Nowadays, the term feminist almost inherently also means politically liberal. If someone’s career involves (supposedly) NOT being political, but being impartial (supposedly), it’s not that surprising to not want to adhere to a label which screams DEMOCRAT!.

I’m sort of disappointed in Day O’Connor, not only because she shuns the word “feminist” so much, but because (as PSoul points out) she’s not that woman-friendly to begin with!

I feel compelled to leave this link again. Read the whole thing. You, too, Judge O’Connor.

It’s a double negative anyway, so perhaps just ignore my comment.

But I do think we need to talk about limits on the term in a more coherent way than we currently do.

Day O’Connor, on the whole, was not always fabu for women. She voted to invalidate VAWA, for example, back in the day. Elsewhere in that interview she recoils at being recognized as a successful woman (she says something like “I’d rather be a successful judge”). While I get that she’s saying she’d rather not be reduced to her genitalia, I think her line of thinking goes too far in the other direction. Her genitalia, in short, is not irrelevant to who she is, where she’s been, and where she’s going. And I think to be a feminist, you need to be comfortable with that underlying fact: that gender is always, irrevocably, there.