I’m a feminist but I’m not against men. I’m a feminist but I’m not superior to men. I’m a feminist but I’m not sexist.

When I first decided to attend a liberal arts college, I expected to see many feminists around me, which was a vast change from the town I came from. And I did, but once I settled in and found my friend group, I discovered that many people have their own ideas about what feminism is. None of these ideas, however, were correct descriptions of feminism.

Feminism is defined by Dictionary.com as “the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.” But this is not what I heard when my new friends talked about feminism.

Some of the most common misconceptions about feminists that I heard were: all feminists are women, all feminists hate men, and all feminists think women are better than men. Not only are these are not feminist ideals, but they also do not accurately explain feminist beliefs.

Based on a study conducted by the Huffington Post and "YouGov" in 2013, it was revealed that, only 20 percent of Americans identify as feminists. Comparatively, 82 percent of survey respondents believe in equality between men and women, while 9 percent claimed they did not.

Interestingly enough, the 82 percent of survey respondents that believed in gender equality would be considered inadvertent feminist, yet for some reason, they do not define themselves as feminists.

So why are the 82 percent of inadvertent feminists not calling themselves feminists? Well, as the study continues, researchers asked survey respondents if they viewed the word “feminism” as a positive or negative term. 37 percent of respondents said they viewed the word “feminism” as a negative term, while only 26 percent of respondents considered the word to be a positive term.

Reflecting on these new ideas about what most of the population thinks feminism is, I started to question why I am a feminist? Why do I associate myself with a term that the majority of the population, the majority of my friends, view as a negative term? After thinking about it for only a short time, I realized I am a feminist because there is still inequality between the sexes.

I am a feminist because, according to Borgen Magazine, women are still forbidden to drive in Saudi Arabia, and because in Pakistan women who refuse arranged marriages are subject to “honor killings,” and because in the UK, Turkey, Slovakia, and countless other nations women are not allowed to serve in combat, and because, at this rate, it will take 45 years to bridge the wage gap between men and women in the US.

Yes, there are women who identify as feminists who hate men and yes, they may also think that women are superior to men but these women are not feminists. What I hope for the new friends I have made in college to understand is that feminists are not sexists. Feminists believe in equality between the genders and that there are still problems between the sexes and societal standards that need to be addressed. I am a feminist because I believe in equality.