What made you a feminist?

[MipMipMip]

I've copied my post over from another thread, hence the trans elements (Although it was trans that led me down the rabbit hole.)

I would be really interested to know what people's lightbulb moment was? I think knowing that may help attract other people. Thanks.

I was not into feminism. I was into equality, fairness for all. Not pushing men aside and demanding more and more. All this business about men have a better deal is nonsense, we're in GB in the 21st Century. Equality is here, sure women won't get promoted as fast if they're missing time to have maternity leave but when they are there they will.

I read a few threads about the trans issue. Of course trans people should be able to change where they want! They've had ops to get rid of genitalia, they must really feel they are women and are in a bad situation so yes, I'll pretend.

Then I started to hear a few fact. That for many it was a turn on to dress as women and toinvolve unwilling participants in their fantasies. The numbers who don't seek any medical help, let alone transition. The ones who are wearing their teenage daughters clothing and getting aroused (ifanythingabout your teenage daughter or their belongings gets you aroused there is something very wrong). The crime rates staying the same post transition.

Then there was what was being demanded. Access to women's prisons. Ignore safeguarding. Rape centres and refuges no longer being sacrosanct.

I started hearing instances. A woman going for a smear, requesting a female nurse and being told the man identifies as a woman. A man going into a refuge claiming to be a woman and raping people. Another going in a refuge and when women objected the women being kicked out for being transphobic. A woman questioning being punched. A woman being made to lie in court about gender. A man leading a hate campaign against a women's officer then taking her place. #NoDebate. Meetings to dicuss this being shut down. Police involved for stating facts. Employers called for people disagreeing. Endless endless abuse on Twitter.

So trans did not mean what I thought it meant and these are not people I want in my space.

I started seeing how privileged I am. I have not been raped. I have not been assaulted. I have not had a violent relationship. I have not been obviously used or missed out on things because of my gender.

I had to think of my #metoo moment. I remember it because it was funny (would it have been had I been alone?). How many have I forgotten?

I started to realise that men did have advantages. That a men's pill was developed and scrapped because it had the same side effects women put up with. That when a child is ill it is the woman expected to miss work to deal. That male privilege is real, that the effect is there even if it's not obvious. That men think women dominate a conversation if they speak for 30/. That things really are not equal and even here, in GB in the 21st century, things are not fair and there is a fight to be had.

There are a lot of things happening right now. Knowledge of FGM. Rapes in India. #MeToo. Rotherham. But it was these boards, with the mix of voices, full of facts and arguments, personal experiences and shared stories, that brought be to this very angry point. I don't like having my eyes opened. But they needed to be and sadly I learn more to horrify me everyday.

I am a feminist.

Thank you ladies.

Hmm, it would be way back in primary school in the 1970s, being told I couldn't play cricket but had to play netball, couldn't do woodwork but had to do needlework... because I was a girl.

But welcome to the coven! Your dungarees, garden bra-burning brazier (pun intended) and "regaine for armpits" (TM) are in the post People on this board in my experience are very nice (despite its fearsome reputation on some other bits of Mumsnet).

I guess was never an equalist because I could see that women were being given the shitty end of the stick over and over again, that the people who weren't equal were in fact women (I do want equal rights, but equalism makes it sound like the inequalities in society are randomly distributed through society rather than being distributed according to a recognisable pattern to do with sex, race and class). "Equalism" always strikes me as a bit like those people whose knee-jerk reaction to "Black lives matter" is "All lives matter" - well, yes they do, of course they do, but on the whole it's not white people in the US being pulled over by the police and shot dead in front of their partners while they have both hands on the steering wheel.

What made me a feminist? Men's behaviour

Having several brothers and a mysoginistic dad. It sharpened my feminist instincts.
(I do love my brothers and Dad, but I'm an eyes wide open kinda gal and have been since childhood).

Welcome to the coven from me too!

I don't think I ever made a conscious decision to be a feminist. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't be one. I thank my mum, my nan, my aunties and all their lovely feminist friends for that.

And as for "equal"..at about 19 it occurred to me-men have had precedence for thousands of years. They didn't want to be "equal" to women, they wanted to own us. So why, when we want our piece of the pie, are we slammed for potentially overtaking them?
What if girls do better and women earn more? These possibilities are presented as if they are the end of days, when actually the other sex had all of that for centuries.
I want to be at least equal and I'm not sorry.

It was when I was quite young, my dad saying "I'm the head of the household". And I thought, why?

I saw the logic of it and need for it from a young age, did some reading, adopted a lib fem position.

I then got a bit disenfranchised from the whole thing, mainly because the blogs I used to follow all got taken up with infighting and calling everyone out all the time for everything so nothing was actually getting said. So I dropped out of online conversations but kept principals.

My journey to being rad fem was longer

A friend got fired for being pregnant
Another friend was in a violent relationship
I started reading the relationship boards here.

But I can date the moment that I turned rAd fem to about 2 years ago and a post of Datun's on I think one of the Spartacus threads or another early trans thread. All she said was something like women are oppressed because of their ability to bear children and it all fell into place.

I know it should be really fucking obvious but so much 3rd wave stuff is about denying biology and deriding "biological essentialism" that it had just never really clicked for me before.

I’ve never not been one. I was a proto-feminist small child before I had so much as heard the word, and despite a total lack of role models. It’s incomprehensible to me to be a woman and not identify as feminist.

i have always been a feminist it's a innate feeling that i have always had, fine it odd to think others don't feel the same.

Like ifNot

Also realising that parenthood costs mothers more than it costs fathers.

In health risks, In loss of earnings, loss of savings, jeopardy to employers' faith in you, loss of time, loss of freedom, hit to pension, increased labour at home in terms of childcare and housework

It just costs women more. 99 times out of 100 it costs women more. Financially, practically, emotionally, logistically. It infuriates me that the sacrifices of parenthood aren't more equal.

Death by a thousand cuts.

Starting with being pissed off I had a choice of itchy tights or cold knees at playschool but the boys had nice warm trousers (thanks mum)

And peaking with having a daughter, who went to that same preschool some 30 years later and spent her first session making necklaces for a princesses and pirate theme whilst the boys jumped about on a climbing frame. Ffs.

There has been many, many moments between and since. But yeah. I’m a feminist.

I didn't really realise that women hadn't achieved equality until Mumsnet

Of course I always thought that mostly men and women should be treated the same, but it never occurred to me that this wasn't actually the case. To me feminism was all done and dusted in the seventies and it wasn't really needed any more because of course men and women were treated equally.

MN really opened my eyes and made me view things critically. I'm not sure if I'm grateful or not - in some ways I think I was happier ignorant, but once you see what's going on you can't unsee it, and it's so bloody enraging

in the 70s everything seemed stacked against girls. in 1980, having to fight to get onto the woodwork classes, we had until the end of the first week at a new comp to get our parents to write to request that we move from needlework and home ec to woodwork, metalwork and engineering drawing. The first week of a new school should have been about support not hostility. They hated me from there on in, but weirdly i went on to do civil engineering as a career.

that and every day since, i think i have had an experience that made me more of a feminist, even before i knew the word.

Finding of about sex as a child through A. a man who liked to loiter near Brownies cookouts and make sure they saw him wanking and B. Through a conversation with my mum after viewing a police poster about a girl who had been abducted, raped and murdered. So essentially, I knew about male violence long before I even had a chance to explore what sexual pleasure might be for me. No girl should have that kind of initiation into the world of sex. Its so wrong.

The Advent of Facebook brought about my lightbulb moment. The sheer numbers of misogynists who are on there, and the handmaidens who support them. Hateful, bile filled posts. All of them speaking as if they want a woman to inflict their hate on. Dismissive of rape, assault, harassment. I had to stop reading them.

Although I suppose I had an awareness of gender inequality from a young age. In my parents' marriage my mum was the smart one. But my dad thought he was. He'd no time for whatever women had to say. So my mum never had a voice.

The Self-ID thing peaked it. Entitled, privileged, instead of fighting for their own space they choose to oppress women. Misogyny personified.

My mother. Born in 1927. Had to give up work when she married because she was in the civil service. I've never not been a feminist.

I grew up in a misogynistic family. Most of the men are violent, most of the women were abused as children and again by their husbands. It was just the way things were.
One day I snapped and stood my ground, and I booted my brother in the nads. I realised I was going to be bullied by him anyway and no one was going to stick up for me, so I may as well go down fighting.

Always been a feminist. I blame my best childhood friends mum, who was at greenham common
As a child I was quite obsessed with fairness and noticed early on boys and girls weren't treated equally and it really rankled.

I was brought up to be a feminist. But there has been incidents of sexual harassment that cemented it.

When I was 7 in 1953 my uncle told me I had to be a nurse instead of a doctor because I was a girl. I got angry about that.
Every year there were things I was not allowed to do because I was a girl, so I stayed mad.
When I worked in the berry fields when I was 13 they treated me the same as they did the boys. That was a first.
The Equal Pay act of 1963 didn't mean I would be paid the same as the coworkers who were men though, because the men had a family to support and my children didn't count as a family, I guess, because I was separated from my husband. By then I wasn't just angry, I was ready to fight. So I did.

Having an engineer for a dad who delighted in teaching me the tricks of the trade. Having a mum who believed in dressing tidly but who thought the whole make-up thing was no competition for an extra 20 minutes in bed. A dad that cooked, a mum that wallpapered.

Being brought up to judge people on what they say and do, not what they look like. Being born in the 70's when gendered toys were less of a 'thing' thanks to Spare Rib et al.

All this was very important, but the real 'epiphany' was changing school and arriving for PE with my football studs. Was told 'girls play netball, not football'. Handed a bib and then got told off for doing a throw-in instead of something called a 'chest pass' that was piss easy to intercept at that level (12 yo) so seemed utterly pointless to me.

My previous school's county had done all PE mixed, including dance, rugby and so on. I had been lined up for the county team football trials before moving.

'Girls don't play football' consequently
1)Prompted me to get a book about Suffragettes out of the library.
2)Made me bunk PE for the rest of secondary school.
3) Made me the woman I am today.

to request that we move from needlework and home ec to woodwork, metalwork and engineering drawing

Ha! I went to an all girls school and mine was the first year the school ran an O Level Technical Drawing course. They wrote home to tell our parents what a brave and feminist step forward it was. I did it because we had to do one non-academic subject and I was shit at art!

At school seeing unfairness and comments like “I need a nice strong boy to do go and get x”. And thinking that 12 year old boy is no stronger than me, why should he get to bunk off for ten minutes to go and get x from another classroom.

I started feeling the unfairness before I was a teenager, and it grew the more I witnessed it. The sexual harassment at my first job at 15, feeling uncomfortable with older colleagues/bosses ogling me, saying inappropriate things to me and then getting pissed off with me for making more sales them.

For being seen as a piece of meat, the constant sexual innuendos, touching, grabbing, not taking no for an answer, the shocking entitlement some men think they have over your body, so tiresome and degrading.

For being surrounded by lads and ‘lad culture’ as a teen, where young girls sit around whilst men play computer games where the characters have sex and beat and kill sex workers, watch football and sports that were all male dominated, and see music videos and magazines everywhere such as Nuts, Zoo and FHM which told women how to look to be considered sexually attractive.

It was all a bit shit, and I hope the world young women grow up in now is better, we need strong female role models, we need young women to be listened to not leered at, they need to feel confident to say no.

Yes MistressCeeCee reading comments on line has been another fuel to my feminism. It's not just about how parenthood disadvantages women economically, it's how dismissive society is towards rape and sexism and abuse of power.

These men who self-identify as good men, they never fucking stand up for us and challenge the locker room talk, they just correct us by saying ''not all men''.