When asked who their feminist friend was, my friends said me.
I initially hesitated.
I’m the feminist of the friend group. But I didn’t always want to be.
This conversation came up after my roommate was presented with a riddle that reveals the depth of each individual’s gender bias. Before I continue, let me give you the chance to answer the riddle for yourself:
“A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad.
The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says: “I can’t operate—that boy is my son!” Explain.
My roommate responded that the surgeon must have been the boy’s gay, second father. But what about the possibility that the surgeon was the mother? My roommate was mad that she had answered the question the way she did, having already had plenty of knowledge on feminism and women’s equality.
The riddle was run by Boston University, where they asked 197 BU Psychology students, and 103 children ages 7-17 to answer and “In both groups, only a small minority of subjects—15 percent of the children and 14 percent of the BU students—came up with the mom’s-the-surgeon answer.”
Self-proclaimed feminists were supposed to have done better, but even 78% of them could not come up with the ‘mother’ answer.
I answered “The mother,” and my roommate responded with “Of course you would!”
This surprised me. I mean, I know it’s no secret I’m on the board for Her Campus SBU but I didn’t know people actively viewed me as ‘the feminist.’ Even the person that originally presented the question to my roommate said they needed to ask me too.
I am extremely lucky to have an outlet to post my feminist ideas somewhat anonymously. I do so on the He rCampus SBU Instagram account every day. Not everyone has this outlet, but I encourage everyone to take the time to understand feminism and equality whether or not you are publicly broadcasting your opinion.
I think there’s a huge percentage of college women that quietly care about feminism. A ton of these women actively choose not to talk about it in fear of being categorized as ‘crazy’ or ‘radical.’
This is why I was hesitant to take the title.
It’s unfortunate how feminist advocacy is mistaken for radical feminist advocacy. I don’t take every opportunity to discuss women’s rights, but I do actively think about it in casual conversation. Then, when I finally have enough information to formulate an organized opinion, I come up with a blog post like this.
After thinking about it, I realized what an honor it is to be considered the feminist of the friend group. I’ve been a part of several groups of girlfriends throughout high school and college and I can easily pinpoint all of the girls I thought of as feminists.
I admired them and I still do today.
I’m curious to know if they know that they’re the feminists, too.
This article was originally published on www.keepingcurious.weebly.com