In their book Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies, Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, both university professors and self-described feminists, report on the use of acronyms as a form of shorthand among some academic feminists. IDPOL, or "identity politics," represents the belief that people and their ideas are defined entirely by membership in an oppressed or oppressor group. TOTAL REJ represents the contention that "our culture... is so infused with patriarchal thinking that it must be torn up root and branch if genuine change is to occur." WORDMAGIC signifies the effort to uncover the supposedly masculinist roots of words and phrases most would consider gender-neutral, such as "the thrust of an argument." BIODENIAL represents the idea that biology is completely unrelated to male or female experience, such as the assertion that "the pain of childbirth is socially constructed by patriarchy and would not happen in a feminist society."

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