What made you a feminist?

When I read the phrase 'Women have very little idea how much men hate them' in the Female Eunuch.

I was a teenager and suddenly lots of events and feelings and treatment started to make sense. It wasn't just coincidence. All this 'stuff' was happening for a reason. The penny dropped.

I'm a feminist trapped in a woman's body.

Being brought up by parents who subscribe wholeheartedly to traditional gender roles, and who very clearly preferred our brother to my sister and me, started me off noticing that "it's not fair" and questioning why. I was reading Germaine Greer at 15, but I understand her better now (I think).

And now I've had 20 years of adulthood and every day I experience or become aware of further injustices.

Mumsnet and realising that being a feminist didn't mean one exact thing, that I can be a feminist and still disagree with other feminists.

Datun made me a feminist

I think subconsciously my Mum just raised me to be a feminist, despite having older brothers I was never treated differently by my parents or made to feel that I was 'just a girl' and couldn't be on the same level as my brothers. Despite my uncle once proclaiming I was the 'son' my parents never wanted, and watching my aunts and grandmother treat my brothers differently because they 'didn't like men' so I would get spoilt for holidays and gifts and they'd receive nothing.

I think the lightbulb moment really came though when I started high school and a young man took an instant liking to me and I wasn't interested, so he spent the next 3-4 years relentlessly stalking and harassing me, I had to get his number blocked from our telco to stop his incessant calls, I'd have to hide my backpack to stop him leaving 'gifts' for me, I had to block his emails from the vile threats he would send about me and my friends and worst off everytime I complained and raised this people would just respond 'Oh you should be flattered' and 'It's just an innocent romance' - like no, it was harassment of the highest order.

I ended up having to print out all the 'evidence' and lay it bare for my parents to show them it was serious and violent and they took me to the police to get a restraining order out on him as the school weren't interested to intervene in the slightest.

Suddenly I was a pariah, I had head teachers calling me into private meetings during lunch to interrogate and intimidate me into dropping the restraining order, I'd get things like 'What if he kills himself, it'll be your fault?' (eh, no suicide is definitely a one sided decision kkthanks) and 'What about his right to an education?' 'What about his friends?' 'What about his future employment opportunities, he won't be able to join the armed forces or travel' etc.. like no one was teaching him that actions have consequences, instead my experience was being minimised into 'overreacting' and being an 'hysterical teenage girl'.

The whole thing ended with me changing schools, losing my friends, getting sick as stress exacerbated other health concerns, it impacted my grades, I had to home school, then I had to choose a Uni about 5 hours away from my home town just to feel 'safe'. It's something that has hugely impacted how my life turned out and I often wonder how my life could've been different if I'd just given up.

Funny thing is, if the roles were reversed I doubt any of this would've happened, but then I don't have this sense of entitlement that just because I like a person that they must like me back or else.

All this drama because a young woman wasn't interested in a young mans advances and she bore the brunt of the punishment.

I could have written your post OP. Identical story here. In ituntil the bitter end now!

I have always had feminist beliefs, however I did not know I was a feminist until I was called a TERF. Looked up radical feminism and yeah, fits me perfectly.

I actually used to think the radical meant extremist. And also (embarrassingly) that feminists were all angry man hating dungaree wearing hairy shouty women. I bought into the media lie, basically.

never your last paragraph puts it so well. i too thought it was a "series of unfortunate events".

I've been a feminist since childhood but various experiences have reinforced or altered my feminism.

In primary school- not being allowed to wear trousers. Being pushed or chased by boys and being told by teachers to 'just stay away from them then".

In secondary school- sexually active girls were called slags but there was no equivalent word for boys. Being pressured, by a teacher and in front of the whole class, to shave my legs and armpits.

On becoming a mother- the assumption that I would know how to look after a baby and a house better than my partner would, and would therefore do all housework and childcare while his life remained relatively unchanged.

On becoming a single parent - watching ex partner continue with his education and career but being unable to do the same due to caring responsibilities. Realising that my career and earning potential had been permanently damaged but his had not. Learning that the CSA consider £15 per week to be an adequate contribution from an absent father.

I came to radical feminism as a result of

• Working a series of low-paid, typically female dominated jobs and realising that they are low paid because anything considered to be women's work is devalued.

• finding out about the phrase 'cotton ceiling'

• an epiphany where I realised that the grooming, sexual harassment, sexual assaults and rapes I experienced as a teenager were not a series of unfortunate events, but connected and resulting from a society which privileges men and devalues women.

Always called myself a feminist but in hindsight it was a pretty vague identifier as I had lots of those sexist ideas about not being like other girls / women and not being affected by sexism.
Motherhood and an awareness of my own biology (as well as help from this forum!) made me into a real feminist

i had many siblings but all boys and girls were brought up roughly the same, sharing the same few toys and wearing similar clothes. mum did literally all the housework and looking after, but didn't expect the girls to follow suit. i never questioned my mum's role. it never occurred to me i had that much in common with her. i enjoyed a lot of freedom.

there were more boys and men than women and girls in the family though, and i felt they must be more important. i recall thinking how all my favourite musicians and authors and philosophers were men. i concluded i wasn't a feminist, because i really liked men.

i liked men so much i grew up into one of those really cool special different girls other people have been talking about. also very cool with the porn and the porn inspired sex. i remember the exact point in the late 1990s / early 2000s when porn culture started to influence my sexuality, and i resented my parents for not teaching me to be a girly enough girl. i had to work hard to learn and i never felt like i quite pulled it off.

interestingly for me the sexual assault and rape and harassment experienced in my teens and 20s did not turn me into a feminist. what did? i met a man who earned a lot more money than me but insisted on sharing it with me. he told me my job was more important than his and he thought the disparity in our wages was unfair. he got me thinking about why what i did (a typically female role) was so undervalued. i started to look outwards from my own experience to my mum's and to the women around me. through my work i came into contact with a lot of stories of abuse.

so as a person who'd always loved men, it sadly took a man to get me thinking critically about women's places in the world. but from there my feminism snowballed, turning into an avalanche after my first baby and a fucking ice age after the others. to his credit, the man, who'd fallen in love with the special cool girl, did not run away from the raging ball of feminist fury that he'd unwittingly provoked.

I would like not to be a feminist. I would really like not to be. The capitalist patriarchy keeps on making me a feminist. Like watching my dh die inside and then actually die, because he wasn't 'providing' like the patriarchy said he should, and because taking care of people is not a financially productive activity and we have been told that it is a drain on us rather than an essential part of any civilisation. Like watching my mother spend a lifetime pretending she wasn't ridiculously clever and good with money, because she had internalised all that shit about 'emasculating' men. Like finding on a group work experience placement aged 16 that the boys had been taken off to another office to be shown the calendars of naked women that the company produced for some clients, whereas the girls were kept away from this, and that it was somehow OK that they produced this stuff, provided they kept the 16 year old girls away from it. Like being sexually assaulted at my own front door by a stranger - because he could. I do believe transwomen are oppressed by the patriarchy, because they are men unlike what the patriarchy wants them to be. Life made me a feminist and keeps me a feminist. Bugger it.

Being in the kitchen helping wash the dishes with my nan and mum after sunday roast while my dad and and brother sat on their arses watching tv. What the fucking fuck???? I was about 9.

Can I ask why Lang?

Why men can't be feminists? Or why I am suspicious of men who loudly proclaim themselves to be feminist?

1. Feminism is for women, about women, by women. Men can amplify or provide support but they are not women.

2. Why is he proclaiming about himself instead of amplifying the voices of women?

SheilaHammond Thank you. I feel bad due to having such a 'charmed life' while women suffered so.

My gran lost her mum during WWI (not due to the war) and during WWII she took over the running of the home and had to feed and clothe my mum and her sibling yet she was so gentle, loving and kind. She was widowed very young but I don't remember her ever complaining about anything. She is my role model.

I just feel now, it's time to learn as much as I can and do what I can. I think after my own experience I owe that to other women who have suffered so much for their sex.

Don’t feel guilty spontaneous. Be proud. It’s great you are such a role model to your family.

Male violence all through my childhood. Seeing my mother beaten and threatened and controlled. It being well known that was happening but just accepted as what men do.

Fuck that.

Agree that men can’t be feminists. Allies yes, my DH is one of those, great man, but they don’t and can’t know what it’s like to be a woman.

I’m def a radfem.

I feel a bit bad about my story. I've never been raped, assaulted, been treated as less a person due to my sex. I live in a quiet rural location and when my husband was alive I just got on with life in a happy marriage with our children.

When my husband died and the last of our children left home I was at a bit of a loose end. I started reading things online about women and was shocked as it hadn't been part of my life experience. I now realise I've lived a very charmed life.

My toe dip then full plunge into feminism came when I realised the full effects of self ID. I have daughters and granddaughters and it terrified me. I began to mention things I was finding out to my DC especially those with daughters and they were horrified. The more I learned the more I shared and the more terrified I and they became. My DC are all #peaktrans even those with no girls. I'm just so grateful I came across this subject when I did so I could help to try to stop self ID and also so I could warn my DC what they could be facing.

Now I am a feminist I shall die a feminist. I just feel very guilty I didn't know more/understand more a lot earlier. I think this is part of the reason why I do sometimes get things wrong but I'm proud to say I learn more each day and get less wrong too.

My parents had a very traditional marriage so feminism was something that just didn't appear on my horizon - until now!

Senior school over 30 years ago

I did physics and technical drawing woodwork and metalwork

Mainly because few girls did the 1st and only me and two friends did the last three and they weren't seen as girl subjects

(In my school before anyone has a pop)

I dont even like those subjects i only did it to be contrary

Men call themselves feminists when they think it'll grant them access to pussy.

No man can have the life experience required to be a feminist. We all arrive here through a personal journey. A man can be a feminist ally and I welcome male allies wholeheartedly.

I think men can be supporters of feminism and even live according to basic feminist principles. But they can't actually be feminists. And I'm generally suspicious of any man who announces his own feminism.

I’m another one who is pretty late to this. I didn’t think we needed feminism anymore - teenager in the 90s af girls school, did ok in my career in my 20s. Sure, I had unpleasant boyfriends and was told by my dad that I had no value because I was no longer a virgin but that was normal and I couldn’t see how sexist it was. I thought my household was enlightened because my mum was quite successful and I only have sisters but see it as anything but now.

What changed me was adult anorexia and a particularly wonderful therapist, and Mumsnet FWR. Speaking to my therapist in my recovery we explored anorexia as the result of growing up in a patriarchal society and everything made sense. That coincided with the trans stuff becoming a big deal on here and with #metoo (which made me realise things I had never seen as sexual assault couldn’t be anything but).

Now I’ve realised how bad we still have it in the way women are still viewed as inferior and that the few precious rights we have are under attack I’m not going anywhere. I’m in with both feet.