Am I a real feminist? Do I know what feminism even is?
The struggle that I face when I ponder these questions is the intersection between being Hispanic and being a female.
Growing up within a Hispanic culture, I feel I was heavily exposed to the notion that submissive roles are for women and that the head of a household must always be a man. If you’re a female, you are inherently destined to love cooking and cleaning.
All of my childhood years were spent observing the reinforcement of these strict gender roles not only within my household but across the households of our friends and family.
As I grew older, I learned about empowered women who persevered in life and took steps away from the restrictions of social and cultural gender norms. They got an education, worked, and voiced their opinions publicly. I was introduced to a new concept called feminism, a stark opponent to the misogyny that perpetrates throughout my culture.
I embraced that newfound concept, or at least I tried to. I have come to realize that there are certain things that are harder to adapt to than others.
It was easy for me to claim that I believed in women’s rights, in equal pay for equal work, and I tried to inform others about the things I picked up on in my journey of realization.
However, as I champion for this movement and for equality, I face other questions dealing with things like chivalry and social stigmas in everyday life that we might not notice.
Growing up in a society and culture where you witnessed girls being critiqued for dating but showers of praise for the boys who got “all the girls," where you were taught by example to always let a man deal with the finances, to always put your opinion as a woman beneath that of a man’s, can make it difficult to actually implement those lifestyle changes into our everyday lives.
I tell myself, for example, that if I were a true feminist I wouldn’t sometimes catch myself enjoying the “perks” of chivalry.
But the truth is, feminism isn’t about being the perfect feminist. In fact, in wanting to be a “perfect” feminist I am once again drawing from the pressures that society places upon women to be effortlessly flawless. I think identifying yourself as a feminist means to be aware that there is work to be done so that women’s rights can reach political, social, and economic equality, and working to get it done in your own unique ways.
As President Obama stated in his essay for Glamour Magazine on August 4th, “…. there are some changes that have nothing to do with passing new laws. In fact, the most important change may be the toughest of all—and that’s changing ourselves”.
I believe this to be true, because we sometimes tend to ignore, when focusing on policy and legislation, the small details in our lives that we can change to create a more equal environment.
I, personally, would like to believe that feminism calls upon each of us, man or woman, to reexamine our role in the social norms that prevail throughout our culture, including sexism and gender-related restrictions. Once we are making a conscious effort to do our part in our lives, we are better prepared to demand for change on a large-scale. Because the people that we influence the most are not legislators, but those immediately around us.
Being women from a minority group, it is hard and confusing trying to navigate our way throughout a movement whose ideals we want to embody, while at the same time struggling with the outdated traditions that we grew up in. I don’t claim to have any concrete answer to this intersection of identities, but I do have hope that a step in the right direction is talking about these dilemmas and internal conflicts, so that with self-reflection and discussion we may better support each other in our journey towards equality of freedom.
