The morass of choice is at the heart of these most recent self-flagellating screeds. But in the years since - and thanks to “Sex and the City’s ' Charlotte York, who in one memorable episode chanted “I choose my choice!” like a mantra - it’s devolved into the idea that anything is a feminist choice so long as a feminist chooses it: not just relationships and kids and career but also religion, sex work, dieting, breast implants, stiletto heels, gun ownership, capitalist megalomania. “Choice” feminism started as the belief, coined somewhat peevishly by Linda Hirshman in her 2007 manifesto “Get to Work,” that a woman’s freedom to choose trumps her right to equality. Is it any wonder that many of us aren’t sure where and how the term is rightly applied? Miley Cyrus rushes to proclaim that she’s “one of the biggest feminists in the world,” while Katy Perry and Shailene Woodley blithely disavow the term meanwhile, right-wingers like Sarah Palin valiantly attempt to co-opt the term for uses the second wave never intended, and the consumer marketplace shills Dove products and Pantene shampoo with watered-down feminist rhetoric about self-acceptance and empowerment. Perhaps it’s not surprising that people find themselves so easily tied in ideological knots over feminism, given that it still occupies such a contested place in American culture. One woman wonders: “I Love Wolf Whistles and Catcalls: Am I a Bad Feminist?” Another asks: “Am I a Bad Feminist Because Sometimes All I Want for My Life is to Get Married, Have Babies and a Nice House Out in the Country?” And: “Can a Beauty Editor Be a Feminist?” Everywhere you turn, there’s an overwrought unburdening by a woman wringing her virtual hands over the prospect of feminist failure - confiding her self-diagnosed Bad Feminism, unpacking its minutiae, and then ultimately concluding that, damn it, she’ll call herself a feminist if she wants to.

Look around the blogosphere, and there seems to be a serious crisis of conscience among feminists - one that even predates Roxane Gay's trailblazing new book on the subject.

Bad feminist writer