Hello everyone,Feminism can be defined as any of the following
When I was sixteen, this was my creed. I was a raging feminist. Looking back I feel like teenaged me thought she would change the world with her passionate classroom speeches and tumblr posts. There is nothing wrong with feminism as a concept. Actually, it is a very good concept and one I still support. However, I am no longer a feminist. Let me explain. Perhaps what sparked my devotion to feminism was how misunderstood and misrepresented the concept of feminism was/is. It is this misunderstanding and misrepresentation which eventually led to my disassociation with the term. My younger self was determined to help people understand and squash preconceived notions about feminism.. My first blog post was titled ‘Feminism and Trump’. In this post, I spoke about how some people believed feminism is synonymous with hating men, and it is this toxicity which led me to resent the movement.
As time went on, I began to be ashamed to say I was a feminist. Afraid even. Feminism became quite toxic, in my experience. The word feminazi was thrown at me often and I regularly encountered people who would verbally attack me for hating men (which is completely false) or else tried to start a debate about how women already had equal rights and feminism was trying to oppress men (again, false). Internet feminism was also quite toxic in 2016/17. The argument of what makes a good feminist and bad feminist unfolded online. It was implied by some that one had to reject everything stereotypically feminine in order to be a ‘proper’ feminist. I was an impressionable sixteen/seventeen year old and took to wearing as little pink and as much black as possible. The basis of what the word ‘feminism’ meant, got lost. I got tired of people jumping to conclusions when I said I was a feminist. Immediately I was thought of as loud, ‘preachy’ and annoying. Eventually, I decided I wasn’t going to call myself a feminist anymore. Identifying myself as one, caused more grief than healing. If I had to use a label, perhaps intersectional feminist, but I would rather not. As I have gotten older, I have become more aware of many different aspects of injustice in the world. As a feminist, I wanted equality for all but the focus was on equality between genders. Nowadays I look through a different lens and I read about inequality people face due to race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation and so on. It isn’t that my beliefs have become more liberal or changed in any way, because I have always believed everyone should be treated equally. However, the label ‘feminist’ meant I spent most of my time trying to convince people I was not a man-hating-lunatic, instead of furthering my own knowledge of inequality within the world and find ways I could help relieve this inequality. I firmly believe in equality for all. It is not something that needs a label. If you call yourself a feminist, good for you. I’m glad your experience with it have been fruitful. To everyone else, arguably nazifeminists exist, but you were barking up the wrong tree when directing that term at me. Now the terms feminism and feminist make me uncomfortable. I wish this was not the case. However, there was a lot of good that came with shedding those terms from my identity. My privilege as a white woman in a first world country has been illuminated. Yes, women are victims of prejudice and inequality but so are many people of different genders, races, sexual orientation, religion etc, all over the world. I am not a feminist. Maybe some day I will build a better relationship with the label, but for now - I am not a feminist and that is okay. Thanks for reading, Rosie
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