In brief, apparent feminism seeks to:
- make more obvious the need for feminist interventions in everyday life as well as in academia. So, an apparent feminist would be devoted to making apparent the urgent and sometimes hidden exigencies for feminist critique of contemporary politics. In addition, apparent feminists seek to respond to the reactionary ways in which feminism is often attacked. The notion of apparency in its incarnation as denoting something potentially false calls subversive attention to attacks on feminism. Apparent feminists are concerned with responding persuasively to attacks on feminism while still making apparent their self-identification as feminist.
- use rhetorical techniques to call upon audiences who do not usually self-identify as feminist. That is, apparent feminists are interested in coalition with those who might appear to be feminist in their activism or ideological perspectives, but for whatever reason do not embrace that label.
- demystify the relationship between feminism and efficiency. As has often been noted in technical communication and rhetoric scholarship, terms that are invisibly and especially valued should be troubled. The ways that we understand efficiency and how it bears on our use of other terms limits our understanding of those terms; that is, our choice to continue using the term feminism depends upon our determination that it is efficient to do so. I argue for explicit analysis of the term efficiency in order to show that it actually relies upon perhaps unexpected concepts—like diversity—for its value. (For example, we might re-imagine efficiency as audience-focused. The most efficient message is one that is the most effective for the largest amount of people.)
