What is a Feminazi?

A term used primarily by conservatives to disparage liberal progressive women and those who support women's rights, "feminazi" is a portmanteau word that combines "feminist" and "nazi" and blends their sounds and meanings into a single word. A feminazi is an exaggerated description of a woman's rights advocate so ardently committed to the fight for gender equality that she is (as Merriam-Webster.com defines 'nazi) "a harshly domineering, dictatorial, or intolerant person."

Made popular by radio talk show host and conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, the term "feminazi" did not originate with him. In his first book, The Way Things Ought To Be (Pocket Books, 1992) Limbaugh credits the originator of the word and provides his own definition of feminazi (p. 193):

Tom Hazlett, a good friend who is an esteemed and highly regarded professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism. I often use it to describe women who are obsessed with perpetuating a modern-day holocaust: abortion.

Two decades later a much wider range of women falls under the conservative commentator's "feminazi" label. At present, Limbaugh uses the term to describe any woman or women whose attempts to advocate for those basic and legal rights such as abortion, contraceptive use, and equal pay do not meet with his approval.

Other pundits have mocked Limbaugh's use of the term feminazi by offering up their own definitions. In the midst of the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke controversy in March 2012, Comedy Central's The Daily Show host Jon Steward observed during the March 5 broadcast that a feminazi was "someone who would herd you onto a train to go to an Indigo Girls concert."