"Feminazi" is a term used pejoratively to describe either feminists who are perceived as extreme or radical, women who are perceived as seeking superiority over men (rather than equality), or to describe all feminists.
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The earliest known use of the word dates from 1989 and it was popularized by politically conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh in the early 1990s. It is a portmanteau of the nouns feminist and Nazi. The online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term as used in a "usually disparaging" manner, to describe "an extreme or militant feminist".
Etymology and usage
In his 1992 book The Way Things Ought to Be, Limbaugh credited his friend Tom Hazlett, professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, with coining the term. In the book, Limbaugh also stated that the word refers to unspecified women whose goal is to allow as many abortions as possible, saying at one point that there were fewer than 25 "true feminazis" in the U.S. Limbaugh has used the term to refer to members of the National Center for Women and Policing, the Feminist Majority Foundation, the National Organization for Women, and other organizations at the March for Women's Lives, a large abortion-rights movement demonstration.
In 2004, Limbaugh named feminist activists Gloria Steinem, Susan Sarandon, Christine Lahti, and Camryn Manheim as "famous feminazis". In 2005, Limbaugh said "I haven't used that term on this program in years. But it still gets to 'em, doesn't it? And you know why? Because it's right. Because it's accurate." As of October 2015, Limbaugh was still using the word regularly on his show.
Criticism
In a 1996 interview, Gloria Steinem criticized Limbaugh's use of the term feminazi. According to Steinem, "Hitler came to power against the strong feminist movement in Germany, padlocked the family planning clinics, and declared abortion a crime against the state—all views that more closely resemble Rush Limbaugh's." In her book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Steinem characterised the term as "cruel and ahistorical", and elaborated on the repression of feminism under Hitler, noting that many prominent German feminists like Helene Stöcker, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin and Clara Zetkin were forced to flee Nazi Germany while others were killed in concentration camps.
In his book The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh's Assault on Reason, John K. Wilson cites Limbaugh's definition of the term as meaning "radical feminists whose objective is to see that there are as many abortions as possible" and says "by this definition, there are literally no feminazis".
In 2016, in response to the use of the word as a slur against her, Brooklyn-based singer and songwriter Renee Goust released the song "La Cumbia Feminazi" as an "answer to the abuse we women suffer too frequently when we speak up to defend our rights." Goust says she gets called the slur on various social platforms, such as YouTube. In her song, she sings about "a virtual incognito who is trying to upset [her]" by calling her a feminazi just because she is a woman who is "brave" and "not quite frail."