The Intimate is Political: Feminist Identity and Sexual Behavior.

Feminism is understood to be not only about equality for women as a group, but also about personal empowerment, which is captured by the slogan "the personal is political." Scholarship on feminist identity has demonstrated that those who self-identify as feminist share a set of social attitudes, though this group has become more heterogeneous over time, comprising a wide spectrum of people who have liberal, moderate and even conservative views, who support a broad spectrum of social change goals not only for the advancement of women as a group, but also for reductions of social inequalities of race, sexual identity, and concerns for the environment and children. As the identity "feminist" becomes more accessible to a wider array of individuals with a broader agenda, is its capacity to engender personal empowerment diminished? Previous research suggests that, for women at least, a feminist identity offers many social psychological benefits, including improved body image, interpersonal assertiveness, and activism. In this paper, I extend theories of the personal benefits of feminist identity for women to sexual behavior. Using original survey data from the Sex in Canada research project to assess the relationship between self-identifying as a feminist and sexual behaviours. Results show that those who call themselves a feminist differ in their sexual behavior from those who do not. This suggests that, as feminist identity broadens politically, it continues to impact personal, even intimate, choices for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]