Hundreds of women are gathered together at a revolutionary convention. It is 1840 in Seneca Falls, New York at Wesleyan Chapel. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott have come together to organize the first women’s rights convention. All of the women gathered have a strict purpose. These women aren’t yet known as feminists, but they are.

My feminism movement started more than a hundred years later and hundreds of miles away. Unlike these strong, brave women, when I became a feminist it did not make history and it cannot be pinpointed to a date. I had yet to hear of this convention or any of these women because I was only six-years old. How can a six-year-old even grasp the concepts of feminism? I didn’t know it as feminism but the principles of the movement were already part of my life. It was the first time I heard my mom judged verbally by other adults for being a working mom. It was something simple, something easy to ignore, but it made me question a woman’s role or, in my case, a girl’s role. My mom was superwoman; she worked outside of our home and raised my sister and me. Isn’t that what my parents meant when they told me I could do anything? That I could be superwoman too? Society—even in the early 2000s—wasn’t ready to let me, a girl, do or be whatever I wanted. The first time I overheard my mom telling my dad that she had been left out of a meeting because the men wanted to talk business, or one of the many times my mom was scowled at by the daycare workers as she picked us up after the daycare had closed. Little things, things that would lay the ground work for my feminism.

A brilliant scientist is passed over for yet another promotion. The man who takes her slot has no idea what to do because it isn’t even his field of science. Maria Jones was the only female scientist in her company. Her parents had died when she was young, but they too had told her that she could be anything she wanted to be. When she decided to become a scientist, she thought of them. Every time she was ignored or turned down for a job, she thought of them. She married late in life, never had children, and made her marriage a fair partnership and refused to settle for less. An environmental hippie, born in the fifties, who would not be told how to behave or whom to answer to. She is now one of the best high school biology teachers there is and she shapes young minds to be as freethinking as she is.

My mom was one of two female attorneys at her first law firm and the only mother. The men she worked with simply pretended that she didn’t have kids and made her work long hours. Whenever there was a problem with my sister or me, she would have to decide who's day to interrupt, my dad who didn’t like being called away during work or her bosses. She lived in a male-dominated world, a world that wanted her at home with her children instead of working sixty-hour weeks. Everyone thought that we were raised by babysitters and daycare, but what they see was how she did everything for us when she was home. After a twelve-hour day she would take us home and make us dinner and ask about our days; she must have seen a million badly drawn pictures and complimented each of them to our satisfaction. She chose to be a dedicated mom and an excellent attorney even when she was penalized and judged for being both.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” (The Women’s Declaration of Sentiments and Grievances)

Ms. Jones sits on the table in the front of the room. She is small so her bare feet swing inches above the ground. I am a freshman in high school and she is my biology teacher. Someone has asked her about how she became a teacher. Ms. Jones smiles and begins to recount her life story. She describes the difficulties that she has faced as a woman, making it clear that it is not an indictment on all men. I think it was in that class that I learned more about the struggles of women than in any American history class. In front of us sat this brilliant woman who had to fight harder than her male peers for every job and opportunity she received. She didn’t see championing women’s rights as feminism; she saw it as just what people should do. To Ms. Jones it was simple: equality for everyone.

“You’re a feminist?”, the college guy I had had a crush on asked with disgust. He thinks that feminists by definition are man-haters who want more rights than men. It is 2015 and I am explaining what it means to be a feminist to some guy who isn’t listening. He has lost interest in what I have to say; suddenly I become someone not worth his time. He doesn’t understand why anyone would be a feminist because women are treated well, and if they are making less money it is because they are not as good at their jobs. It isn’t the first time I have experienced someone with misconceptions about feminism and about the rights of women, but it still upsets and surprises me. I think about when I was little and my parents told me I could be and do anything.

I wonder if my dad knew that it would be harder for me than it was for him or if he was blind to my mom’s struggles. I think about all of the women that have come before me, great women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and I wonder if they were as discouraged as I am. Women continue to fight for equality and our country has come a long way since 1840, but there is so much inequality left. As a feminist, I find myself fighting for more than just women; I fight for everyone who is marginalized. When I was six-years-old I didn’t know why my mom was treated differently and I didn’t notice that people of color or people of different sexual orientations were different from me because we are all human beings; now that I see the differences in treatment and experiences I still know that we are all human beings who deserve to be treated like human beings. Elizabeth C. Stanton and Frederick Douglass stood side by side fighting for equality for everyone, a concept that seems so simple. I am a feminist because of people like Stanton who fought centuries before me for rights that all people deserve.

*Non-historic names were changed for privacy purposes.*