1. Like Charlotte Proudman, who legitimately challenged irrelevant remarks made about her appearance on LinkedIn, you don’t take sexist comments with a pinch of salt. You can tell the difference between a compliment in a social setting and an unsolicited rating of your appearance in a professional context from a man more than twice your age, even though this is apparently a hugely complex and baffling distinction.
2. You find the term feminazi mildly offensive (given that it seems to equate the quest for gender equality to the Holocaust and all).
3. As a casual observer you once commented (perhaps lightheartedly) on social media about a sexist comment someone made, only to see media outlets doorstep his wife, publish Facebook photos of his daughter, whip up a publicity storm and then blame it all on the fact that you and five other people expressed your opinions on Twitter. You dirty Twitchforker, you.
4. You think it’s pretty unfair that women effectively work from 4 November until the end of the year for free because of the gender pay gap; and that female managers “work for free” for nearly two hours a day; and that the pay gap is even wider for women of colour and disabled women.
Oh, and that 54,000 women lose their jobs to maternity discrimination each year.
5. You’re concerned that in 2015 women still make up fewer than a third of MPs, fewer than a quarter of professors, and one fifth of high court judges, write just one in five front page newspaper articles, and lead fewer FTSE 100 companies than men named John.
6. You’re angry about the 85,000 women raped and 400,000 sexually assaulted in the UK every year.
7. It troubles you that 26% of all sexual offences reported to the police arerecorded as “no crimes”, that rape victims face public blame and ridicule, and that conviction rates for rape in the UK are among the lowest in Europe.
8. You’re outraged that two women every week are killed in England and Wales by a current or former partner. You don’t feel like outrage is too strong a word to use in this context.
9. It strikes you as irrational that you live in a country where one in three girls experiences unwanted sexual touching at school, yet the curriculumdoesn’t guarantee that young people will learn about healthy relationships and sexual consent.
10. You believe that in a world where women routinely face discrimination, sexual assault and violence it makes sense to challenge every instance of gender inequality – even the “minor” ones, because they are part of the wider imbalanced structure and help to maintain the attitudes that allow the larger transgressions to flourish.
But whatever you do, don’t you dare speak out. Because that’s what really makes you a feminazi.