"She's a militant feminazi!"
That was the first thing I ever heard concerning feminism. It was clear to me, as a child, that this was a seriously bad thing to be. For a long time, in the echo chamber of deeply conservative company, this sentiment was reinforced. Feminism was bad, unattractive, rude, man-hating, and only for women of loose moral character. Feminism was synonymous with being a heathen, an extremist liberal, and generally an unhinged human being.
As a child, you don't tend to question the authority of the adults around you.
Thankfully, my father's influence often encouraged me to think critically about what I believed, and why. He encouraged me to "use my little gray cells," a quote from Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, and not to shy away from hard questions. He also insisted that anything I did not know or understand well enough to explain to someone else, to look it up. So I did.
What I was shocked to find, (although most probably wouldn't be) was that feminism was mainly the idea that men and women are equal, and the barely less radical idea, should be treated that way. Feminist literature often merely pointed out ways in which women are generally treated unequally. These authors weren't unhinged by any means. They had graphs, they had studies, statistics and, notably, they had resonance with me.
I had, already in my short and sheltered life, experienced things personally that were clearly and bluntly identifiable. I had wandered down the rabbit hole thinking to find a monster and instead discovered a very ordinary bunny.
Feminism isn't a dirty word or a distasteful fetish. It's only putting a name to what, as human beings, we should already acknowledge — we are all equal and should be treated that way.