I am a feminist. I shave regularly. I wear makeup and dresses and cardigans with flowery patterns. I worry about what I look like and sometimes even how much I weigh. But at the end of the day, I'm still fighting the good fight. I'll argue with you, I'll scream at you, I'll publicize your bigotry to the world if I have to. As feminists, we constantly find ourselves battling first and foremost for people to see beyond the stereotypes they've set up for us so that they will actually listen to what we have to say. I have struggled with this issue myself, in reconciling my love of all things 50s (a time period which was very restrictive on women) with my feminist beliefs. Putting ourselves into little boxes is not going to help anyone else take us seriously, though. And you know what? I just love the swing dresses and pencil skirts of the 50s, I'm not looking to revert to the same society.
If you know me and don't know I'm a feminist, we don't know each other well at all. Feminism has become a huge part of my life and I can easily say that I've been a feminist most of my life. When I was younger, it didn't make sense to me that boys had to follow one set of rules and girls another, very opposite set (this included restrictions in the toys I could play with, the activities I could get involved with, the clothing I could wear and even the way I was allowed to sit, although my parents didn't strictly enforce these things). It wasn't until high school, when for the first time I began to feel disrespected by many of my male counterparts and disappointed in the internalized misogyny that my female counterparts followed, that I moved into the feminist sphere.
The first school I went to in college was mostly accepting of feminism. I could walk into a room full of people of any gender, tell them I was a feminist, and have many of them chime in that they were as well, or sit down to have a respectful, fulfilling conversation with me about our beliefs. I moved on from that school and found that it's actually quite difficult to be a feminist everywhere else (alright, so I already knew this, but I had to actually come to terms with it). "Feminist" is a bad word because there are still big, bad people out that who don't want us to feel empowered and use the word to describe ourselves. They will attach connotations to it that aren't necessarily popular or widely socially acceptable so that we are too afraid to identify with such a term. So declaring your feminist stance loudly and proudly is step 1 in the big fight. Step 2 is to either get loud about it or (if you're the quiet type) integrate it into your own life and lead by example.
An ex of mine told me that feminism was outdated. He told me "if you care so much about all of those other issues (i.e.: racism, classism,
heterosexism,
cissexism, etc...), then why don't you just call yourself a humanitarian?" He's not really a special snowflake; we hear this sort of thing just about as often as
pansexuals hear, "Are you like...attracted to pots and pans?" We are on the cusp of fourth-wave feminism and yet the idea is still hard to grasp for many folks. Some would like you to think that feminism is "sexist" and seeks to exclude groups of people, others feel as though there's no point in making it female-centric if we're allied with other groups. It's an old and tired and, in my ex's case, male-privileged way of saying "I don't want you to feel empowered, I don't want you to think your cause is important enough to fight for." He said that obviously women are fine, because you know, we have the right to vote and own property. Oh! Thanks for
mansplaining that to me (he was an expert at that). I'm going to take a page from
Alix Olson, feminist slam poet and musician, to explain to you how I feel about this one. Alix, at one of her shows, had a man approach her and tell her that she needs to "relax, just calm down, be more subtle," since after all, men and women are basically even these days. Her response was the poem
Subtle Sister, and the part I always want to quote when someone tells me to be docile and calm and quiet is:
Subtle, like a penis pounding its target?Subtle, like your hissing from across the street?Subtle, like the binding of my sisters' feet?Subtle, like her belly, raped with his semen,
Draped in his fuck? Funny, doesn't seem even.It's quite graphic, but it's the abridged way of telling someone that the day that women cease to be raped and beaten/killed by their male partners and harassed in the streets and made to feel as though their bodies are constantly betraying them (etc)...then I won't be a feminist anymore. That is my main cause. The reason I fight alongside the others is because (1) tearing down discrimination against any oppressed group is to begin to tear down
discrimination against them all and (2) I'm a decent human being who believes that everyone is deserving of equal rights and respect.
Where I've been and what I've built myself upon is important, but what about where I want to go? I find this is an extremely significant part of feminism: it's constantly evolving and we are always presented with new issues to discuss and learn about. Since feminism involves many peoples' voices, I want to listen to and learn from those voices. I want to hear the stories of trans woman, of women of color. I want to talk to and better support fat activists. I want to meet a straight, white, cis male feminist and hear why he stands against a system despite the fact that it gives him so many privileges. I want to meet people from all walks of life, scream and shout at rallies, help and learn from survivors of misogyny, and encourage and teach a new generation to change the world, just like we're trying to do now.
This is the way I channel my anger and sadness about what's going on in our world today, this is the way that I try to make a difference. What about you?
This was my outfit inspiration for what I wore a few days ago when we had a nice sunny day in England. This image was found on Tumblr, I'm not sure who this gorgeous doll is (looks a bit like Vintage Vadalizm but I'm not sure)! Here's how it translated from the resembling pieces I had in my closet:
I apologize for the crappy quality, I don't know why blogger isn't uploading this image bigger! Anyways, I'm really happy I finally figured out what to do with that shirt. I love gingham, and bought it on a whim, and later discovered that it has a really unflattering shape (it fits like a maternity shirt but it is definitely not one)! I'll spew about Forever 21's return policy here because it's very disappointing: you must have a receipt to return anything. Most stores will give you store credit without a receipt, which would have been fine with me, but Forever 21 does not. I misplaced the receipt and so I was stuck with the shirt, very upsetting because I didn't find it cheap!
No outfit is complete without heart-shaped sunglasses! I wished desperately that I had my paisley bandanas, but I left them at home so I had to compromise!
You can't really see them in this photo, but these pillows, from 
I'm most likely going to find a way to incorporate maps into my decor. I would really like a large world atlas so that I can stick pushpins into the places I have been as well as the places I plan on going. Even cooler would be to include local maps: of my hometown and my favorite cities (which are London and New York so far)!
