There is nothing extraordinary about me.
I'm 23. I went to university. I look more typically English than you can imagine. I don't live below the poverty line, thank god. My parents aren't well-off but I've never wanted for anything. I'm not ugly, nor am I a classic beauty. I had a 'normal' upbringing. And I'm a girl. And I'm writing this blog about feminism.
I'm saying this to show you that there is nothing about me that means my opinion should be listened to more than anybody else's. I don't pretend to be any sort of academic expert, or to have had any significant experience that means I'm any sort of authority on the subject. I'm a completely ordinary human being. But I believe, though you may disagree, that my ordinariness, combined with the fact that I'm a woman, means I have the right to comment on how I think an 'ordinary' woman is affected by issues relating to gender in day-to-day life. Because despite how liberated we appear to be, with our careers and our rights to vote, these issues are there. They affect us every day, and the fact that we have become so accustomed to them that often we barely even notice their presence just makes it even more wrong. Being accustomed to something is only an indication of the amount of time we have been exposed to it, rather than how correct a practice it might be.
I'm not writing this as a call to arms, to inspire a revolution, or to slag off any men. I'm not saying anything earth-shattering, and I know I can't be that influential, and to be honest, on the whole, I like men. I'm writing this because I feel I have to; because the more it's talked about, the more attention is drawn to it. I believe that sexism has become an inherent part of the way our society functions, and the blame can't be laid on individual men anymore. And this, I believe, is where feminism comes in. Or rather, where it SHOULD come in. And even if none of this is new, then I feel that one more person joining in the chorus of protest can't hurt.
I had a conversation with a girl in one of my classes at university last year about feminism. She said she would never class herself as a feminist; that the idea carried too many negative connotations and that she wouldn't want to associate herself with that. As a, perhaps naively, proudly self-proclaimed 'feminist', I was shocked to find out that a word that had such positive connotations to me could mean something so different to somebody else. And when I discovered how many other people thought the same way as this girl did, just in my class at university, I was even more confused.
So I got on my figurative high-horse and thought haughtily to myself, why WOULDN'T you want to be a feminist? Why wouldn't you want to strive for a level of equality that we deserve? But sadly the word itself seems tarnished beyond all recognition; so much so that many women today are afraid to touch it; afraid that people who believe in the negative stereotype of the feminist will class them as lesbians, or butch, or 'radical' – none of which are bad things, but equally, none of which are synonymous with 'feminist'. Either this, or they believe that there's simply no need for it, which is even more worrying in itself, or perhaps they worry about the possibility of standing alone from a crowd and saying about the status quo: 'This isn't right'. To all this I say, somewhat ironically yet there unfortunately isn't another appropriate phrase, MAN UP. Screw the stereotypes. We need to take back the F word.
'Feminism is the radical notion that women are people'. That's it. That's all there is to it. There's no sub clause or small print that says to be a feminist you need to burn your bra (which never actually happened, by the way), or denounce all involvement with men, or be a lesbian. These are all (horrifically outdated and incorrect) stereotypes that we, ourselves, have attached to this word. We've become our own worst enemy, and split womankind into different groups – those who will class themselves as feminists, and those who won't. Yet, if innately we all want the same thing, as I suspect we do, then what are we even arguing about?
One of my best friends is probably the strongest feminist I've ever had the fortune to meet. She's also one of the most 'feminine', in the traditional sense of the word. She wears lovely clothes, always looks elegant, wears make-up, has a long-term boyfriend, likes clothes shopping, all of the things that you probably wouldn't expect a 'feminist' to do. (She even wears SKIRTS. God forbid, someone call the feminism police and have her arrested, surely the Sisterhood won't allow that?!) In addition to this, she's also training to be a lawyer, was the editor of her (renowned) university newspaper, worked for the North East Refugee Service as well as for the housing organisation Shelter. And, as Ginger Rogers once said, she did it all in heels.
She's also, though she won't thank me for saying this, incredibly intelligent, humanitarian, socially and politically aware, and what's more, a warm, funny and loving person. AND she happily and openly admits to being a feminist. I almost want to stick her on a giant poster in London and say, if SHE can be a feminist and do and be all of these other things, why the hell can't you? These two things are not mutually exclusive.
Feminists aren't super-human creatures, sent to Earth to point us in the right direction (a misconception that I think causes the 'us and them' mentality we've grown accustomed to); they can come from and be anyone, from any background with any amount of life experience. (They can even be men, shock horror). They're also not infallible people with no problems. You can be a feminist and worry about being a bit overweight, or have man trouble, or wear make-up. They won't strip you of your badge for that, believe me. These low-level problems are so innately woven into the fabric of our society that practically nobody could be immune to them. My aforementioned friend admits to worrying about her appearance. It's the perspective you have on these issues that matters; you can worry about boyfriend trouble, by all means, but don't let this one aspect define who you are as a person. That's what makes the difference, knowing that you exist outside all of that. The feminist movement was/is about choice, and the fact that your biological sex should not shackle you to any particular decisions. The last time I checked, wearing make-up didn't impede anyone from standing up for women's rights.
There are many people, including women, who believe that we now live in an equal society, in terms of the Western world at least. Women can vote, have careers AND families, wear what they choose and be educated to the same level as men. Brilliant. But... the gender pay gap is still over 15%, for some jobs it's over 2o%; there are horrifically few women in any positions of corporate or executive power; and in politics, less than 20% of the people involved are women. Fair enough, some of these differences COULD be contributed to things other than the glass ceiling - I'm sure I've heard it argued that there are fewer women who want the high-powered executive jobs than men, though I think that's bullshit. I'm not an aspiring lawyer or politician, so I can hardly claim to have any sort of experience trying to make it as a woman in the corporate man's world. However, I believe that this extends far further than the statistics you may read about pertaining to employment, right into the minutiae of women's day to day lives. We need to redefine what we think this word to mean to show that it involves ALL women. And we are not statistics.
It extends to women who are heckled in the streets for wearing a skirt, who fear to walk home at night because they might be attacked, who believe they need to act like men in order to progress in their jobs, or equally, who are told (as I have been assured is true in some lawyer firms and I suspect other jobs too) that their feminine appearance, such as wearing high heels to work, is paramount to their success in their job. It encompasses every woman who feels that she'll be judged if she leaves the house without make-up, who despite every effort to the contrary, can't help but feel a bit fat when she opens a magazine. It involves every woman who's ever been treated badly by a man, but resigned herself to it because 'that's just the way men are'. (When has that EVER been a good excuse for anything? When has the longevity of the status quo ever been a good enough reason to fight change and progression?) It includes all the women who, sadly, think that because there ARE so few women in positions of power, that it's every woman for herself.
And I think if you were to go out and find statistics for women who've felt like that at least once, the evidence for the necessity of feminist action would be irrefutable.
So feminism isn't about fighting for the vote any more, or fighting for the right to have a career and a family. But in some ways now, because some of the issues may seem on the surface to be much smaller, the fight is so much bigger. So don't tell me that feminism is an outdated notion that has no place in modern society, or that feminists nowadays are just female chauvinists who want to screw men over for 'revenge' (you may laugh, but I've heard that one a lot before). As long as there are women who feel any of the aforementioned ways, or that they are marginalised because of their sex in any other respect, feminism still exists and needs to exist. We might be able to vote and go to university, but we still have a very long way to go, and reclaiming the F word is phase one.
