WHAT does the word ‘feminist’ mean to you?

Does it conjure up black and white images of women protesting at a Miss America pageant, or Gloria Allred clasping Norma McCorvey’s hand during pro-choice rallies ahead of Roe vs Wade?

Maybe you’re going further back and thinking of the ‘Munitionettes’ who stepped into the factories during the First World War.

Mind you, if you’ve been to a book shop in the past year or so, you might be thinking of a quote attributed to Kardashian lite Kendall Jenner. The quote is ‘Do your squats, eat your vegetables, wear red lipstick, don’t let boys be mean to you.’

That’s because, for big business, ‘feminist’ means one thing – money.

Publishers in particular are using the word as a branding exercise. New parent? Why not read your bundle of joy Feminist Baby, the story of tiny infant who ‘refuses to be categorised’. As anything other than a feminist, presumably.

Children aged three to seven might enjoy the Little Feminist books. It’s important for kids to smash the patriarchy right from the off, otherwise they’ll definitely grow up shackled to oppressive hierarchical gender norms.

There’s lots there for adult women too. You might like Free the Tipple: Kickass Cocktails Inspired by Iconic Women. There’s a cartoon of Frieda Kahlo on the cover. You could mix a Gloria Steinem, who famously wrote: “A feminist is anyone who recognises the equality and full humanity of women and men.” On the other hand, perhaps you’ll swig a drink named after Beyoncé, who once said: “The more successful I become, the more I need a man.”

These books sit comfortably alongside jumpers from Topshop which have the word ‘feminist’ stitched on them (interestingly, Arcadia Group clothing is frequently manufactured in Romania, where one in five mothers gives birth without having had a single medical check-up. I bet they’re all keen to hear the kernels of feminist wisdom in Eat, Sleep, Slay: Kickass Quotes for Girls with Goals).

You can read one of these books while you’re resting your feet on Bella Freud’s Solidarité Feminine hot water bottle, a snip at £135.

So some people spend their money on this twee nonsense because it’s marketed as ‘feminist’. Does any of that actually matter? Well, maybe. Feminism isn’t just a meaningless word. It’s increasingly a directive.

We live in strange, oddly authoritarian times, where old Tweets can sink lives and men and women can be convicted of offences without ever being charged. Dissent in the post #MeToo world is quickly punished.

Last year, novelist Margaret Atwood – yes, she of The Handmaid’s Tale – was tarred and feathered by fourth-wave feminists for suggesting that men accused of sexual assault should be investigated properly, and not just by a scrum of witch-hunters.

In article Am I A Bad Feminist?, Atwood said “condemnation without a trial” is vigilante justice and can lead to a “culturally solidified lynch-mob habit”. After the article was published Atwood was accused of calling rape survivors liars.

Harry Potter actor Emma Watson gave a speech at the United Nations on gender equality in which she called for men to support women’s rights around the world. However, even that wasn’t quite good enough, and she was quickly lambasted as ‘white, privileged and elitist’. Critics said she was, in fact, simply furthering the oppression of women.

And therein lies the great problem at the heart of this new brand of feminism, where ideas and arguments have been swapped for Twitterstorms and t-shirts.

The days of the firebrand are gone. Now, women are frequently encouraged to see themselves not as equals, but as victims, incapable even of knowing what’s inside their own heads (female Trump-voters, for example, apparently suffer ‘internalised misogyny’).

To be a feminist now is literally about fitting in; you’ve got the opinion, here’s the jumper. The concept has become so fundamentally toothless that it’s now the establishment. It’s mainstream; it’s even marketable.