ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that feminists are presented as out of the ordinary, as not quite normal. The target words “feminist,” “feminists,” and “feminism” appeared 25,139 times, or 0.02% of all words. Clearly, feminism continues to receive relatively little attention in the media. Critics claim feminists are demonized when portrayed in the media as crazy, ill-tempered, ugly, man-hating, family-wrecking, hairy-legged, bra-burning, radical lesbians. Many people argue that when feminists or women are personalized and trivialized, media provide less attention to substance. The most common co-occurrences of words representing concerns violence toward women were feminist/s-violence and feminist/s with lexical variants of rape. Women and feminists are portrayed in a victimization frame when their representation refers to weakness, vulnerability, mental illness, crime, fear, dysfunctionality, and so forth. Women were significantly more likely to be linked with home than feminists were. The goals of the women’s movement are more closely associated with feminists than with women.
