A feminist is someone who supports the idea that women should have the same rights and chances as men — and who, often, is willing to say so. The same word is an adjective: a feminist book, a feminist law, a feminist joke. Though actually, not every woman is a feminist, and not every feminist is a woman; men can be feminists too. The word has a temperature. In some families it is a compliment. In others it is said with a rolled eye, as if the person were difficult on purpose. Students sometimes swallow a cartoon — “a woman who hates men.” That cartoon is useful to people who want you not to listen. First attested in English in 1852, as both noun and adjective, from the same Latin line as feminine and feminism (fēmina, “woman”).