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.
