Made me sad

On the new game show the Power of 10 tonight, Drew Carey gave away a million dollars to a 19-year-old kid. The boy correctly guessed (within an acceptable margin, as set up in the rules) what percentage of women polled said they considered themselves feminists.

The percentage? 29%.

All I can say is that if I'd been on that show I would've lost a lot of money, because I would have put it at much, much higher-like around 80. I think this is another one of those situations where I'm naive.

(I also couldn't help noticing, he noted dryly, that this was a case of one rich white man making another. And by virtue of his cynically if correctly assessing his countrywomen's definitions of themselves, too.)

(Better start practicing now: President Rudy Giuliani...)

(But I digress)

But I'd also be really curious to know if that's exactly the way the question was phrased. I subscribe to the belief that if you tell most people, and certainly most women, what feminism actually means--

advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men

--they support it. Sometimes it's a real wake-up call for me to reminded of just how much the word "feminists" has been devalued.