How did you come to see a need for feminism?

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

For me, it's been very gradual. I don't think it would have occured to me not to call myself a feminist as a teenager, but it also wasn't really on my radar. I also went through the 'yay, empowerfullisement, post-feminism' stage at university.

I think now my stance is fairly radical (and I think MN is very radical in some ways, eg., the lack of tolerance for rape myths at least in FWR, and the awareness of a need for women-only space). I know that I have to tone things down to explain anything to my family, which is a bit sad. But it all makes me more and more aware we really do need feminism. I don't know how much that's because sexism is more overt now than it was a few years ago, and how much it's because there's finally a backlash against diluted fun-feminism.

Anyway, discussing this on the pub, justtherightbullets and I figured a thread might be nice, to talk about how we became aware of feminism.

I identified as a feminist as a teenager, then in my 20s felt 'we don't need feminism anymore because it's all sorter' , and in my 40s I saw the light .
I am now 48 and getting angrier by the minute - with some of the men around me, with some stuff spouted by slebs and my society as a whole.

I am hugely fascinated by some RadFem theories but am far too lazy relaxed to walk the walk.

I have found a lot of feminist blogs really good, though I came to all of them through MN. Karen Ingala Smith, Louise Pennington, Glosswitch, etc. And people like Sarah Ditum and Marina Strinkovsky. I think they helped me put things into words.

MN made me think about it all on a personal level, though, and to think about how my own family dynamics were actually pretty sexist. I'd definitely bought into the whole choice/chance rhetoric ('oh, yes, it's true my brothers never did so much cooking/housework, but clearly this is an isolated quirk of my family and not part of any pattern ...').

I really notice with my sisters-in-law, too - we all roll our eyes at the same things. Maybe if I'd had sisters growing up, I'd have been quicker on the uptake?

I identified as a feminist in appreciation of the change in our lives and expectations since my mum & grandma's times but didn't realise how much inequality there still was till I left home and saw a bit more of the world.

I concur with JeanneDM that my family dynamic was incredibly sexist, I had no sisters and my mother was very isolated and unhappy with the balance of power in our family. I couldn't see this at the time for various reasons.

I have always been a feminist since I was old enough to have feelings abotu these things, and so sort of "realised"at about 14/16 I suppose. First volcalised when a friend said "are you a feminist" and I said "of course" at 16 I think and my friends both said they weren't and I was because to me it was obvious.

For me it was because I always noticed the way I was treated by men and boys, because my appearance and personality - sex and gender if you like - do not match and because I look very feminine poeple treated me a certain way.

Also late teens + street harrassment etc always hated it so so so much. My reaction to builders whistling etc when in school uniform was always in addition to the usual embarrassment, feeling a bit threatened/uncomfortable was ALWAYS just who the fuck do you think you are to make me feel that way, what gives you the right to do that.

I never did a liberal empowerfulised thing, or looked into feminism. It's all be quite instinctive for me, what I just feel is right.

A bit like bullets it was MN that first gave me a name for what my feelings are and that's radical feminism

I mean they don't match the stereotype.

I look (and especially when a child/young) like a real stereotype of small pretty girl - that's just my looks and build and colouring.

My interests have always been more stereotypically male.

People always made such huge assumptions about what I liked and who I was based on what I looked like and it just fucked me off no end.

That's what made me a feminist and incidentally why I get so shouty on certain threads about sex/gender

I've always identified as feminist but being a parent was the real tipping point for me, seeing how boys and girls are treated differently and the way girls are encouraged to be passive and boys to be aggressive.

I also feel more radicalised since becoming a parent. From my position as a mum how things have changed towards me. Even though I've got a son I've realised how crucial it is that I'm aware and acting on my beliefs now on his upbringing and his world.
I've always been a feminist and quite into politics. But it didn't feel as important as it does now.

I've always been a feminist in a theoretical way. The point at which I realised that I needed to be a feminist activist was when I went from the girls-can-do-science atmosphere of a very academic all-girls school to the very different culture of university in 1999. Nobody seemed to see anything wrong with the "pimps and hos" themed bop in the JCR, or with date-rape, or with hilarious games where women undergraduates were quizzed on how many sex toys they had. Then I left university and was asked about child-bearing intentions at a job interview. For a law firm.

At school we had basically been told that women's rights were solved - we had the vote and a good education, it was now up to us to get on with it. The Ice Bucket Challenge had nothing on the metaphorical cold water that was poured on that by reality.

Oh gawd, yes, having become a parent focussed my mind no end!

And yes, MN helped to give me the language to express some of what I felt was right or wrong.

I too am acutely aware how much I owe my sons to become the men I need them to be.

When I was about 15 (in the 80's) I started going to the local womens group, by 18 I was doing voluntary work with young female survivors of sexual abuse.
I learnt young but I learnt from some amazing wimmin.

At uni I was more into women's rights than feminism (self defence classes, reclaim the night etc). By which I mean I thought some things were women's issues or problems but not noticing the underlying structural/philosophical/political reasons.

During my 20s, continued to be case by case (no, I'm not ashamed of my sex life, Mr, are you of yours; women may or may not be prettier in skirts, Uncle Joe, but they're not on the earth to please your eye, so get a grip) - without really making the links.

Feminism, in the more structural sense, was via MN (in my 30s).

I find it quite hard to articulate how I feel about feminism and when I came to consider myself to be a "feminist". I was brought up in quite a balanced household, power-wise. My parents were (from my perspective anyway) quite equal. If anything, mum was more in charge than dad over things I could see (years later I know this wasn't true but in any case mum is not a pushover). So it never really occurred to me that I was a "girl" and therefore less deserving etc.

Uni was a bit of a wake up call - Male dominated degree, 1:4 ratio women:men. So it started to become apparent that all was not equal and I was perceived as "different". Then a male-dominated career, further realisation that the world isn't "fair" as far as gender is concerned. So I started to get a bit ranty but wasn't really that interested in causal factors, just in discrete symptoms. I would have described myself as a feminist if asked, but only because saying no to a question that means "do you want the same rights and entitlements as men have" seemed daft.

I really started to read about feminism when DD was born. Being able to cogently explain the systemic and sweeping disadvantages that come from being born without a Y chromosome is suddenly much more important- I want the world to change for her, so I need to up my game.

I still don't know what "type" of feminist I am. I don't like labels very much though so I'm not that bothered by the taxonomy.

DoYou - yes, my mum was isolated and unhappy too.

It did annoy me at the time that my dad would come out with things like that he was just naturally less good with children than her so she'd stayed home (when she patently hated it), or that he just couldn't learn to cook, or when he'd pretend he had no understanding of meal planning. But I never really put it together, and for ages I just thought my mum was daft for not telling him where to go. I mean, she was daft - but she was also very trapped.

I thought some things were women's issues or problems but not noticing the underlying structural/philosophical/political reasons. This rings true for me, too.

I went to an all-girls school, which was nice in some ways, but I think it set me back in terms of feminism, because I didn't fit in very well, and in my late teens my closest friend was male, and so I did that typical 'ooh, I just naturally get on better with men, get me' thing.

I grew up in Ireland, where, up to my grandmother's generation the culture was equivalent to the type of culture we now associate with muslim countries - dominated entirely by religion and openly and aggressively misogynistic. My grandmother had nine children by caesarian section. Doctors never advised her to stop having children because making sure her husband could have sex and that contraception was never used was far, far more important than her health. Women were literally worthless.
My mother was brought up in that mindset but grew into the world of opportunity that Ireland was becoming in the 70s and 80s. She was first in her family to get a degree and to have a professional job. Yet, when a man came along and decided he wanted to marry her, she went along with it, as taught, and ended up with someone who, to date, has been riding on her back for 35 years.
A significant point in the development of my feminist ideas (although I never knew to label them as that, feminism was non-existent as a concept in my world) was when I was in the car with my father, aged about 12 and he said, in all seriousness, that he didn't think it was worth educating women. He said this to his own daughter who was top of the class in all subjects, when his wife was entirely supporting the family with her wage, given that he hadn't worked for 10 years at that stage. I started to realise then the entitlement that men have, the sense of ownership and privilege they hold. If a man can say that in those circumstances it shows just how arrogant they are - even when riding on the success of women they feel entitled to belittle them and tell them they have no right to that success.
Other things - like the fact that my mum earned all the money and yet my father wouldn't let her do up the bathroom because he didn't want workmen in the house, and the fact that my mum thought I was "very hard" on my then bf (now DH) because I didn't do his laundry, despite the fact that we both worked fulltime, increased my sense that the world was unfairly biased in favour of men, that men got the easy deal in everything.

It is really only in the last 5 years, though, since coming on MN and particularly since becoming a mother, that I've started being able to articulate my thoughts and put sense on them and share them with other women.

Feminism was in my DNA from the time I and got into trouble at the age of 5 for objecting to the teachers always asking only the boys to "move the benches" in PE, through childhood when I argued my corner over "girls can't do that", through teenage years when I was baffled how many of my classmates deferred to boys or tittered and giggled around them or thought it important to have a boyfriend (not my own close friends - we never hesitated to tell pushy boys to F off).

It continued into early adulthood when I chose a job that was, at that time, male dominated and did the whole F off bit again when I was informed how inappropriate my choice of work was or when I applied for promotions that put me in charge of men.

More of it when I applied to open a bank account or for a mortgage in the days when male guarantors were required. Then again, big-time when I had children and did not expect to do the whole pinny and warming slippers thing but to remain economically independent.

It carried on when people were surprised that I was not dying to be a grandmother and now that I am a grandmother that I don't see it as my vocation in life to do the whole child-caring bit all over again.

It's never ending really. But I can honestly say that I was aware how much life was biased in favour of men right from early childhood and am further baffled how it is not blindingly obvious to every little girl in the world.

I grew up with it, and didn't think about it that much - there was Germaine Greer and Virginia Woolf on the bookshelf, but I was more fascinated by the naked torso swimming costume thing on the cover than what was inside. We were brought up learning to cook and clean and also to use household tools, and the only reason I didn't have my own tools was because there was always a workshop or back of landrover to supply them all, so I just picked up the things I needed the summer I built myself a bookcase out of boredom/lack of shelves.

My grandmother and great aunts had all had some sort of higher education and career, and it didn't occur to me to question whether they'd found it difficult at all, because it was what I'd been brought up with, so I didn't know it was actually quite unusual. My secondary school was all-girls, and we were definitely being brought up to be the business women and academics of tomorrow.

There were a couple of incidents at school and uni where people did seem to think we had to do something just because we were girls, and I did stand up and question it, without really thinking it through, I just didn't really get the whole, "You can't do that because you're a girl" thing. Also, it was standing up for some crap on a project with the boys school which was almost the only time my mother actually publically supported me.

But it wasn't till I was in work and seeing women not progressing as quickly as men, though they're just as capable, and seeing friends taking time out on maternity, because they got paid for months rather than just a couple of weeks on paternity for their husbands, and they were usually on a lower salary anyway, so economically, they didn't actually have a choice. And working in IT, which is often interesting, flexible and well-paid, and yet I'm often the only woman, and I've always been in the minority, which just doesn't make sense to me. Plus people always asking, "Miss or Mrs...?" and school friends changing names on marriage and assuming I must be a secretary rather than a unix techy because I'm female, and - and over time, I just because more aware that actually, my mother's generation hadn't actually fixed everything, and in some ways we were going backwards. And if not you, then who?

I was about 8 or 9 - my mum asked me to hang up my dad's socks, he was sitting downstairs watching TV, and to make sure I hung them up in pairs to make it easier for him!!

My marriage basically. Its completely sexless and affectionless ...no touching at all. DH lost interest in the mid 90s. When ive tried to talk about it in RL (not to many people) its been minimized and not seen as important. Reverse the genders though and you get a completely different reaction "you do realize if you dont have sex with your husband he will go elsewhere dont you"

Because as cailindana said in her post above it boils down to mens needs being more important. And what society is saying to me IMO is that if your husband doesnt want sex OR affection then you shouldnt either.

I was at an all time low when i first posted on MN just over 3 years ago. I knew my upbringing was sexist (i have a catholic mother too Italian in my case) and i had many arguments with her and other sexist people but i didnt fully 100% identify as a feminist until i started using MN. Since then and particularly in the last 18 months i speak up when i see something sexist or mysogynistic I told my slimming world consultant that i thought their magazine was focusing too much on looks rather than health. And i have said other things both in that class and elsewhere that havent exactly made me popular. Im not scared to speak up any more. And i have so much more confidence than i had 3 years ago.

Mn was also where i discovered those brilliant bloggers mentioned above

It was a gradual process as I discovered my relationship was abusive and that what I thought was normal wasn't, at all. So mumsnet. Then started following various feminism threads as interested in the topics and then the feminism section started up.

A few things. I took a job in prison which started me off on a left wing path. Then I got married and took my DHs name despite not wanting to and him offering to change his name to mine instead so we matched. Then I had a baby girl. So in the space of two years I laid the foundation of who I am now.

I was educated by liberal nuns who taught us to be feminists. They had to be well educated themselves to enter the order and then they had big expectation on their pupils to be feisty and take ourselves seriously as girls and women. We largely did and I am raising my own girls in the same way.

I think I have always identified with many feminist ideals - women being equal to men, women are intelligent, women having the right to decide how they will live their life for themselves etc, but never explicitly called myself a feminist. As mentioned in other threads, I have been through my own personal trauma, and came to realised "Women just don't have the same advantages in life that men do, in so, so many spheres", of which I am very interested in the business areana. I was lucky enough to have connected to coupled of women (much older and wiser than me), who gave me a few books to read. And so feminism has become a more recently explicit ideal for me.

However, it was this article, that made me realise that I needed to step outside my comfort zone and analyse my role in feminism, and the things I can do (large and small) to get the ball rolling. Everything we do in terms of feminism benefits someone, somewhere else. If women get into senior management, then perhaps other countries who treat women poorly will step up. If women maintain the right to decide on their own bodily autonomy, perhaps that might help with FGM in other countries. As they say, "every little bit counts".