But it’s not nearly as simple as that. I have always had a huge respect for the feminists of yesteryear, the ones who fought for the vote, reproductive rights, equality. My mother calls herself a feminist and 20 odd years ago went on the marches, signed the petitions. I have nothing but respect for those women.

My problem was that I have never experienced any sexism. I’m a from a liberal middle class suburban background in New Zealand – the first country to give women the vote, we’ve had 2 women prime ministers, one for 9 years. The most it’s come to is my art teacher when I was 11 saying “that’s pretty good – for a girl.” And we all knew he was a dick.

So from my point of view, this feminism that I admired, the fight for equality, was already won. Women were equal to men. Wherever I looked this was the case.

So from this assumption, it follows that none of the contemporary feminists were from the same mold as these bygone feminists whose actions I admired. What’s the point in fighting for something you already have? Thus, these ‘feminists’ must be the kind of fringe radicals – eg. all acts of heterosexual sex are necessarily rape because the patriachy is so dominant that women aren’t in any sense autonomous, so can’t consent.

As I considered myself pro-equality (which I thought a redundant belief) I was against the ‘new’ feminism, because I think the kind of radical ‘feminist’ that I characterised is actually undermining women (by painting them as so passive) and is trying to make women better/more than men, thus tipping the scales in the other direction. In fact in my experience women were being prioritised at men’s expense, I thought (and still do in a lot of cases) that the ‘movement’ had gone too far.

Now I am only starting to realise that my experience isn’t necessarily the case, and that sexism is actually out there. If that seems ridiculous to you that I wan’t aware of it, keep in mind that I am from a liberal middle class background – i.e. all the grown up feminists (men and women).

I was pro-equality, which in my experience had been reached, so I thought the feminism I admired had already won. Thus I resented being called a feminist.

What’s the point of my blabbering on about this?

If you simply claim that all, or even most, women/girls who don’t identify as feminists do so because they don’t want to be classed as feminazis, you’re oversimplifying the issue hugely. It’s possible that their reasoning is similar to mine.