In the era of about 2010 to 2015, give or take, when the far-leftist political invasion of American universities was in full force ("invasion" not being a figure of speech, exaggeration or hyperbole, as in many campuses it was literally a physical takeover by activist students and professors, even up to including pretty much in essence taking university staff as hostage, not even making that up), the concept of "feminism" was being extremely aggressively being pushed onto society.
Everybody was talking about and declaring themselves to be "feminists". Heads of state, such as Justin Trudeau, were openly and proudly declaring themselves to be "feminists", entire governments were declaring themselves to be "feminists" (such as the governments of Canada, Finland and several others), a institution after institution, especially universities, were declaring themselves to be "feminist" (and not even just in the United States), and so on and so forth.
There are even outright "preachers" of feminism. Take the famous (or infamous) atheist activist who goes by the name Aron Ra (originally Aron Nelson) for example. Back in that era, when far-leftism was also aggressively taking over the worldwide atheist skeptic community, he was one of the biggest and loudest of such preachers. (Calling him a "priest", even figuratively, isn't actually a huge exaggeration because he actually was a Christian preacher before he became an atheist.) He would literally tour the United States giving speeches are all kinds of atheist/skeptic conventions, university campuses and other events, preaching about feminism, and quite directly and explicitly so. He literally had some hour-long sermon about feminism. (For some reason his kind of slogan was "there's only one definition of feminism", which he emphasized and kept repeating over and over during his sermons in response to criticism of the excesses of feminism and far-leftism in general. He kept repeating the mantra that "feminism" just means "women's rights" and nothing else, and just kept repeating it like a magic spell whenever someone would present criticism.)
There was, indeed, back in that era this sentiment among the far left that you either were a "feminist" or you were a monster (back then they had yet not invented "fascist" as the go-to insult, that would come some years later.) If you support women's rights you are automatically a "feminist", and conversely, if you denied being a "feminist" then you didn't support women's rights. It was one of their favorite motte-and-bailey arguments back then, when it came to criticism against their activism. And, of course, every far-leftist activist proudly declared themselves as "feminists".
Curiously, you don't hear this sentiment much from far-leftist activists anymore. They have become oddly quiet about the entire feminism thing.
Of course none of them outright denies being a feminist is asked, but they don't talk about it much anymore. You don't hear them preaching about it, you don't hear them declaring themselves to be feminists without being asked, they don't mention it much in speeches, slogans and protests.
In fact, for a good while the very concept of and the word "feminism" has gotten a bad reputation among them, and they have for quite many years now been awkwardly silent about the entire thing and not declaring from the rooftops themselves to be such.
And the main reason for this is one J. K. Rowling, famous author of the immensely popular Harry Potter book series.
You see, the far-leftist mind is fickle and constantly changing. They don't have a well-defined fixed set of values. Instead, their values are very fluid and will change over time. Unlike they claim, their goal is not to impose a particular set of clearly defined policies onto society. Instead, their goal is to gain total control of society, whatever it takes. Thus, their tactics and talking points are constantly changing, constantly searching for the newest political "weapon" that helps them gain as much power over society as possible. If one tactic turns out to not achieve that goal efficiently enough, they will change tactics and talking points, even if they are completely contradictory with the previous ones.
As I mention in that other blog post, many of their past tactics and talking points had the "problem" of being pretty much "pushing against an open door" goals: They pushed and pushed and pushed certain political talking points... but turns out that they are pushing against a mostly open door, so to speak.
For example, one of their favorite talking points in that 2010-2015 era, when "feminism" was all the rage, was that there absolutely must be "women-only spaces" where men have no business entering. Well, what do you know, society has always had such "spaces", even though the activists thought they had come up with a clever political weapon to gain power. Society was mostly like "yeah, so? Women already have 'spaces' dedicated to them, where men can't enter. What are you even talking about? Why are you pretending like there aren't any and that we need to create them? There already are!"
Thus, they changed tactics. They found out that concentrating on the "T" of the Holy Acronym was actually much more effective than trying to push against the open door of women's rights. So there was a kind of "transitional" period of about 2015 to 2020 where the narrative changed to put that "T" above everything else and to make it the most important issue that exists in the entire world.
Which, of course, meant that they have now reversed many of their previous talking points compared to when "feminism" was the primary talking point. For example, quite prominently, now women cannot have "women-only spaces where men can't enter". Now men can take over their spaces, their hobbies, their sports, their awards, everything, just by declaring themselves to be the big "T".
Enter the "trans-exclusionary radical feminists", or "TERFs": These are "old-school" feminists who reject that notion and have kept to the more traditional form of feminism that reject these newer notions that men should be able to invade women-exclusive spaces and take over everything that's exclusive to women (such as female sports and so on.) These are activists, mostly women, who still proudly declare themselves to be "feminists" and who hold the older 2015 view of feminism (with a varying degree of zealotry).
While there have been some prominent "TERF" speakers, for the most part the modern far left has ignored them and essentially smothered them to invisibility by not talking about them.
With one very big and prominent example: J. K. Rowling.
She doesn't openly classify herself as a "TERF", but she is constantly being accused of being one because of her more "traditional" feminist views, ie. that she doesn't want men entering women's locker rooms and so on and so forth.
Because of her fame, this one they couldn't silence by ignoring her, so they tried to crucify her, to "cancel" her, and for several years engaged in an absolutely massive smearing campaign against her, trying to ruin her reputation and making her drop to her knees and beg for forgiveness.
I don't agree with Rowling on many things relating to feminism and politics, but I give big kudos to her for not backing down and not submitting to the far-leftist mob.
Turns out that Rowling is way too rich for even the far-leftist mob to be able to "cancel" her. She is pretty much untouchable. She is in that financial position where there's nothing that the mob can do to her, so she doesn't have to back down, and she is free to double down on her opinions. Something that aggravates the far left a great deal. This "enemy" of theirs is untouchable and they can't do anything about it.
Having followed this entire saga relatively closely, I have noticed that the decline in the preaching of feminism, and even the very use of the word, coincides with the unsuccessful attacks on Rowling.
Indeed, because of "TERFs" in general, and Rowling in particular, "feminism" has gotten a somewhat of a bad reputation among the far left, as the latter has kind of become associated with the former. And, thus, they have stopped using that word to describe themselves (at least without prompting).
It may well be said that J. K. Rowling killed "feminism", particularly as the far-leftist notion that was being pushed in its heyday in the 2010-1015 period.
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