Backlash

Abstract

The backlash against feminism was first defined in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women , by Susan Faludi, in 1991, and the term has inflected discussions of feminism ever since. Faludi identified the “backlash” as a widespread, deeply conservative media response to feminist progress during the Reagan era which sought to undermine the victories of the feminist movement by claiming that women's equality was leading to their unhappiness. Within the media of the time, any choices by women that could be defined as anti‐family, such as remaining single or putting off having children, were pathologized and blamed on feminism. Indeed, feminism created all kinds of new suffering, such as infertility, divorce, stress‐related disorders, sexual confusion, infidelity, identity crises, hair loss, depression, the feminization of men, spinsterhood, and increased likelihood of rape. Faludi carefully defines the backlash as a trend, not a conspiracy; she describes the backlash as a media development that grew to have tremendous impact due not to a concerted strategy, but rather to a cultural zeitgeist already anxious about feminism's apparent successes.