"Crystal Plati, 32-year-old executive director of Choice USA, said that at her organization, We use [the word feminism] but we don't belabor it. We are also open to other words.

She continued, "More than looking at just one word, for me it's about doing some listening for what kinds of language young women are using to define their empowerment for themselves." She also pointed out that it's not just young women who are alienated by the term. "No matter what choice we make about language," said Plati, "we need to be building toward an inclusive movement, in particular a movement that has women of color and young women in leadership. Changing the word is not enough. We need to address why it's alienating."

It's an assertion familiar to women in the movement, who for years have been reminded that second-wave feminism of the 1970s did not address the concerns of women of color and women from lower economic strata.

It's a concern that activist and author Rebecca Walker -- whose mother, Alice Walker, coined the term "womanist" as an inclusive alternative to "feminist" -- said she's been anxious about for a long time. In an e-mail, she referred me to an interview she gave to Satya magazine in January. In the interview, Walker said that in 1992, when she co-founded Third Wave, an organization for young women activists, she worried that "the word feminist had become too divisive and culturally loaded." Walker also told Satya, "It seemed clear to me that the term had more of a repellent effect than a magnetizing one within my generation, and I did not feel the need to prove my allegiance and gratitude to the women that came before me by holding on to something that had meant so very much to them, but did not mean that much to me."

In the interview, Walker continued, "The left is getting our collective ass kicked because of just this kind of romantic, naove attachment to movement narratives and aesthetics of 20 and 30 years ago." She also pointed out that "many women of color do not feel an affinity with the term because, among other things, we know firsthand that people who call themselves feminists are not always our friends," she said. "They have not de facto done their work around race ... though [they] would become appalled if we suggested that some 'feminists' were also racist."

The racial wound remains fresh for many women who spend their lives thinking about and working on issues of female empowerment. When Berger launched her F-Word site in May, she said she was surprised that some of the anti-"feminist" mail she got was from other women activists. Berger explained, "The word 'feminist' alienated a lot of political allies I wanted to be tied to," including women of color "who told me that traditionally this word is off-putting because of the predominantly white, middle-class vibe it had." Others, she said, told her, "I hope you don't make the same kinds of mistakes your foremothers did."

The result, said Berger, is that a month after her launch, "the word 'feminism' is on the site, but it's not the tag line anymore. I've toned it down a little bit."

When I asked her what words could possibly replace the pesky descriptor of the movement, Berger was stumped. "I'm not such a fan of the word 'humanist,'" she said in an e-mail. "I think it's one of those 'well, duh ... who ISN'T pro-human??' kind of concepts." As for "womanist," Berger wrote, "I like that it may be more appealing to women of color ... However, I don't think feminism is just about 'women' anymore." It's these qualms, Berger said, that keep her "pretty attached to the f-word." But she conceded, "Maybe it isn't worth fighting to reclaim a word. There are much bigger things we need to be fighting for."

But what if we don't need to fight to reclaim it? What if we've already begun to make it new?

There is a camp of women who say, "'Feminism is just what we determine it is,'" said Mandy Van Deven, 25, founder of Altar magazine, a magazine about social justice, and the director of Community Organizing for Girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn, N.Y. "'So if we wear makeup and call ourselves feminists then we are feminists,'" she continued, adding that she did not necessarily identify with this multi-purpose definition. Van Deven said that changing definitions is "part of the evolution of political movements and the evolution of language and how people are going to identify themselves as individuals and in the scope of larger political context."

Van Deven said she thinks that there are a lot of young women out there who -- while they may not like the word or embrace the entire exclusionary history of the movement, "are really anxious to grab the word and claim it and say, 'No, I don't care, I am going to make this word work for me.'"

Rowe-Finkbeiner, author of the book "The F Word," said that Van Deven's attitude is typical of broader political and linguistic patterns. "In the history of social movements, many of the people who are most impacted by negative connotations of a word are the ones who take that word back," she said. Rowe-Finkbeiner pointed out that women have already done this with "bitch" -- as in popular "stitch and bitch" knitting circles and "bitch-n-swap" clothing swaps. It's a phenomenon similar to a gay re-appropriation of "queer," or African-American usage of "nigger."

Third Wave co-founder Amy Richards said she isn't too worried about the women's movement agreeing on one word. In her work on campuses, she said the number of projects she sees young women taking on -- from prison reform to AIDS funding in Africa to living-wage fights for university staff -- is enough to satisfy her that there is tremendous life in the movement, even if no one knows what to call it. "The thing that's different from 30 years ago is that young women are moving beyond organizing around reproductive issues and violence against women. It's not that those issues aren't relevant to them, but I think they're just tired of them."

Gandy said that membership in her organization is bigger than ever. "Eighty percent of people in the United States, based on what they think now about pay equity and domestic violence, would have been considered total feminists had they felt that way 30 years ago. And the women's rights movement is living in our daughters every single day. Whether or not they consider themselves feminists."

Besides, said Richards, "Whatever we'd change 'feminism' to would become a bad word too." This story has been corrected since it was originally published.

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