I don’t think that word means what you think it means…

Feminism. It’s always been a controversial ideology, particularly among those who identify as male, but we have recently seen a surge in women who say they are against feminist ideals. From Shailene Woodley telling TIME magazine in May that she’s not a feminist because:

“I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance.”

to the hashtag #WomenAgainstFeminism that has been flooding social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr over the past couple of weeks, accompanying posts by women saying they don’t need feminism or are “anti-feminist” because of  X, Y, and Z, it’s clear that…well, people don’t really know what feminism means.

So here are two open letters, one to the women who call themselves “anti-feminist”, and one to everyone who thinks feminism is a bad thing.