Not being a feminist doesn't make you sexist, last I checked.
You can identify however you want, but if you're truly not sexist, you're a feminist as far as I can tell.
Suffice to say, to me a feminist is a person who is actively part of the movement. I've never heard "feminist" used to mean "believes in gender equality".
Imagine a Republican telling you that "Republican" is defined as someone who supports natural human rights, and therefore anyone who truly supports natural human rights is a Republican.
The feminist definition of "feminism" is inaccurate for the same reason.
> Feminism supports gender equality
> I dislike the idea that men can only be sold on feminism
> if they think there's something in it for them
You'll do better if you wait ten years, and then try to explain to the software engineer he became that he has relative privilege compared to the sophisticated VP of Sales who dresses to kill, or girls he meets in bars, but still, you're going to have a bit of a struggle.
You and I can reel off 50 ways in which he's privileged, and the inherent advantages he has by being white, male, smart, etc, but what he knows is that he has a daily grind, and that he has a lot of relationships in his life with women where they hold /all/ the cards.
While people continue to be blind to their own privilege, and only see the highlight reels of other people's privilege (eg: forever), you're only going to be able to sell it on gender equality, rather than "women's rights need to increase beyond where they are now".
Dislike it all you want, doesn't change the reality that if you have one self-interested faction whose interests appear to conflict with a different self-interested faction, then the interests will need to be "sold" or else forced on the other faction.
Hence: appeals to shared principles like "equality." Even when the positions are demonstrably not about equality at all.
There's an older version of this debate, regarding whether people who don't know or care about a given religion—but happen to follow all its tenets by coincidence—will get into the "good afterlife" of that religion. There are a lot of Christians who argue that to be "Christian" isn't a matter of faith, but rather a matter of acting the way Jesus would have one act. (And thus, in this model, there are atheist Christians.)
Feminism used to be different, it used to be like humanism, now I see it as a tool to tear down white straight men and claim women are superior and deserve special treatment. I didn't always have that view, but after seeing a lot of Feminist groups attacking Hacker News using hoaxes and untrue statements I eventually came to that conclusion. I have never seen Hacker News or YC discriminate against women, and anyone who posts a sexist statement gets downvoted.
I think on 4Chan and Reddit a lot of these sexist men are really boys under 18 who are not mature yet and hide behind an anonymous name to lobby death and rape threats at women. I just don't see that in Hacker News or YC, when men are mature they don't do those sorts of things.
So yes sexism does exist and there are issues, but not everywhere. The word Feminism in itself is sexist because it only mentions the female gender and there are more than male and female genders out there. Hence Humanism would be a better name or Equalism because it does not mention gender.
I want to state that equal rights is different from special rights and entitlements. If anyone wants a career in IT, they have to study hard at math and science, they have to work for years to become an expert sometimes as many as 15 years. You can't just avoid studying hard, blow off math and science, and then study arts instead and then claim you are owned a job in IT because of your gender. If you want a job in IT, study math and science instead of art, keep learning and gaining experience over the years to become better so you can get a job. Communication is a key, and about 80% of the job. If you cannot communicate with others effectively and keep using the terms mansplaining when something is over your head and you need help with, it isn't going to help the team and make you look bad.
Admiral Grace Hopper, Ada Augusta Lovelace, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, and many others studied hard, worked hard, developed the experience and skills they needed and didn't have anything handed to them, or were entitled to anything, or required special treatment. They just studied math and science, studied hard, worked hard, and reached their potential to develop the experience and skills they needed to do what they did.
Let's review some definitions for feminism:
"the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities"
"the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes"
Which part of that do you disagree with that makes you not a feminist?
And, if being a feminist means one supports gender equality (which is what it means), how do you believe it can ever follow that not being feminist doesn't make one sexist? Seems like believing that people should be treated differently based on their sex is the very definition of sexism.
I can imaging many people who have not studied feminist theory and yet still believe in the principles you listed. Can we legitimately ask that they self-identify as something of which they have little or no functional understanding?
I don't identify with feminists or men's rights activists today because equality is not those specific group's goal.
Some people, having been accused of being "not _real_ feminists" one time to many, stop self-identifying as such (even though their views on gender equality have not changed).
I suspect the bad reputation is primarily caused by bad actors who are actually anti-feminist, and who don't want us to continue to move toward equality. 4chan has frequently leaked made up "feminist" rants into the internet at large, right wing Christians very frequently paint an extremely negative view of feminism, etc. There are plenty of people who genuinely oppose gender equality who will say or do anything to stop feminism in its tracks.
I used to be squeamish about the term, too. But, then I spent some time reflecting on why. And, the reality is that all the negative connotations I have about feminism (other than the anti-trans so-called "radical feminists" that even feminists make fun of) come from things men who are demonstrably against equality of the sexes have said or done.
The feminists I know (and I know a lot of them; I helped start a pro-choice activist organization here in Texas when the bills that are forcing closure of all but six clinics in the entire state were making their way through the state house) are nothing like the picture Republicans paint of them, nor are they anything like the caricature that some redditors and HN participants seem to believe is the reality. I don't know where these ideas even come from, honestly. The feminists I know are regular people, who see some injustice in our society and are trying to do something about it. They may occasionally be wrong on the details of execution, but they aren't man-hating bitches from hell, and it's really counter-productive to take the most extreme examples of anything and decide that the entire movement can be ignored because a few said something obnoxious.
To be fair, though, I used to identify as Libertarian. But, the bad apples within that movement seemed to overwhelm the reasonable folks; and there seems to be a movement of extreme right wing nationalists calling themselves "libertarian" lately, which finally put the last nail in the coffin for me. When "libertarian" came to mean "we need paramilitary thugs patrolling our borders to keep those illegals out" to the majority of people, it was time for me to opt out completely from using that label (not to mention the idiotic positions on climate change many self-identified libertarians take). So, I understand where you're coming from. I feel as though I've been robbed of an identity by ignorant nationalist racists. And, I guess if I believed everyone saw feminism the way you, and some others seem to, I don't know if I'd be as comfortable using the term.
I don't know what the right thing here is, but I know that there is a strongly anti-woman bias among many participants on reddit, and on HN, and it shows itself in all sorts of subtle and not so subtle ways. My most downvoted comments on both reddit and Hacker News have frequently been about sexism or racism or privilege (and occasionally about Apple, but I'll happily take those lumps), and I find it pretty reactionary and disappointing, but not surprising.
As it is, the perception to the vast majority of people is such that I find it more effective to avoid the word and simply advance the equal rights part.
Wanting to avoid associating yourself with the general zeitgeist of thought generated by soi-disant feminists is, annoyingly, quite reasonable currently.
"With friends like these, who needs enemies" applies a lot more often than I might like :(