What made you a feminist?

The remorseless litany of violence against women and children. Helped established a rape crisis centre way back in the 70s . Once you see it / know it, you can never unsee it.

I am devastated at how easily the rights of women are being removed. Who'd have thought, after decades of activism, Spare Rib, Outwrite, political changes, women's rights could be so easily removed by men - and politicians stand by watching or cheer leading the misogynists.

I was about 7 when I figured I was a feminist - though I hadn't heard of the word. Growing up through my preteens and teens every day the papers had at least one story about a bride who died in a stove accident. India's infamous dowry deaths.

After many years, I feel the same sense of horror at the weekly killings of women in the UK. As Jean says on the bike thread, the bodies keep coming. How can one not be a feminist?

Having DD made me a feminist. It wasn’t until she was born that a lot of things that has rankled for years became clear.
I don’t want her to face the shit I faced growing up and accept it as normal, like I did. Because I want more for her, and for women and girls in general.

Internatoional womens day 2004 at the ymca in Pune India. Standing there with women who survived being set on fire was quite humbling.

All the things that others have already posted, plus this - seeing the gap between the life that my mother wanted for herself and could have had in a less sexist society and the life she actually ended up with. By 5 or 6 I was raging on her behalf on a regular basis.

Since I was about 14 when I realised I was good at exams I have felt I could do whatever I wanted to do and realised I was as clever as the boys and was their equal. I started reading feminist literature and tend to think all women are feminists. The ones who don't like the word just haven't thought about what it means. Very few women want to be a man's servant or be paid less than a man for the same work.
I became gender critical due largely to transexuals in sport and the GRA insanity. Transexuals who just got on with life in their new gender and didn't try pushing women out of the way so they could win medals/ go on short lists/ eliminate women's changing rooms/ pretend they were women even though they had penises they had no intention of getting removed didn't bother me.

Male violence made me a feminist. I have been raped, sexually assaulted, attacked, the list goes on. I don't want this for my daughter.

I thought we’d been there, done that (to be fair, all girls school, academic success, early career all confirmed that idea). Then I had kids. Mummy-tracked, some rubbish post-natal care, the ‘pinkification’ of childhood, the ‘girls aren’t good at maths’ of primary school.

Now I’m definitely a feminist - and for me, it’s all about the biology. I had the odd grope on the tube etc as a teenager, but the inequality really hit when I had kids and chose to take a long maternity leave in order to facilitate breastfeeding. My career has not recovered. While on maternity leave I did the vast majority of the household organisation / chores / planning / cooking, and I couldn’t change the balance when I went back to work. School phones me even on the days when my kids tell the office that their dad is at home, and I’m over an hour away at work. My DH’s family, school and the dentist call me Mrs DH’sName, though I never changed my name and it’s correct on all the forms (I have to re-correct it each time).

I really didn’t expect all this - I thought I had equality. Turns out not. I’d like it to be different for my daughters.

Always have been due to my amazing parents.

I was always a feminist but from a social justice perspective - from fighting for toilets in my first proper job where as an IT consultant I had to visit companies where many had no female toilets on the mgt floor (where the computers would be housed) through to golf clubs not allowing women to attend corporate events through to going on radio (MoneyBox I think), when an insurance company refused to pay out on a burglary because ex and I weren't married and they said my stolen goods weren't covered but his were (even though I paid the bloody premiums) - they would have paid out if I was a maid or a visitor however!!

I worked hard, did well and then I left my ex who launched an all out war for years - weaponising the legal system and god knows what else to intern me overseas. I turned to the services that I paid all my tax for and found them to be non existent for me.

I gradually realised I was like one of those black slaves in the US that whatever I did or whoever I turned to (and still happens today), they were not only wilfully blind to me - but they would punish me for trying to get help / out. I had to be taught a lesson and kept in my place - at the bottom, under their jack-boot, at their whim.

I'm now a bloody enraged radfem ready to spill whatever blood is needed to win this war - because it takes million of women and girl's lives each year, never mind about all the injuries that are mislabelled as something other than the cause - violent, entitled men, using a variety of coercive control tactics, protected by other men and the patriarchy.

Bring it on.

I am also smug at how much better the English Women's Football team is than the men's.

I am angry that those achievements are given next to no funding in comparison to the men and very little media coverage.

I don't follow cricket or rugby, but aren't our women's national teams doing rather better than the men in that too?

But the patriarchy and institutionalised sexism aren't a 'thing' supposedly.

@Jeanhatchet

Men.

That's all I really wanted to say too.

I'm realising that even on feminist threads I'm scared to voice my opinion. Obviously not as rad fem as I thought I was.

Am I somewhere between lib-fem and rad-fam? Med-fem? Mad-fem? I'm definitely mad about it.

I remember when I started becoming sexually active. I enjoyed sex/sexual contact and did it willingly because it felt good. I got a lot of comments and was warned about “getting a reputation” and I remember thinking, hey, i’m being berated for something a boy would not get any stick for.

Then a few years later I was in an abusive relationship. The man I had a relationship really, really did not like women and took it out on me.

I read some stuff and started to identify as a feminist.

Then I had my daughters and realised the sheer amount of unconscious bollocks that happens even when children are small. I bought a blue dinosaur sleepsuit when I was pregnant and had lots of “what if you have a girl” comments.

I joined Mumsnet and read the FWR boards. The threads about the Cologne attacksand the trans issues really opened my eyes and now I would say i’m a radical feminist.

Men

For Christ sakes. No nothing trans made me a feminist. It is so tiny. Do you know what really want to know what did?

Growing up with an abusive father. That's what did it. I am equal and I am indepenent and I deserve, demand and get the same rights as men. It's not negotiable and I have absolutely no issue with the trans agenda.

It really bothers me when women who have never suffered get their arse in their hands about something that has never and will never affect them and claim to be feminist, when doing nothing but shout about it.

You walk a mile in my shoes. And you will know exactly why I am as I am and why I have no time for this shit.

I was born furious that girls had a raw deal. Why did my brother have better toys, better clothes, easier expectations? But this meant I hated being a girl, then wanted equality, not sure when I grasped the equality flaw to be honest. It's rife though, today I saw people questioning why there wasn't an equal number of men's refuges, poor men.

What made me a feminist?

I was born female in a man's world. Getting groped at school, in lessons as well as in the corridors. Wolf whistled on the way home, in school uniform. Seeing the boys doing winter PE in tracksuits, when we were expected to wear ludicrously short skirts. The pressure to be pretty, and sexy. The number of people that assumed I couldn't be a doctor, because I was a woman. The changing rooms that were still labelled doctors/nurses instead of male/female. The people who insist I must be a Miss/Mrs. The people who have seen Dr on a form, so assumed I was a man. All the meetings where the men talk over me and down to me. The constant mansplaining, before that was even a known concept. Realisation that it was true that men walked in a straight line, and women were expected to dodge. The men that grope because you dare to enter a night club, or a pub. The men that grope you on public transport.

Knowing that as a woman, I am just as good as a man, thank you very much, and am not putting up with this any more. It isn't one thing, it is a thousand.

Now, what made me a TERF, that's a bit more complicated. I am not transphobic. I have worked with people with gender dysphoria. I have fought for them to have access to medical services, and used the preferred pronouns, and condemned some of the reactions. And then all the other trans jumped on the bandwagon. The TRAs, and the AGPs. I saw group after group violently thrown under the bus: those with gender dysphoria, lesbians, homosexual children, autistic children, women. Enough is enough.

My mum and all her friends were full on hairy legged feminists when I was growing up so it's always been there

*Anyone apologising or being embarrassed for being 'late', stoppit right now.
*
Wholeheartedly agree.

If MN only ever made one woman realise how important feminism is it would be a triumph, the fact it has influenced many is incredible.

There's no shame to be had in developing knowledge or an understanding.

I think I was assigned feminist at birth

I can't remember not being a feminist - though I am always learning more.

I've been re-radicalised about 8 years ago, after being a bit more fluffy/liberal in 00's (busy doing other things & being s bit "cool girl" for a while)

It's a journey.

Saturdays, in the mid to late '70s.

My dad and my brother went off to rugby practice on Saturday mornings, and then on to watch a game in the afternoon in the local club.

Whereas my mother (working full-tine, same as my father) and I were tasked with cleaning the house (dusting, hovering, scrubbing bath and toilet and sink, etc.) (And laundry too - washing and drying and ironing everyone's clothes.)

And also preparing the evening meal for the returning males.

I thought it was wrong.

Anyone apologising or being embarrassed for being 'late', stoppit right now, there's really no need! Doesn't matter when or how you come to feminism, the arrival is a reason to be glad. I have been a feminist for yonks, but only realised my thoughts were considered RadFem about three years ago. It took me a further year to own it. We all get here how we get here.

My mum only started realising she might be a feminist a couple of years ago and she's in her seventies.

I’m embarrassed to say I only recently converted to feminism since mumsnet

I grew up in a very very sexist household. My father was an abusive controlling prick. A traditional man. Head of the household. My brothers were treated very differently.

I grew up thinking feminists were nutjobs and hated all men.

I have a fuck tonne of metoo stories.

But until mumsnet, I never really realised what a feminist truly was.

And DH has changed an awful lot too, not watching porn any more, talking about metoo, we chose a surname together instead of me taking his, he does 50/50 childcare and housework, things like that.

Proud feminists we both are. Am sad to see the bad press we get. My father was all ‘feminism gawn mad’ type.

I think I’ve always instinctively been a feminist, but only able to clearly articulate what that means and why in the last 15 years.

I actually don’t think that I was socialised as a child in the typical fashion that many people here talk about. My childhood was rather chaotic and my mother wasn’t particularly interested in clothes, hair and make-up (or indeed housekeeping etc), so I never picked all that stuff up at my mother’s knee. My father was relentlessly pushy about my academic achievement and took little interest in any other aspect of my life (he died when I was ten, so that is my lasting impression of him).

I didn’t want to be a boy, but I recognised that boys and men were regarded as superior in society and I craved that same effortless authority. I would consciously adopt the symbolism of maleness (e.g. I would say that my favourite colour was blue, because blue was male).

In secondary school I was on the debating team and took part in UK-wide competitions. I learned to speak and argue with confidence, and I still tend to dominate conversations in the way I now see that men do. I was always a fairly good critical thinker, but debating really honed that skill.

I called myself a feminist in school (and it was in secondary school that I had my first Me Too moments), but I didn’t know what feminism really meant until university. I studied archaeology and anthropology, I learned about human behaviour, genetics, history, politics, gender and sex. I learned how to apply feminist analyses to history and the challenges in making women visible in the past.

Then I started to read feminist works and as the years have gone on I’ve come to understand and be able to articulate how and why I am a radical feminist.

I’m grateful for my odd childhood, though neither of my parents would call themselves feminists and certainly didn’t talk about any of this stuff (I’m pretty sure my dad would be appalled by me now!).