Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

#SorryFeminists Shows Feminism’s Lighter Side — But It’s Serious Too

The high-profile internet blowup du jour began with an ill-considered tweet from new T Magazine editor Deborah Needleman, advertising an appearance by known professional thorn-in-the-side of feminists Katie Roiphe.

“Sorry Feminists,” Needleman tweeted in parentheticals, “this woman is sexy”. The implication of her statement being that feminists can’t abide a sexy woman, or a sexy woman who disagrees with them, because feminists apparently hate sexiness.

New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum fired back with a concise dressing-down: “Did you wrote that tweet from 1963? Impressive.”

This seemingly momentary dustup between (and about) women media figures didn’t simmer down after Nussbaum’s dig, though, because almost instantaneously a new Twitter hashtag and trend was born: #sorryfeminists. Hours later the hashtag was still flooding Twitter and had spawned its own new Tumblr.

Tired of being told by ideological opponents that advocating for gender equality comes with a set of prescribed rules for behavior (“Wanted: feminists. Must hate men, disavow motherhood, and eschew all trappings of femininity”) feminist bloggers, writers, activists and more began tweeting, with irony, things that they actually did that might break such nonexistent rules. Known feminists confessed to enjoying things like nail polish, pilates, cooking and cute children.

A few samplings:

I chimed in with a true anecdote about my morning, noting that I’d needed my husband’s help to close a window in the cold weather:

But my favorite tweets went beyond confessing these everyday “transgressions” against a made-up feminist ideal to a new level of absurdity:

The message behind this outpouring and eruption on social media, and the reason it snowballed so quickly, is that feminists are exhausted with being told we’re rigid thinkers who are not human beings.

Nobody, not even the most ardent political advocate, is a machine resisting the patriarchy with every fiber of his or her being. Instead, we all choose our own personal sites of resistance and focus on the bigger picture: the sad lack of equality that pervades our society at large. And that’s a-okay. The irony of “Sorry, feminists” is that there are no feminists to apologize to. The strict gatekeeper of appropriate feminist activity is an anti-feminist myth, a straw-woman invented to provide cover for those who know that gender inequality exists but don’t want to fight it. “The false idea that raising one’s voice against sexism suddenly means you’re in a realm where high heels are forbidden is an excuse for disengagement with injustice.”

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.