We explored how women talk about feminism and feminists and position themselves in relation to a feminist identity within a conversational setting. Nine pairs of female graduate and senior undergraduate students talked about feminism in sessions lasting 60 minutes. Sessions were analyzed using discourse analysis. Participants positioned themselves in multiple ways in relation to feminism. Notably, a feminist subject position was both difficult to take up and difficult to reject. In resolving the dilemma, to be or not to be feminist, participants drew on three interpretative repertoires: a liberal version emphasizing equality and rights, an extremist version emphasizing undesirable extremism, and a lifestyle feminist version entailing being feminist by virtue of how one lives. We discuss the implications of this multiplicity for conceptualizing feminist identity and for feminism as a political project.
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