Ten years ago openly classifying oneself as a "feminist" was the ultimate form of virtue signaling. We got heads of state, most prominently Justin Trudeau, openly and proudly declaring themselves as "feminists", we got entire governments declaring themselves "feminist", and we got millions of far-leftist activists not only classifying themselves as "feminist" but strongly advocating for others to do the same. There were even far-leftist activist public speakers, eg. among the atheist community, making entire speeches about feminism, what it is, and how important it is to call oneself such.
Nowadays, however (and for quite some years now), you very rarely see far-leftist bigots using that term anymore to describe themselves, or advocating it. I don't even remember the last time I saw a leftist calling him or herself a "feminist", or even talking about "feminism". Sure, some might still do, but in my experience it seems to be extremely rare nowadays.
It's not that they are denying being feminists (and I'm certain that if you asked eg. Trudeau, or any of those who openly and proudly declared themselves "feminists" ten years ago, they would still classify themselves as such), but they aren't openly declaring it anymore, they aren't talking about it anymore, they are very rarely using that word anymore.
What happened? Why did that term fall out of fashion?
Well, at least part of it may be explained by the one situation where they still are using that word, at least indirectly. And that's when they are talking about "TERFs".
What they call a "TERF", or "trans-exclusionary radical feminist", is what the rest of the world calls (at least if they know their history and terminology) a traditional "second-wave" radical feminist. In other words, your archetypal cliche "down with the patriarchy!" "all men are rapists!" "the future is female!" non-armpit-shaving radical feminist of the 1970's onwards, who nevertheless has not bought into the current far-leftist "trans activism" ideology, and thinks that men have no place in women's spaces (eg. women's bathrooms and locker rooms), not even if those men pretend to be women.
In other words, what we may call "traditional" radical feminism. Which, from the point of view of the modern far left, is too narrow as it concentrates only on the activism for women's rights and privileges rather than anything else.
In fact, and perhaps somewhat ironically, over ten years ago many leftist activists were loudly declaring how "feminism" just means "supporting women's rights" and nothing else, that any other political baggage that the "right-wingers" were adding to the term was extraneous and didn't belong there, and that assigning any other political agendas to it was nothing but a conspiracy theory.
And that's probably the problem that the modern far left is facing with the concept of "feminism".
For some years they tried to fix the problem by calling it "intersectional feminism", which would be feminism plus all the other far-leftist jazz (ie. racism, critical race theory, trans-activism, support for unrestricted immigration and so on). However, it seems to me that in later years they have stopped using even that term, and are not using the word "feminism" at all. (As mentioned, it's not like they abhor the term and explicitly avoid using it, and many of them would probably agree to being "feminists" if explicitly asked, but they just aren't using the word on their own volition anymore.)
It may well be that they don't like the association with "TERFs" nor the fact that, somewhat ironically, they might have been too successful ten years ago in pushing into the public consciousness that "feminism is just about women's rights and nothing else". They might not like the idea of it being "only" about women's rights, as that's only a minor part of their current ideology and religion, and thus the word has fallen out of use, out of fashion. Plus, of course, avoiding association with the evil "TERFs".
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