I don’t know exactly when I began identifying as a feminist. I do know that all my life the adults around me were always encouraging and never let my gender hold me back. Then, I grew up a little, and realized that the world isn’t always fair or equal. All of a sudden all of the girls in my grade were being sent to separate assemblies than the boys because we needed to be lectured on how tank tops, shorts that go above the knee or something as ridiculous as flip flops were inappropriate school attire. Apparently, the boys would get to distracted if we showed skin past our faces, ankles and elbows. Apparently, we would look as if we were “going to the club."
After this assembly I felt offended on so many levels. The girls were being treated like idiotic sluts and the boys were being portrayed as if they had no sense of control or public decency. While I’m sure the words of this assembly affected mainly girls, boys were also being put into a certain archetype and worst of all the teachers saying these things were losing all of our respect. It was on that day when I started to feel different. It was when I started to realize that maybe things weren’t as equal as I’d originally imagined.
Over time I had learned that the world was far from equal. Not only were women being treated as the lesser human, but also people of a different race, sexuality or religion. Everything was on a much larger scale as well. As pressing a matter as school dress code was it all became abundantly clear at the time that bigger issues must be tackled first.
Women all over the world are mistreated, punished for showing their faces, speaking out and having their right to an education taken from them. Transgender women are constantly victims of emotional and physical abuse because of their chosen gender and women of color are tragically under-represented.
When I was first learning about women’s rights it surprised no, shocked me that there was ever a time women couldn’t vote just because they were women. There was an episode of "Suite Life of Zack and Cody" where the entire episode was a Boston Tea Party flashback, and, in the episode, a character, Esteban, came up with the idea of democracy and voting. After he comes up with this idea another character, Carey, say’s something along the lines of, “Oh super fun, sign me up!” and Esteban says, and I kid you not, “No, you’re only a woman." It was around this time I heard the word feminist.
I was a very big fan of this word because, to me, it has always meant as the definition states, “The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social and economic equality to men.” I saw it as positive and something I was proud to use to talk about myself. However, around the time I got to high school I started to find that other people didn’t feel the same way. At first it baffled my mind, until I realized that peoples perspective of a feminist was completely skewed. All over Twitter people were stereotyping feminists as man-hating “feminazis” who would only scream and cause people to roll their eyes and go, “ugh." Let me get one thing straight. A feminist is not someone who hopes for a man to fail or for women to reign all powerful. A feminist is someone who would like to be treated fairly, be given equal opportunities and advocate for the equality of both genders
It wasn’t just men saying these things though. It was women too. In fact, my best friend junior year of high school told me she was not a feminist and to this day I am still stunned by that conversation. At first when she told me this I was angry; angry that she was fighting against herself, fighting against her sister and mother and all the other women who face prejudice everyday. Then, I started to think from her perspective. I started to realize that women who hadn’t been as informed as I always tried to keep myself never learned that feminism was actually a good thing. They only had what other people had been telling them, until one day “feminist” became a very scary word to use, and with so many people against it why would anyone want to use it to identify him or herself?
In the words of The Beatles, I “want to start a revolution"--a feminist revolution, and that doesn’t have to be a scary thing. I want women and men to stop cowering at the word “feminist,” and if they truly believe in equality among genders to start using it. I want them to start giving feminism a good wrap. I want to stop reading sexist tweets online, and while the 140-character anti-feminist statements really get me riled up before Pilate’s class, I’d really like for them to come in less quantities. I’d like for all of these biases towards feminism to disappear because they are overshadowing the whole point, which has been and will always be equality. I need all of this to happen because while I thank my family everyday for raising me to be proud of who I am, I can’t stand the feeling of little girls being told they can do anything they set their minds to, to only to realize that they will never make as much money as a man doing the exact same thing.
