DO that?

Vincent Berdeyes, a professor in the department of communication and performance studies, said it is impossible to attend Saint Mary’s and not be a feminist.

“I think the thing about a women’s college is that those values of feminism are woven into the institution, just educating women is a primary value,” Berdeyes said. “To me it would seem an inherent contradiction between being a woman in college and being anti-feminist. There has to be some limitation or misconception about what feminism is to be able to hold that position.”

The hell? Oh wait, he’s a communications and performance studies prof, not an historian, because if he were an historian, he might recollect that women’s colleges were started not on feminist premise, but on the post-Enlightenment bourgeois idea of “female education” completing a young woman before going off to marry.

There is nothing inherently feminist about women’s colleges.

I was in college when Mike Barnacle called our students “whiny, unshaven feminists” in the Boston Globe. We took up a collection, and sent him a largish box full of used disposable razors.

There are plenty of clean-shaven feminists, and plenty of hairy reactionaries. Though I don’t get the Brazilian waxing either. Ouch!

Many of these students may actually be feminists along the lines of some of your own definitions, but just not really identify with that term.

Did anybody else get that kind of a reading out of this? These girls aren’t necessarily backwards and patriarchy-loving… they just don’t like the word feminist.

Quotes like this kind of led me in that direction:

“Some people think that if you are a feminist then you are a man hater. I think a lot of people are afraid of feminists,” Kensinger said. “But again, I think feminism in its most basic nature means equality, so I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to believe in that.”