Thursday 6 March 2014

The moment I knew I was a feminist

I've read a couple of books lately - Reclaiming The F Word: The New Feminist Movement and Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists - both of which posed the question, What made you a feminist?  So of course, that got me to wondering what my own 'click moment' was: what was the moment when I knew I was a feminist?  But the thing is, I don't think I've ever had one.  As weird as it may sound, I don't remember ever not being a feminist.

Born into a left-wing South African family in which political activism was as natural as breathing, I grew up with parents who were vigilant about limiting discriminating behaviour.  Not to mention that childhood thirty years ago was rather different to now.  The tyranny of pink for girls hadn't yet taken hold (most of our childhood photos show my brothers and I all wearing varying shades of brown or blue), and gendered marketing to children barely existed.  This meant that, for a long time, I never questioned the notion of feminism because it was so ingrained in me.  From the moment I could talk, I knew what was bad - racism, sexism, homophobia, disabilism - and I knew that I was therefore a supporter of anything that was anti- these things.  I was one of those terribly self-righteous children who wrote poems about the horrors of racism and gave class presentations about apartheid (I fit in really well at my school in Bradford, let me tell you).

As a pre-teen, I would spend International Women's Day (which is this Saturday: put it in your diaries) with my mum at slightly hippy-dippy workshops, or with my friend Anya at all-girl events put on in local community halls.  In between henna hand painting and trampolining classes, I would reflect on how much luckier I was than my brothers, who had to stay at home and play football.

I can remember reading my mum's copies of Ms and Spare Rib when I was barely into my teens.  By this time, she was embarking on an MA in Women's Studies and the house was even more full of feminist texts than before. 

At school (and later, at university), I was the person who brought every discussion back to feminism or queer theory.  Whether discussing the works of Charlotte Bronte in English or the sociology of the city in Geography, my preoccupying thought was always, "what's the feminist perspective on this?".  For all that, I was astonishingly poorly read when it came to, y'know, actual feminist theorists.  I've always been one for soundbites above reasoned intellectual argument, and slogging through The Female Eunuch was not appealing to 19 year old me*.  Instead, it was in Riot Grrrl fanzines that I found feminist voices I could relate to.  Girls who wrote about the pressure to be thin and beautiful, and their efforts to resist it.  Girls who wrote about sexism and homophobia at school or in the workplace.  Girls who wrote about assualt and fear or the ways in which we harm our own bodies.  I started my own ranty, feminist fanzine and briefly felt like I was contributing to a dialogue.

However, by the time the new century began and I was in my mid-twenties, feminist activism - for me personally, and for many many other women of my generation - seemed to fizzle out.  Maybe because we were trying to cope with the mid-twenties crisis of, "When does my 'real' life start/How do I get the career I want/When will I ever be able to afford to do the things I want to do?" or maybe because the fire lit by Riot Grrrl had died down, but have to admit that I, and many other young, late-90s feminists, let the cause down.  Although I still identified as a feminist, I felt disheartened.  I knew that feminism was still as essential as ever, but as the term post-feminism started being bandied about - the idea that, now women have equality in law, feminism is an obsolete movement - it started to feel like I was on my own, when really I just wasn't doing a good enough job of seeking out other dissenting voices.

For me, it was the growth in internet-based activism found on blogs, Tumblr and Twitter that re-lit my passion for feminism as a truly vibrant movement.  Seeing other women, many almost a generation younger than me, ensuring that their voices in the fight against patriarchy was like a lightning bolt to me.  From high-profile Twitter campaigns, such as the one to get the Bank of England to include women on banknotes (and the disgusting, deep-rooted misogyny that such campaigns exposed), to huge media outlets such as Jezebel, feminism has remerged as a vibrant and powerful force. 

Do I think the new era of feminism is perfect?  Hell no.  I wish that women would stop complaining that other women aren't doing feminism 'right' because I'd like to think that any activism is better than no activism, and our ire is better directed at the real target: the widespread misogyny borne of a patriarchal society.  That being said, the tendency of some popular feminist writers to focus on a narrow - often transphobic and heterocentric - view of women's experience is extremely damaging, and there is often a lack of understanding of how racism can intersect with sexual oppression for non-white women.  Because of this, mainstream feminism continues to be alienating to many women, and that must be recognised, but I can't help but feel excited when I read Laurie Penny in New Statesman, or Kira Cochrane in The Guardian, or the many bloggers out there who write passionately about being a feminist.  To see young women engaging with feminism in a way that previous generations never did gives me hope for the future and gives me the energy and inspiration to continue my own activism through writing, teaching, learning and reading.

I'd love to hear your stories: what was the moment you became a feminist?

*I've actually still never read it, although a course on Feminism at university did finally force me to read - and love - Greer's The Whole Woman, bell hooks, Naomi Wolf, and many others.

10 comments:

  1. I don't remember "becoming" a feminist either. I remember hearing stories about my mum going off to university against her parents expectations and having to pay her own way for the first year or so. I also remember feeling proud that I was taken home from the maternity unit in a yellow babygro, much to the horror of some older relatives. So I was aware that I could choose whatever life I wanted and that this was a new thing which previous generations had not had; I don't know at what point I became aware that not all girls in the modern world shared that freedom or that not all employers would be as open minded.

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    1. I had a brief moment when I thought you actually remembered being in the yellow babygro and feeling proud! I'm not at my sharpest this afternoon.

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  2. I've just submitted a Sociology PhD, and over the course of my time at university I've been to many lectures and seminars on feminism - during my PhD I even led some seminars on feminist sociological theory. I think it's a really interesting area, which is still of relevance today, it's not just a historical part of sociological theory. My PhD looked at the experiences of men with breast cancer, so men being very much a minority group in a culture which is very much organised by women, for women. That was very interesting in terms of how the relationship between majority and minority groups works (or doesn't). So for me, feminism is about creating a higher level of equality between men and women, but in a way which is flexible for different contexts.

    Oh, and referring to the comment above about wearing non-gendered colours, in the few days running up to when I was born, lots of baby girls were born, the hospital ran out of pink blankets, and so I was given a blue one. I love the photos of me as a baby!

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    1. First, I'm so jealous you're just finishing up a PhD - my dream is to go back to uni and study further. It must have been fascinating to look at a situation where, for once, men are the minority group and women have the power.

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  3. Age 16 in my 1st job at KwikSave. I was expected to sit on the till as I was a girl. I insisted that I should be treated the same as the boys and work on the shop floor.

    In hindsight, it was backbreaking work but I made my point!

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    1. Haha, I can be a bit like that with DIY - "No, I CAN do it" - and then regret not paying someone to do the job.

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  4. I LOVE this post! I did have a 'realisation' after being pretty anti-feminist in my late teenage years (an attempt to distance myself from the stereotypes I imagine) and I remember it pretty vividly. I feel slightly disenchanted with feminism at times and it can be extremely difficult in a climate of women tearing each other apart or saying that a particular brand of feminism isn't right, but I am so glad I had that realisation a few years ago because it's one of my absolute favourite things about myself haha. Cheers to being awesome feminists!! :)

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    1. There was a very interesting piece in The Guardian on Saturday about conflict and disagreements within feminism, the perspectives given (that the ability to express disagreement and dissent is an essential part of the movement) made me feel a bit more positive about things.

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  5. This is a brilliant post! And I've really enjoyed reading the different responses to see how each person has identified with the topic.

    See, I never would've have described myself as a feminist and actually, I think I always found it a mixture of being quite intimidating, oppressive or alienating. Not necessarily the people or movement, but certainly the word/term. Deferring to not considering myself part of that group. But I now know it's not as black or white.

    I went through a few different metamorphoses. When I was younger, I was quite a tom-boy. For example, I'd often get just as dirty as my brothers, or help my dad with the same things my brother(s) did; 'male things'. Then my teenage years saw more girly things but still, I wanted to be treated just the same as the boys, but I wanted to wear frilly, pink things if I wanted to! Then, from the age of 16, I entered a significantly male-dominated environment; studying, and later researching, physics. I rarely saw the negative effects of being a female in such a system but I know there are many. Perhaps me not seeing them was due to a fundamental difference in my mental approach; the person who pushed me to do physics was my dad, and the way my siblings and I were raised didn't involve 'girls can't do that!'. Now, I am a huge advocate for girls/women in physics (and science, engineering and maths) and regularly give talks in this arena. And yet, I still wouldn't describe myself as a feminist. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, or maybe I fundamentally don't understand what the word means, or what it means to be one.

    Perhaps not a very insightful response but I enjoyed rambling on. Again, a great post. Thank you!

    Jen | gingerellaj.blogspot.co.uk

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    1. Thanks for your thoughts, this was really interesting to read. My approach to feminism is: do you believe women are human beings who deserve the same rights as men? That's the essential point of feminism. Yes, there are more complex issues at work within the movement and I think it's those that people find intimidating or oppressive. But it all comes down to that one question: are we human and do we deserve to be treated as such?

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