Feminism is defined as the political, economic, personal, and social rights for women that are equal to those of men. It’s a hot topic right now, but I can remember a time when I had never heard this word. A time when it wasn’t understood or shared with anyone I knew. I’ve come to see that often in society we equate discriminatory views with bad parenting, or loud negative opinions of different people groups, but this is not necessarily truth. Often enough, we learn things in the silence, we learn to believe things from what is not said, just as much as what is said.
When I was growing up, no one told me I wasn’t equal to the boys around me, but nobody told me I was either. I grew up with certain assumptions, that what I had to give to society was birthing children, and that any dreams I had would come true by finding validation and love in a man. To be frank: no one explicitly told me this, it was a learned belief. It was in the slight comments I heard from those around me: the stray comment about how I was good at kickball, for a girl. It was how the heroes in fairytales were always boys, and the ones who received the help were always girls. It was the fact that both men and women had very specific expectations laid out for them: women being the home makers, and men being the hard workers, expectant of love and a hot meal at their return home. These truths in my world were nonnegotiable.
I didn’t quite have the words to express these beliefs, but as I grew older I noticed an underlying inequality. I noticed the patronizing way I was spoken to, the fact that I felt that my dreams somehow mattered less, and that my desire to do something great could not happen if it turned out I fell in love, as if love meant I belonged to someone else. As I learned more about feminism in my teen years I became outraged by the treatment of women in Afghanistan, at the fact that at one point in time women did not have the right to vote, that in Greek cultures women were viewed as disfigured because they looked different than men. I became outraged by the littleness I felt, the passing over glances I noticed from the men around me, when they realized I had opinions to share. I came to embody this word: feminist, I came to be one of the roaring, loud girls that just wouldn’t stop talking about it.
But, I was not born being a feminist, and it was not preached to me either. I chose it. This is how I know that sexism, racism, greed, these are things we grow into. These are things we learn and can unlearn. These are things we choose. And these are things we can un-choose.
I wasn’t raised to be a feminist. And I’m glad. I’m glad because that means that regardless of our environments, I know that we, as people, can change. We can see how things may be today, and we can change so that our world can change. We get to alter our society by our actions each and every day. Equality is possible if we choose it.