Feminism: fem·i·nism (noun)
the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests
^ according to merriam webster ^
“Self love is radical” - Ms. B
I have now spent 350 minutes in a classroom learning about feminism. Two years ago, this is something I never imagined I would have the opportunity to do. Two years ago, I saw myself as an empowered, smart, and strong young woman. I understood that I faced a world biased towards empowered, smart, and strong women. However, I never had the opportunity to really internalize what it meant to be a woman, and although I had a basic understanding of feminism, calling myself a feminist, I had no idea how much I did not know.
At the core of being a feminist, there is the value of self love. You have to understand your identity and appreciate your strengths and features to be able to uplift others and take on a society that is not welcoming you with fully open arms. For women, this is generally difficult. We are taught to question ourselves, to be polite, to work for others before ourselves, and to constantly compare ourselves to others. The habit of comparison and idea of perfection is where the whole concept of a “bad feminist” forms. Roxane Gay writes brilliantly in her article Bad Feminist about the boundaries and judgements that exist around feminism, simply because women themselves have limited what the title “feminist” includes.
Are you not a feminist if you are a stay at home mom? Are you not a feminist if you wear skirts and makeup everyday? Are you not a feminist if you do not personally support women’s reproductive rights?
To limit the title “feminist” to such a confining image is dangerous. It is why feminism remained a term and movement only accessible to white, upper class women for generations. If the goal of feminism is truly to create equality among all genders, people of all identities need to be able to connect with and see themselves in what it means to be a feminist, otherwise the movement will never succeed.
Personally, being asked at the start of our first class to answer the question “what do you like about yourself?” was a challenge. I thought immediately about how my answer would be perceived by my classmates and also found myself stuck thinking about my body image, something I have struggled with throughout my entire life. It took me some time to formulate an answer. I ended up saying, “I like that I am strong.”
Thinking back, connecting the intersectionality and confining definition of feminism with the idea of self love and personal image, I realize that I felt comfortable saying that I am strong because 1) I love that I am strong but 2) I felt like it was the “right” thing to say. In class, someone brought up the image of “Rosie the Riveter '' acting as the face of the feminist movement. Although she is not specifically who I picture when I hear the word “feminism,” I do think of a woman defying traditional gender roles, going after what she wants in life. For me, I know that being and looking strong is not a common or traditional characteristic of a woman. Knowing I am strong makes me feel powerful.
Is this because I associate being strong with men, and men with power? Whether or not we want to narrowly define what a feminist looks like, we grow up in a society with norms and media that force us to comprehend gender roles. We grow up seeing men as presidents, men as principles at the schools we go to, men asking the girl out in almost every romance movie ever, the super hero almost always being a man. Everyone grows up understanding, usually subconsciously, that men have some kind of power that women do not have yet.
Debbie Cameron’s A Brief History of Gender made me question my bias towards what it means to be a man or woman and how confining the definition of each is, as well as the fact that our world operates in an incredibly biased, gender binary way. Ultimately, my question is why do we label everything? Can we live in a world without labels? Lauren mentioned that our brain operates through categorization; can that ever change? Should it?
If labels and expectations surrounding gender make it almost impossible for me as a young woman to grow up confident in myself, make the idea of being a “perfect feminist” an exclusionary and almost impossible goal, and influence every system that exists in our world, how can they be good?
