How today’s youth views feminism is complicated, just like the youths. Doing a search on the terms teens and feminism will return hundreds of blogs and organizations made up of and for active, young, self identified feminist who find the feminist identity relevant and empowering. Judging from the growth feminism is enjoying among the youth, it’s easy to conclude that feminism is viewed by the youths of today as an integral part of their personal identity and relevant to their world.

But consider the youth who either actively rejects a feminist identity or is disinclined to identify; her reasons for not identifying demonstrates that there is an alternate view of feminism’s relevancy and appeal among the youth.

In an article by Riley Mcevoy, Mcevoy talks about the culture meme of the reluctance of youths to identify as feminist. She goes on to downplay the veracity of that meme. But, it takes only a quick read of the Julie Zeilinger’s interview with Rebel Girl Itallianna to see that the issue of the youths’ reluctance to identify as feminist is a prevalent phenomena. Almost as prevalent, in fact, as the youths’ embrace of the feminist identity.

One of the leading reasons for this disinclination to identify is the perceived irrelevancy of feminism. One youth may look out at the world and see how sexism is still a pernicious foe, and woman still struggle to retain control of their bodies. But, another youth looks out and sees none of that. They see a dim, past time when woman had it tough. They couldn’t vote, get educated, and in all respects were unequal to men. But that was in the time of their mother, grandmother and aunts; they fought all the battles. Women won, and those days are over.

A belief of feminist irrelevance may cause a youth to be uninterested in defining themselves as a feminist, the image problem feminism has is what goads the youth into rejecting the feminist identity outright. The stereotype of the hairy she beast stridently, bitterly, haranguing every man in a ten foot radius is just too nauseating. She wonders if that is what she will become if she dare start trusting her burgeoning consciousness of her person hood’s equality with the males she shares the world with.

So among the youth exist, side by side, two diametrically opposed views of feminism. One set of youth view feminism as so relevant and compelling they incorporate into their budding self. The other view is of an ideology that once may have made sense, but now has no real significance and carries ugly associations. It’s definitely not an ideology to identify with. Complicated? Indeed. It will be intriguing to see how feminism progresses into the future with such a dichatomy among the youth.