Feminism Vocabulary

Question 1

Ableism

Answer 1

Discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities

Question 2

Androcentric

Answer 2

Dominated by or emphasizing masculine interests or a masculine point of view

Question 3

Asexuality

Answer 3

The lack of sexual attraction to anyone, or low or absent interest in sexual activity

Question 4

Benevolent Sexism

Answer 4

A subjectively positive orientation of protection, idealization, and affection directed toward women that, like hostile sexism, serves to justify women’s subordinate status to men

Question 5

Biphobia

Answer 5

Aversion toward bisexuality and bisexual people as a social group or as individuals

Question 6

Bisexuality

Answer 6

An identity for which sex and gender are not a boundary to attraction

Question 7

Cisgender

Answer 7

Denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex; not transgender

Question 8

Creep(er)

Answer 8

A strange person who you strongly dislike; an unpleasant or obnoxious person; someone who causes you to feel nervous and afraid

Question 9

Cultural Appropriation

Answer 9

When members of a dominant or privileged group exploit the culture of a marginalized group, often without understanding the latter’s history, experience, or traditions

Question 10

Double Standard

Answer 10

A set of principles that applies differently and usually more rigorously to one group of people or circumstances than to another; especially a code of morals that applies more severe standards of sexual behavior to women than to men

Question 11

Fat-shaming

Answer 11

Unkind and usually public criticism of someone for being overweight

Question 12

Homophobia

Answer 12

Irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals

Question 13

Homosexual

Answer 13

Sexually attracted to people of the same sex; based on or showing a sexual attraction to people of the same sex

Question 14

Internalized Misogyny

Answer 14

The involuntary internalization by women of the sexist messages that are present in their societies and culture; the way in which women reinforce sexism by utilizing and relaying sexist messages that they’ve internalized

Question 15

Institutional Racism

Answer 15

Societal patterns that have the net effect of imposing oppressive or otherwise negative conditions against identifiable groups on the basis of race or ethnicity; in the United States, institutional racism results from the social caste system that sustained, and was sustained by, slavery and racial segregation

Question 16

Intersectionality

Answer 16

Concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another; first came from legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989

Question 17

Kyriarchy

Answer 17

A concept first created by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others

Question 18

Male Gaze

Answer 18

Presentation of media, such as films or advertising, from the perspective of a heterosexual man

Question 19

Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs)

Answer 19

People who believe that social, legal and economic discrimination against males is present in society to the extent that fighting it deserves an organized effort mirroring feminism; generally have asserted since the 80s that women and feminism “went too far,” and have harmed men in the process

Question 20

Misandry

Answer 20

A hatred of men

Question 21

Nice Guy (TM)

Answer 21

Men who view themselves as prototypical “nice guys,” but whose “nice deeds” are in reality only motivated by attempts to passively please women into a relationship and/or sex

Question 22

Objectification

Answer 22

The treatment of someone like an object instead of a person

Question 23

Patriarchy

Answer 23

Social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly, control by men of a disproportionately large share of power

Question 24

Privilege

Answer 24

A set of advantages (or lack of disadvantages) enjoyed by a majority group

Question 25

Purity Culture

Answer 25

The view of any discussion of things of a sexual nature outside of the context of heterosexual marriage as taboo; adherence to a strict heteronormative lifestyle that forbids most physical contact with significant others, as well as engaging in self pleasure, or holding lustful thoughts about another person that is not a spouse; includes an insistence on female modesty and responsibility to shield boys and men from sexual temptation

Question 26

Racism

Answer 26

A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race; racial prejudice or discrimination

Question 27

Slut-shaming

Answer 27

Attacking a woman or a girl for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feelings, and/or acting on sexual feelings

Question 28

Toxic Masculinity

Answer 28

Socially-constructed attitudes that describe the masculine gender role as violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, etc.

Question 29

Transgender

Answer 29

Of, relating to, or being a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex [assigned] at birth

Question 30

Transphobia

Answer 30

Intense dislike of or prejudice against transgender people

Question 31

Victim-blaming

Answer 31

Here the victim of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment is held as wholly or partially responsible for the wrongful conduct committed against them

Question 32

Wage Gap

Answer 32

The difference between the amounts of money paid to women and men, often for doing the same work

Question 33

Womanism

Answer 33

A form of feminism focused especially on the conditions and concerns of black women