Feminazi is a pejorative term for feminists that was popularized by politically conservative American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Origin and usage Feminazi is a portmanteau of the nouns feminist and Nazi. According to The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, it refers (pejoratively) to "a committed feminist or a strong-willed woman". The American conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who popularized the term, credited the university professor Thomas Hazlett with coining it. Limbaugh began to use the term in 1991. Limbaugh, who was vocally critical of the feminist movement, stated that the term feminazi refers to "radical feminists" whose goal is "to see that there are as many abortions as possible", a small group of "militants" whom he characterized as having a "quest for power" and a "belief that men aren't necessary". Limbaugh distinguished these women from "well-intentioned but misguided people who call themselves 'feminists. However, the term came to be widely used for feminism as a whole. The term is used to characterize feminist perspectives as extreme in order to discredit feminist arguments, portraying feminists as bossy, misandric, and hating femininity. It has been used in mainstream American discourse to erroneously portray women as hyper-vigilant to perceived sexism. In Australia, the term gained wider use following the 1995 publication of the book The First Stone, and has been used in popular media to characterize feminists as threatening, "vindictive", and "puritanical". Reactions Limbaugh stated that feminazis, as opposed to mainstream feminists, are those "who are happy about the large number of abortions we have" in the United States. The anti-violence educator Jackson Katz argues that "no such feminists exist", and that feminazi is a "clever term of propaganda" that is intended and used to "[bully] into complicit silence women who might otherwise challenge men's violence". In his book Angry White Men, the sociologist Michael Kimmel says the term is used to attack feminist campaigns for equal pay and safety from rape and domestic violence by associating them with Nazi genocide. According to Helen Lewis, deputy editor of the New Statesman, "the idea of conflating a liberation movement with Nazism is just deeply ignorant. It’s self-undermining, because it’s so over the top." Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, has said that "It’s a desperate attempt to demonise us, and it’s frustrating, because if it wasn’t such an offensive word, you could actually start to embrace