Bryn Mawr is a weird college- a statement unequivocally agreed to by most people who've either attended or been here. The connotations may vary. Some love it, some hate it, and others accept the strange appeal along with the occasional ridiculousness. But all things considered, it's a strange place. And it's in this strange place, among strangers, that I became a feminist.

Feminist! It's an uncomfortable word for a lot of people, evoking the image of angry hoards of man-hating, badly-dressed women shouting "DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCHY!"

I certainly was one of them. So when one of the first things I read about Bryn Mawr was that it has a very feminist and extremely liberal student body, I started wondering if I'd made the wrong choice.

Weirdly enough, I didn't get trampled on by charging mass of furious women screaming for their rights when I stepped onto the campus. No, everyone was calm, polite and was capable of holding reasonably intelligent conversation without spewing hateful diatribes about human males every few minutes. And I began to wonder: Was the portrayal of feminists in popular media and culture....wrong?

*GASP*

And it all went "downhill" from there.

During customs week, I learnt that according to the Oxford dictionary (considered by many as a legit source of information about the meaning of a word), a feminist is an advocate for "women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men." Wait, so feminism isn't about female domination over the entire human race like popular culture says it is ? I was confused. So I talked to more people, and I read a few books.

The more I read, the more I talked, the more I learnt. Contrary to popular belief, feminists come in all shapes and sizes. They can and do dress fabulously well. They don't hate on men. They want equal rights as men, to be able to live in a world where they can make decisions unburdened by gender associations. I learnt about intersectional feminism, the glass ceiling, the radical feminists. And I realized...

There is no one right way of being a feminist.

You can be calm and rational, using logic to justify your argument. You can be angry and upset, which is a valid way to feel about the systematic discrimination women still face every day. You can be a man, a woman or anything in between.

For as long as you believe that the value of a woman is equal to the value of a man, as long as you can see beyond a person's reproductive organs and realize that all humans are deserving of equal rights, you are a feminist. And I'm so glad I had the beautiful community at Bryn Mawr College to drive that message home.

So perhaps this can be counted as my "coming out" speech.

I am a feminist.

DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCHY!