Legal Voice Executive Director and blogger Lisa Stone looked up the definition the other day, and as she observed “Why did I not think more carefully before voting for "heroes"? Who knew the damn definition was so gendered?”
If feminists can reclaim a word like “bitch,” can we PUH-LEEZE get to work on claiming “hero” too? (I would say that terms like “heroine” and “sheroes” don’t quite cut it for our purposes.)
As far as kick-ass women in mass media go, I can think of a government official (who put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling), some funny ladies, a writer and a news anchor that I’d call heroes. Jezebel even came up with 20 feminist TV characters who could qualify as heroes. (They forgot Maude, though. Update: Just kidding! Maude is FIRST ON THE LIST. Duh.)
Who are your heroes?
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