In a recent post on her personal website One D at a Time, Tracie Egan, an editor at Jezebel, where she blogs under the moniker Slut Machine, wrote a post entitled: “There’s No Such Thing as a Bad Feminist.” These days, she says, women see feminism from a range of perspectives, and sometimes those perspectives are wildly divergent. Some feminists are pro-choice. Some feminists are pro-life. Some feminists see sex work as empowering. Some see sex work as disempowering. What matters, Egan says, is that women are talking about women’s issues.

Nowadays, there’s no cookie cutter mold for a feminist–but is there such a thing as a bad feminist? You bet. Not all that long ago, calling oneself a feminist was taboo. In college, my friends were scared to call themselves feminists. That didn’t make them bad feminists. After all, the word comes loaded with negative connotations, from bra-burning to man-hating. Today, calling yourself a feminist is the new, new thing–for some women, it’s a trendy label, like “boho-chic.” But the fact of the matter is that this Spice Girls-brand of “girl power” is about as feminist as Avril Lavigne is punk rock, and label feminism is as thoughtful as a brain full of cotton candy.

After the jump, the three essential components of a good feminist–and three characteristics that define a fake feminist. Plus: A short list of very notable bad feminists.
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