Am I a feminist now?

I've classed myself as a feminist for many years, but the focus has changed as I've matured.

This gender identity stuff, I started out very much as #bekind, found that my 'kindness' wasn't good enough and went to educate myself as instructed...

OP and any other women wondering about this, just keep doing your own reading, look at different perspectives, ask questions, have an open mind and you'll come to your own conclusions. :)

I have no idea why women would be say they are not a feminist unless they enjoy being subjugated by men.

Congratulations, OP, you're actually a second wave feminist. You know, the old school ones who just wanted men and women to have equal rights and opportunities in society.

OP many women fear feminism, complicit in our oppression for fear of the risks to our mental health when we recognise misogyny and real life risk when we speak up about it.

to the points in your OP, what society would permit what is happening to women if, at some level, it didn’t have contempt for them?

There's a a disguised mens rights movement called new intersectional/liberal feminism demanding obedience from young women. Look at the girlsnightin campaign where a feminist initiative was crushed and conceded to centre males.

Every woman has a tally. Every female has a tally because of their sex. 1 in 65 rapes reported end in conviction.

Feminism is about admitting what we have still to fight for

Well, to be fair, I don't shave my legs.

oldwomanwhoruns Cheers .

And yes, same - unattractive women who didn't shave their legs, who couldn't get a man, who were jealous of us younger women blah blah - I shamefully believed all that trope when I was younger .

This is also partly why I fervently believe teenagers should not be given hormones and surgery - I know what an absolute idiot I was for years, I would have gone along with lots of things that are harmful to me - I can't believe people in authority are just accepting what these young people are saying without challenge.

Seconding what everyone has said above. 'Feminism' to me, used to mean scary women in camps who were into bra burning. (Sorry 1st wave feminists, I know better now!!)

But now I unashamedly use the word Feminist. It puts people on notice that I won't be taking any sh*t.

@CreepingDeath - agree with every point you make

Poppycock 😃

OP, I totally get it - when I was in my 20's I didn't think feminism was needed, and it felt like most of the major battles had been won. How wrong I was, I'm now late 30's and think it's needed more than ever.

I suppose that's why I patronisingly roll my eyes at the many young women blindly pushing the trans agenda, I feel like saying 'come back to me in 10 years when you've had a bit of life experience and see what you think then'. I read a great quote on Twitter in response to the young women criticising older women - 'We've been you, but you have yet to be us'.

I also agree that the word 'feminist' has very negative connotations and some women don't necessarily like to label themselves, even if their actions and belief are feminist to the core. Posie Parker for example doesn't like to call herself a feminist, and has had criticism from feminists in the past for her style of communication I guess.

Anyway, with everything going on these days, I reckon a whole new generation of rad fems are in the making .

Also, ignore Mishy, they are generally full of shite.

Obviously I don't mean that the details and processes of creating equality are always obvious or simple, just that it's generally a bit more obvious what we mean by the word 'equality' than 'liberation'.

I'd say I was an intersectional feminist. It's been a long road, I used to be anti-feminist.

The phrase 'women's liberation' makes less sense to me, because it doesn't specify liberation from what or whom. Whereas imo it's more obvious what equality means (in the context of social justice and treatment of groups within society).

Lots of people assume feminists are nagging, angry women arguing about seemingly petty and trivial issues and so wish to distance themselves from the label.

But in actual fact it simply means you think women should have equal rights to men - not more not less, just the same.

When questioned, there’s not many people who openly disagree with that
And it may be interesting to consider why you may have felt distanced or felt negatively towards the term previously. Often these reasons are rooted in internalised misogyny.

The ‘feminists’ I grew up around were all pretty misogynistic. Slating women who didn’t breastfeed babies and stay home with them, slating women who didn’t go out to work as a feminist example to their daughters, slating women who ‘needed’ a man, slated women who didn’t support all women’s choices as ‘you have to support women it’s feminism’. How it was sexist to ask for a man to do a smear, how feminism meant men should be midwives too. How it was anti feminist to be scared walking home on my own. How it was saying women are weak to want my boyfriend to walk me home when we finished work after dark. How my feelings of continually being on my own because of my single mothers working hours were an excuse to not return to work after having children, as if my experience of being a child counted for nothing. As if the time spent with my daughters counted for nothing.

And a whole bunch of men telling me what feminism is. Along with how periods are no excuse not to go to school (excessive heavy hemoraging) along with the it’s sexist to not give fathers equal rights and so on.

Obviously I grew up around a lot of shitty people. And a lot of misunderstanding of what feminism was as a political movement- even studying women’s studies modules at university there was still that confusion- the social construction of gender course literally taught female =sex, woman = gender.

But it was how feminism was all about ‘equality’ and being everything to all people what put me off. It didn’t tally with my experience of growing up a girl. I was abused because I was a girl. (As well as because my supposedly feminist mother enabled it- so a head fuck on feminism right there). My female biology massively impacted my health.

Understanding that feminism was always about women’s liberation made it click to me. I still prefer to say I am pro women’s lib rather than a feminist generally. But the word now makes sense to me in a way it didn’t when younger.

Just a bit slightly gutted at the reversal and roll back of all of the hard fought for protections and rights of women.

sorry for typos, and I hope that didn't sound snippy, OP, I wasn't directing any snippiness at you!

[quote vera16]**@AssassinatedBeauty OK I'll be very honest and say that I previously associated the word 'feminism' with a degree of negativity as a movement which put women's rights above those of others. Of course I know now that not to be the case (hides under the covers).

I also incorrectly assumed that my day to day life had not been affected by sex-based biases. Also not the case.[/quote]
That's a pretty common assumption.

Some of teh accommodations and adjustments made to help women achieve equity (not quite the same as 'equality') are sometimes seen as 'putting women's rights above those of others'). Some fo the same arguments against any form of 'positive discrimination' are levelled at actions taken for the benefit of women. In one sense I suppose you could say they are correct in that - for example - quotas for political representatives are discriminating in favour of women on the basis of sex.

This is usually where attempts have been made to redress imbalance. For example, women having been traditionally so under represented in politics that steps were taken to help increase female representation.

It's okay for anyone who is cross about this, though.

'Gender' means that males are now able to be included in the category of women, so we don't have this positive discrimination anymore. We can anticipate most if not all women's rights and protections being dismantled and scrapped like this as genderism progresses.

When I was at university I didn't like the idea of a Womens Officer as I thought it was patronising and had connotations of Victorian ideas about women being unsuited to the rigours of study. I now work in a very male-dominated STEM environment and see how different that situation is to doing an Arts degree surrounded by other middle class girls.

It's very easy to dismiss isms until they affect you, then you can't unsee them.

@BloodinGutters

feminism
/ˈfɛmɪnɪz(ə)m/

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noun
1 the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.