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.

I can’t remember ever not being a feminist really. I have very early memories of being told that I’d have a different surname ‘when’ I got married- and thinking it was unfair that I had to change names, and my brother didn’t.

I think since entering the world of work, it’s become even more present for me- the very common perception that assertive woman are aggressive, whilst assertive men are natural leaders, etc. And since having DS I’m very aware of how I’d like him to view women, and also of the impact that the status quo has on him too- people have raising eyebrows at him having a doll and pram, ffs. Like a boy learning to care and nurture is an abomination. He’s 17 months old!

Oh and how awful maternity rights STILL are. I was treated awfully by my employer at the most vulnerable time of my life. It raised many eyebrows when I asked to increase my hours recently (from 3 to 4 days)- the HR manager actually commented on “poor DS”. Nobody’s guilt tripping DH about working full time!

OfSpartacus (love the name, btw), "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."

Yes to this. It took me ages to disentangle this, having thoroughly swallowed the liberal feminist line back in my twenties that focusing on biology was biological essentialism.

Nope - biology provides the explanation of the contingent fact (i.e. the fact that could have been different in different circumstances) as to why we are oppressed. The way I think of it is like those old police mysteries on TV - biology is means, motive and opportunity. Being biologically less strong and being vulnerable due to pregnancy and child-rearing provides the means to oppress us, the fact that we can produce children and men can't is the motive for the oppression, the "patriarchal system" (aka sexism written into the fabric of society) provides the opportunity.

Biological determinism would be the claim that it has to be that way, that there's no other way it could be and that being that way is the state of nature. None of which are true.

The fact that something happens to be a particular way, even if you can identify an explanation for how it's come about, doesn't mean that it has to be that way. The latter would be biological determinism, the former is simply pointing out the role biology has played in shaping how things happen to be.

I've been a feminist for as long as I can remember, for as long as I've known about the existence of the word feminism.

I can remember fundamentally feeling that girls and boys were treated differently in primary school, and thinking it was unfair on the girls. I've always had an affinity for women, for sisterhood, for female friendship.

In my teens, reading books by Marilyn French etc, and also Erica Jong, and reading up on women's liberation and sexual equality.

I'm very distressed by the regressive turn women's rights have recently taken.

Always been a feminist but consider myself a radical feminist after years of being a woman and realising even the really nice men have deep rooted misogyny. It's not their fault, it is how society is constructed.

I am sure others will strongly disagree, but this is my experience.

High profile men who I use to respect and have shown themselves to be misogynists include Owen Jones, Brendan Cox, Louie CK and Jeremy Corbyn. These last 12 months had been an uncomfortable eye opener.

I used to be a lib-fem and pro sex work as a choice but thanks to Julie Bindel and others I realise that sex work merely sees women's bodies as saleable commodities, as does porn.

I'm learning lots, and it is incredibly uncomfortable, but I am truly grateful to all the awesome women who are tirelessly campaigning. Mumsnet has been a huge resource, and JR should be very proud.

No disagreement from me, Triple - you sum up pretty nicely what I think too. Lots of supposedly "good guys" who are misogynists through and through, and porn and prostitution as inherently wrong because they treat women as sexual commodities (as well as excusing or even glorifying male sexual violence).

My Mother ran a Nursery school which I attended and to me she was so dynamic, she did everything in the home and was funny and vivacious, yet my Father who paid no interest in her or his children seemed to be seen as some sort of Golden Boy. I remember thinking this was very unfair. I may have been 3 or 4. I also noticed friends dads were also very unimpressive compared to the women.
And my gran told amazing stories about her mum and her aunts and I just felt in my bones that we held everything together even though we didn't get the credit.

Ironically my little sister would not call herself a feminist and yet she grew up with the same stories. I have never understood how we can see the world so differently yet have the same childhood experience.

The post here are powerful and inspiring. Is this the sort of thread that @MNHQ would consider putting in 'Classics'?

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''.

Exactly Needagoodbook

One that stuck in my mind was an article about snuff and torture porn (that I wish I hadn't read, actually). The 1st comment was from a woman(!) "women enact violent porn too" followed by several men agreeing.

So basically, everything men do that is bad, can be absolutely cancelled out because women (apparently) do it too. Male violence is the biggest danger out there to both men and women, yet the denial around that and finding so many ways and instances to dismiss and say women are just as bad, is astonishing.

Thanks fermats . I have to confess I had to look yours up! Damn arts degree!

Means, motive and opportunity is a great way of looking at it. It really helps to make sense of both the why and the how of our oppression, both of which are rooted in biology. You could extrapolate it to other axis of oppression too like the slave trade for example- motive was the need for cheap labour in harsh conditions, means was superior weaponry and opportunity was given by the exploitation of existing divisions in the societies targeted.

In both cases there is a process of othering that needs to happen as part of it though and that's where the biological determinism comes into its own. In order to exploit another human being you need to first stop thinking of them as human so making women, black people, Jews etc less than human in order to justify the fact that it is ok to treat X people like that but not Y people. X people are naturally subservient/stupid/childlike/amoral etc so they need Y people to tell them what to do.

As an aside I've always thought the idea of penis envy was hilarious and know I know what DARVO means I have to say I think this is the original example. Men desperately envy our reproductive capability-if they didn't why would they have spend all of recorded history trying to copy and control it.

In order to exploit another human being you need to first stop thinking of them as human so making women, black people, Jews etc less than human in order to justify the fact that it is ok to treat X people like that but not Y people. X people are naturally subservient/stupid/childlike/amoral etc so they need Y people to tell them what to do.

Absolutely! I remember thinking along very similar lines when trying to explain the history of segregation to DS (he'd come across it via the Horrible Histories Rosa Parks song, and was just horrified, but also couldn't understand why people would do this). I told him that what I thought had happened was this: in order to "justify" slavery to themselves, the slave owners had to invent a mythology (I think the phrase I used for DS who was then about 8 was "invent bad fairy stories") in which the black slaves they oppressed were less-than human. Then, even though slavery was abolished, the "bad fairy stories" lingered on, and people still believed them in the 1950s (in fact, a frightening number still do today ).

I think you're absolutely right that sexism follows the same pattern. "Biological determinism" is just another myth invented to attempt to justify oppression (as is penis envy, the myth of the sexually insatiable male who must be satisfied or he will turn to violence, the myth of the sexually frigid woman who only puts out to get material advantage, the myth of women as intellectually and morally inferior.)

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!).

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.

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.

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.

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.

*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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Men

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.

@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.