‘Feminist’ is so politicised a word that MPs like Dominic Raab are afraid to use it – just as sexists always wanted

If I said to you I wasn’t a racist, but I didn’t believe in civil rights, what would you call me? How about if I said I wasn’t ablest but I didn’t think disabled access should be a concern? Or, that I wasn’t homophobic but I’d prefer it if gay couples didn’t kiss in public? You see where I’m going with this.

Every couple of years, the same debate arises: someone claims they believe in gender equality but they couldn’t possibly go as far as to call themselves a feminist. Most of the people who have said this in recent times have been female celebrities – and usually the ones who have spent their careers advocating for female empowerment.

So I think it’s fair to say it surprised the grand total of zero people when the former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab revealed he does not call himself a feminist. Speaking to ITV, the Tory leadership candidate said that, instead of “feminist”, he would describe himself as “someone who’s a champion of equality and meritocracy”. To most people with a dictionary to hand, his words echoed the very definition of feminism. But Raab wasn’t professing to reject gender equality; he was rejecting the word feminist itself.

Of course, feminism isn’t a loaded word because feminists have made it so; it has become one because misogynists have spent centuries laying down the groundwork to undermine it, labelling it as a “threat to family values”, the “hatred of men”, the “desire for women to take over the world”.

The reframing of liberal movements to brand them as “anti-freedom” is a tactic that has been adopted by those at odds with insurgent social movements for centuries. Now, instead of just being people fighting for rights, feminists are the militantly PC, anti-free speech brigade. But we know, really, that the idea any movement seeking equality could be militant is downright laughable.

Language has long been weaponised by the far right. Anti-abortion became “pro-life”, pro-choice became “anti-life”, anti-immigration became about “taking back control”, racism against Mexicans became about “making America great again”. Pro-gender equality became “anti- men”. The most repugnant of these is the incel favourite: “feminazi”.

Just look at some of the women who have rejected the feminist label – and their reasons for doing so. Sarah Jessica Parker, whose role as Carrie in Sex and the City personified third-wave feminism, once proclaimed: “I’m not a feminist, I’m a humanist” (sorry SJP, that’s something else entirely). Joni Mitchell has always rejected feminism, on the grounds she doesn’t “want to get a posse against men”. Geri Halliwell – the girl power instigator herself – said “feminism is bra-burning lesbianism”, and Susan Sarandon deemed feminism too alienating, as people viewed it as “a load of strident bitches”.

Polls, too, have shown a widespread reluctance by women who desire gender equality to self-identify as feminists. A 2018 YouGov poll found that just 38 per cent of women call themselves feminists.

There is an undeniable and specific problem with gender inequality across the globe. Women are the ones who have been oppressed for centuries – if we don’t acknowledge that how can we even begin to solve the problem? We have to acknowledge that rape is a misogynist crime; that the gender pay gap and all the complications surrounding it are a result of sexism; and that the bloody, inhumane act of FGM is purely to control women. The only people who benefit from a reluctance to utter the name of the one movement that seeks to protect women, are the men who oppose it.

Because, yes, levelling the scales could mean that some men need to turn down a massive pay package if it means his female counterpart being treated equally. It might mean that another mediocre man doesn’t end up sitting around the boardroom table, taking the place of a qualified woman. It might mean that women are no longer subjected to having to bear a child after being raped, like some will be forced to after the recent ruling in Alabama.

Raab’s statements about wanting “equality and meritocracy” were undermined with every sentence that followed. He defended having referred to feminists as “obnoxious bigots” in 2011, saying that, although he thinks “sexism is wrong … whether it’s said about a woman or about a man”, equality is “too precious” for us to “put up with hypocrisy”.

It’s unclear what Raab is referring to here. Is women fighting to be paid equally hypocritical? Is it hypocritical to share the domestic burden or even demand justice for their abusers?

He also claimed to be so pro-equality that he is “all for” women having their own careers. How progressive. I’m a believer in meritocracy, he said, but then went on to lambast positive discrimination and imply that quotas to bring more women into male-dominated sectors would be done by paying no heed to qualifications.

This kind of attitude is grounded on the position that those currently in positions of power are there because of skill alone – not bolstered by privilege, race or gender. A curious approach when half of the population is represented by an all-time high of just 32 per cent of female MPs.

Feminism can’t be sugar-coated to soften the message and appease the patriarchy. Yes, it is a threat to male supremacy, to female oppression and to the very tangible inequalities that women face worldwide – there’s no denying that. But the word is inseparable from the movement itself – we cannot afford to temper our message to appease those against it. So sorry, Dominic Raab, you have only two choices: you’re either a feminist or a sexist – there is no in between.