Early signs you were a feminist (light-hearted)

[Lio]

By chance I heard Simon & Garfunkel's cover of Scarborough Fair the other day and had a Proustian moment. I'm guessing I was 6 or 7 when I first heard this song, and I hated it because of all the 'tell her to make me' stuff. Gah! What if she didn't know how to make a cambric shirt? Make it yourself.

What early signs do you remember?

In infant school where I realised for the first time that not as much was expected of girls as it was of boys. Also the first time I heard someone say "you're OK for a girl" as I was building with lego rather than loitering in the home corner.

I was too young to know what pissed off is, but if I'd have known, thats how I would have felt.

When -age 4- I refused to wear pink for my cousins wedding. So there were 2 pink bridesmaids and me looking very cute in lemon :)
When - age 13 - I insisted on yellow icing in my 13th birthday cake...the bakery lady was deeply distressed :)
My aunts gave up on me after a while...for Xmas I stopped getting cuddly teddies (?) and pretty things and got really useful stuff like nice pens and a lovely grey cardigan :)
They dispaired of me, I think.
My sis was very into pink, sparkly shit and teddies so they still got to buy them.

Oh god, yes.
School.
I went to a very strict catholic school -for a time :)
Boys did pottery and girls did needlework.
It sucked.
I complained loudly and at length.
Result: the other girls thought I was odd, the boys thought I was odd and the teachers hated me.
I had to do needlework in the end, much to my disgust.
In 2 years I almost completed....an apron.
:)
I was lucky when I got to 14 as 2 of my teachers were die hard feminists and I felt someone understood me at last.

This thread is depressing and inspiring in pretty much equal measures.

Just been catching up with this thread and was heading towards saying it's great and horrible in equal measure ? and then wintersnight said pretty much exactly what I was thinking.

The story about the railway museum/castle museum will stay with me. Wonder what happened to that boy?

I refused to wear pink to my nan's wedding, so got stuck in a hideous peach dress instead. I didn't want to wear a dress either, but was convinced by my nan that it not being pink was compromise enough. I was jealous of my brother's funky red bowtie! I was about 6 I believe

Lio - I caught up with the boy who went to the Castle Museum later when we were both in the upper 6th. I'd say his early attempts to push at gender boundaries had been forgotten and he was showing fairly typically socialised teenage boy behaviour. We were having a conversation in the pub about our A levels and how we were finding them - most of the girls played down their abilities and said they were finding them hard (they went on to mostly get grades A to C- this was back in 1984). He had the "male swagger" thing going and said he was finding them easy - went on to get E/U for his (the scare quotes are because I think this is a socialised pose - I think it's "performing masculinity" in the way that high heels and long painted nails are "performing femininity": I don't think I got to know him well enough at age 18 to know what he was like underneath this).

Hi Lurcio: I'm choosing to believe that he came out the other side and turned into a good guy.

Probably the defining moment was aged about 9, when we visited an army base and I found out the women aren't allowed to drive the tanks. I was outraged and got cross with my DM saying 'well do you want to drie a tank? What's the problem then?' because that was not the point

Watching The Saint in the 70s when suave Simon Templar had enough of a young woman getting uppity and suddenly picked her up, put her over his knee and spanked her

I was horrified. Still am, actually.

When I'd joined the local Women's Group in the early 80's before I'd even finished school.

I've never found a group like it since,sadly.

Loving this thread. Aged 3 telling my mother I shan't stay home like her, I shall work and my husband can stay home and look after the kids instead as I didn't fancy what she was doing. Strange as currently I don't work, spend all my time playing house while DS(8) is at school and DP at work. (ah the recession makes fools of us all)

And aged 10, scandalising my idiot of a next door neighbour by asking her where her son got his Thundercats bedspread as I wanted one, she wouldn't tell me as they were for boys.

Thinking my Gran, (who bought me up) was utterly ridiculous for having refused to teach my Dad to cook before he left home because he was a man and a woman should cook for him, and my utter hatred of Penelope Pitstop for simpering when she could have just sorted it out herself instead of yelling "help me" pathetically.

I was also very lucky to have my Grandfather who refused his medals because the women he worked with couldn't claim them as they weren't considered on active service, (he was a radar instructor in WW2, and apparently some of the wrens he worked with lost their lives due to unstable batteries on the radar sets.) He was also offered the post of head of art at Millfield in the 60's but turned it down after the interview when the head master disagreed with his decision. He made it very clear that women were just as important as men no matter what anyone told me.

Being made to play netball (no one heard of that outside of primary school) not football (on telly)

Boys doing woodwork w we didbloody sewing.

Crappy skirts for girls, boys got trousers
-much warmer and more practical.

Stupid screaming females in films.

Playing robin hood regularly with the boys at school we qll had taken a character - except me as the only girl. I was Thixo, not maid Marian. THo I did play sherrif of Nottingham more often than not.

Had an irrational fear of dolls as a young child and thought that dinosaurs were much nicer.

Beating all the boys in Chase in Year 3.

I was the only girl to do woodwork with the boys in Year 7, when the girls were doing cooking. Luckily my Dad was fully behind this decision.

As a young adult being told that as a woman I should submit to a man (religious). I realised I was smarter, and thought more about things than the men my age in church and vowed that this was never going to be my future.

Very early on, (before becoming athiest!) my vision of God was a woman, beacause she was like a big mother looking after everyone. I was very annoyed to discover that 'He' was always referred to as a man.
As a young teenager, when I asked my PE teacher in secondary school to set up a school girls football team and he laughed in my face. I and many other girls in my year were already playing for a local team and quite successfully. I got a petition together and set one up with another much more forward thinking teacher, but was constantly scorned by the head of PE. He continued to offer only netball to girls for years to come. I refused to play netball for the school out of principle.
The same PE teacher asked for "four boys to put away the trampolines" to which I volunteered and he refused to let me help. Being a very active, sporty girl and being turned down in favour of some very weedy IT type boys who ran out of breath going up the stairs I was pretty frustrated. By this point I think he did it to annoy me!

I was very young, playing doctors and nurses with my nan. She told me I couldn't be a doctor when I grew up, I'd have to be a nurse because I'd be a woman. I told her I'd grow up to be a man then, because I was going to be a doctor. Not quite a feminist response, but the time I was first aware that my sex was supposed to constrain my choices, and also the time when I was absolutely sure in my head that wouldn't happen.

Nursery end of term. My best friend (a boy) got a book on dinosaurs and I got some rubbish girl book. They were just ladybird books but I stropped until my friend swapped. I wanted dinosaurs not the silly pink covered one.

I'm finding these so interesting and, at times, jaw-dropping.

WereTricksPotter, I love it that you called those builders on their behaviour.

Weretricks - in my upper 6th year, my single sex comp joined forces with the boys' school next door. They couldn't cope with girls winning the further maths, physics, chemistry and maths prizes - so they gave the maths prize to the best performing boy. He'd come 5th overall. Love your response to the builders.

I'm an engineers daughter, I always had Lego and toy cars and a big chunky orange bike.
Yes I had dolls, but I had a chemistry set and made bows and arrows too!

So no Damascus moment was always a trouser wearing, tree climbing Tom boy.

Absolutely hated Y7 playground, the boys played football and the girls were meant to just gossip.

Also we had wear skirts and couldn't do wood work