Welcome New Members How did you become a feminist? Tell your story! (PART 3)

I first started identifying with the term “feminist” when I was 14. My brother and I moved in with our dad for the first time since we were 5 and 6, and it was insane how differently we were treated. There was a double standard for everything. He was never hassled about his grades but I was constantly grounded for getting anything below a B+, it was fine if his room was a disaster but my room had to be spotless constantly. I had to cook and clean every day (including doing his laundry for him) and his only chore was mowing the lawn in the summer time. I could go on.

That was pretty much the extent of my feminism for a long time. I thought double standards were basically the biggest problem women faced, and I didn’t like how those double standards affected me, but I never thought about how it affected women as a whole.

It was actually tumblr in about 2012 that made me see how misogyny is everywhere, and that rape culture existed. But that was liberal feminism, and it never really sat right with me. I didn’t really know how having casual sex was good for women, or how pop stars dancing in lingerie on stage was empowering. I kept those thoughts to myself, but I completely agreed that TWAW, and that makeup was an art form, and that I shaved/waxed/tweezed every hair on my body because I liked it. My line of thinking was that the reason those things were criticized was because they were things women enjoyed, so it was my feminist duty to be as feminine as possible. Because that was showing the patriarchy that being a woman is okay, right? I didn’t see how all men (yes all men) benefitted from women’s desperation to live up to their impossible beauty standards and how my own choices to conform to those standards was hurting women as a whole.

I peaked trans right before I “peaked patriarchy” (love this phrase, btw). I made a comment on a reddit post that was apparently transphobic, and got downvoted to hell and someone commented something like “/r/gc is leaking” so I went to /r/GC and it was incredible. I’d finally found feminists who knew that prostitution wasn’t empowering, that TWAM, and that pornography was detrimental to women. There were so many people who were able to put my feelings into words a lot better than I ever could. Before finding /r/GC I thought radical feminists were basically libfems on steroids. I didn’t know even there were different kinds of feminism.

This was all just a little over a year ago, and it has been great. It made me look at my choices and think critically about them. It made me confront uncomfortable prejudices that I’d held for a long time against women, made me question my own motives for a lot of the things I did, and changed the way I see my own role in society.

I’m so thankful for this community.

My mom raised me to be a feminist. She's not highly educated, but she knew that if her girls didn't have a means of supporting ourselves independent of men, we'd be vulnerable to abuse. She was adamant that we all become college educated and self-supporting for this reason. That's what feminism meant to her. The ability to live free and independently.

She's had a string of abusive marriages herself, but she finally found a husband who is kind to her. I am very proud of her for making it out of an abusive marriage to my dad, where she was trapped as a SAHM with several kids and no education, to becoming an RN to support herself, to getting herself out of a really violent situation with my first stepdad.

And I definitely learned from her mistakes. I've been fortunate never to be more than verbally abused on occasion.

That said, I never studied feminism very deeply, and mainly took it as presented to me in the media. So liberal feminism to me was feminism. My understanding of second wave/rad fem was that it happened, but they lost steam because they hated men. And then disappeared. So I was told basically it's good and empowering to be a slut and perform femininity. Ended up with an ED and having very unsatisfying relationships.

Eventually I found radical feminism was still alive and not manhating like I thought. It was just realistic. I learned about it through /r/GenderCritical when someone called me a terf online and I had to look up what that meant.

My main priority as a feminist is protecting women and girls from violence, especially male violence and sex-based oppression. Aside from maintaining safe spaces for those who need them, the greatest means for this is economic assistance. So basically rewarding the hard work of mothering financially. Ensuring that women are paid the same as men for the same work. Ensuring that children's needs are met, because their needs disproportionately are met by their mothers. Taking care of kids and women go hand in hand, to me.

i grew up in a pretty liberal area, so i just sort of assumed that sexism was a thing of the past. i was also raised religious, so i was taught that some things were just god's plan for me when he made me a woman, and of course a patriarchal god could NEVER be sexist.

but then, when I first started getting sexually harassed by adult men, i realized that sexual harassment from my peers wasn't harmless teasing like my teachers said, but rooted in the same thing: they believe that, because i am female, they get to touch my body however they want even if i scream and beg for them to stop. (little girls with brothers are especially vulnerable because they are treated poorly by their brothers and then the parents write it off as "natural curiosity" about his sister's naked body, and if she gets mad and defends herself it's HER who started the problem, not him by being a peeping tom.)

tumblr circa 2013, cesspool though it was, also helped me realize that rape and sexual harassment were NEVER the victim's fault, and that a woman being beautiful or desirable wasn't an open invitation for men to rape her. my mom told me growing up that wearing certain clothes meant i was a slut or that i was inviting sexual abuse, and had male family friends back her up to basically intimidate me into never wearing crop tops or nightgowns without underwear. seeing other girls talk about how they dressed for THEMSELVES, like I had always wanted to, made me realize that nothing i do is an invitation or justification for abuse.

I was born one and my thoughts were all confirmed on the realisation

whenever males form gangs, drug gangs, mafia style gangs, military even,

they automatically turn all there attention towards females and look to exploit them sexually and force them into prostitution.

Men are the real gold diggers, especially when they become pimps and what women are to such men, are a push over, an easy source of revenue for them..

and this is the big thing about males.. whenever they join forces in the name of their manhood they will automatically in a pattern of male behaviour that never alters turn all there focus onto women and girls and hunt them down to rape and torture them and for a fee, provide the rest of their male population an outlet for all their pent up male frustrations by allowing them to abuse their female captives to.

We don't asses men individually we assess them as a group for good reason because our very lives depend on it

I was born in the Philippines but sent to live with my retired grandparents in the US for education. My grandparents were extremely protective and didn't let me have much of a social life, so I spent a lot of time online and reading books.

Philippines is a traditional conservative culture that is patriarchal on the surface, but actually a bit matriarchal underneath. It's difficult to frame in western concepts. Typically the husband is the income earner, but the wife makes all the financial decisions, even in matters of family business, if that makes sense? For example it is expected that a husband will give his income to the wife, and then ask for an allowance for his hobbies.

Anyway in HS I was very much into IRC and online forums, and before torrenting or even Napster, people would share mp3s in IRC channels. This led me to discovering a lot of riot grrl bands and other music that just wasn't available in Philippines, so I guess my introduction to feminism as a concept was stuff like Bikini Kill, and then I started reading Simone de Beauvoir, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and also Filipina writers like Benilda Santos, Rosa Henson, Rosario Torres-Yu, and others. The Philippines has always kind of prided itself on our literature because it was one of our main tools against Spanish and American colonialization in the 1800s / 1900s.

It's difficult to frame my feminism in western concepts because politically speaking, I lean center-left in American politics, and maybe liberal-progressive on a case-by-case basis, but I also consider things in my Filipino culture where we may not be as "liberated" as American mentality.

So I think if you were to ask me my views on different feminist issues, I might give you a "Libfem" response for one issue, and a "Radfem" response on another issue, but I think that's absolutely normal of everyone and we all don't fit into neat square little boxes of ideology.

I never thought of myself as "a girl" or "a woman", I was always just ME, a very complex being, everything I ever had to perceive and interpret the world, my conscience... You know, there are not even words to describe what "being oneself" means, because you were never anything else. But it was definitely not related to any concept of "masculine" or "feminine". I thought it was perfectly normal to want to read novels or see maps or make experiments in the kitchen instead of playing with dolls, because why not? The concept of "girlish" or "boyish" didn't exist in my world.

That changed when I realized that I lived in a world where "the boys" and "the men" were a distinct category that was placed directly above mine, which was called "girls" and later "women". There were also a set of behaviors and hobbies ascribed to each category. This is when I came to understand that my father's violence didn't exist in a vacuum, and that the lack of consequences for his near-homicidal treatment of my mother was directly related to this power dynamic.

I took a long time to discover feminism because liberal feminism is all I knew, and I thought it was shallow and empty. What the hell do I care about empowering myself through sex work? I thought. Not that I didn't have my flirtations with it: female socialization did do its number on me, and I found myself in all sorts of disgusting situations where I degraded and lowered myself. I "had sex" (more like laid down while men masturbated inside me) with people who I thought saw me as a human being, but they just saw me as a fleshlight. A girl.

I never thought much of the trans thing, but this year I read an article somewhere that talked smack about GC and Ovarit and I discovered the whole radical feminism world, of which I was only vaguely aware before. I started thinking about the trans subject deeply for the first time, and I realized that it was absolutely nonsensical.

The feminist movement here in Argentina is mostly libfem. Supposedly anti-imperialist people chew this propaganda which comes directly from US universities, and roughly came from French philosophy beforehand. Y'know, two of the most powerful countries in the history of the world. But they have no coherence. They say that the Europeans created the categories of "male" and "female", and stuff like that, in the name of the indigenous peoples. You talk about sex trafficking and they call you whorephobic. That sort of thing. Not surprisingly, I don't have feminist friends in real life, and not online either because of the whole fear of doxxing. That's how powerful real feminism is; we're afraid to "come out" as real feminists!

To be honest, I really don't give a damn about what "being a woman" intrinsecally means, if it does mean anything. I am this person, this brain, this baggage of feelings and experience. That is all. I don't think human beings experience "being a gender" in a more significant way that they experience "having two legs". How is that meaningful? I only know that it feels strange and upsetting to be considered subhuman by the other half of the species just because "I am a woman", and I hate it. I read mysoginistic stuff online and it makes my blood boil. It's the same with any other kind of hate for characteristics that you can't control and that don't define you. Other than that, I don't really care about "being feminine" or whatever - I just am a woman, biologically speaking, which is as important to me as my blood type, and it's not something I really think about. Outsiders, however, do think about that when they see me and act accordingly. That is why radical feminism is so important.

If I was a dumb person, I'd have the exact same thoughts and consider myself non-binary. However, I recognize the trick. I acknowledge that, except for these sick transtrenders, nobody "feels" gender. I understand that gender is a social construct, just like race, that still hinders my experience of life. I know that my sex does affect me and I know that my womb has a prize tag.

Due to lockdown I'm not really engaging in any activism outdoors. I just post here as much as possible and keep educating myself through readings of Andrea Dworkin, Sheila Jeffreys, Mary Wollstonecraft... (By the way, I was always an Anglophile and I taught myself English, so it's extra lovely to know that you're referred to as "TERF Island"!)

My priority is to keep learning and to eventually meet rad fems in real life. I'm also a law student and it would be ideal to engage in work that benefits women worldwide. That's really my main goal in life.

I've called myself a feminist for as long as I can remember--having an incredibly backwards thinking patriarchal father will do that for you in a jiffy. I was always told what is and isn't proper for me to do as a girl. (I'd get scolded for whistling 'cause only rowdy boys did that.)

In my pre-teen to teenage years my thinking was probably closer to what is considered liberal feminism. My parents wouldn't let me shave my legs to avoid getting bullied in school, wear swimsuits and go swimming with friends, wear tank tops or shorts, etc. I associated feminism with having the right to do these things that I wanted to. But I wasn't really knowledgeable about feminist teachings or social movements. I knew vaguely of the suffragette movement and women's rights--whatever they teach you in school. I associated feminism with becoming equal to men and proving that women and men aren't different.

My Catholic upbringing and education combined with my liberal-leaning community influenced my stance on birth control, abortion, pornography, and prostitution. All those things were not okay for me personally (Catholic part) but if others wanted to use or do those things that's okay since it didn't hurt anyone, or so I believed (liberal part).

By mid to late high school my views were definitely no longer aligned with liberal feminism. My father had just abandoned my family without warning. My mother uplifted our family singlehandedly by returning to the work force (after being a SAHM for almost 20 years) and supporting me and my sister. It seemed like a freak incident but it introduced us to a community of women who all experienced the same thing. Learning how common it was for men to abandon their families and for the separated women to be 'othered' by their old community definitively shattered any illusion I had remaining that men and women are basically the same or that feminism is simply about the equality of the sexes.

A year after college my 2 year serious relationship ended horribly. After the breakup I decided to try dating again. I had never used apps for dating so I began to read a lot of dating advice and stumbled across The Female Dating Strategy subreddit. I learned so much about the current state of dating that I had no idea was going on. For example, I truly thought porn was something only a small percentage of the population used and that it was basically like erotic novels on screen. I had no idea how violent and misogynistic the content is. I also had no idea that women were shamed for not wanting their SO to consume porn. I had no idea just how prevalent hook-up culture was. I didn't know about abuse disguised as PUA strategies. I had no idea that prostitution was being marketed as "empowering sex work" to 18 year olds.

In that same subreddit, someone mentioned Ovarit. I lurked on here for about a month and slowly discovered that a lot of what felt like common sense feminism to me had a name for it: radical feminism. Feminism that's unapologetically for women.

Now I'm trying to be more intentional and academic with regards to feminism. I'm trying to read works by Andrea Dworkin and expand my knowledge. I wouldn't call myself a radical feminist since I'm far too uninformed on the exact tenets of radical feminism or what any of the 1st wave, 2nd wave, etc movements of feminism mean. But I'm grateful for the insightful posts on this forum and looking forward to learning more. I'm also hoping to apply that knowledge to my activism and truly uplift women.

edit: fixed a horrible typo

Actually it was just because I really liked reading science fiction when I was a pre-teen and all the good female sci-fi authors feed a lot of feminist type sentiments into their novels or just present enough interesting, well rounded female characters that when you read some of the male authors that are considered to be good the contrast is glaring. At that point you realize that men just don't view woman as categorically the human the way they see other men and you start questioning the implications of that world view.

What drew you towards feminism?

In short, a lifetime of experience as a woman.

Longer version: I didn't really notice sexism as a little kid, but as soon as I hit puberty, the reality hit me. Catcalls form truckers and construction workers. Boys in school sending sexually explicit messages asking for things (why oh why did I have everyone I knew on facebook?!). My first college bf had a porn collection and didn't understand my problem with it. All of this and more eventually coalesced into my realization: something was fundamentally wrong, and feminism seemed to give me the answer I was looking for ever since puberty hit.

What have been your experiences in the feminist movement?

I find a lot of women I talk to, when I start getting into socialist feminism, become very very excited. I think a lot of women are initially attracted to liberal feminism, but find it a bit void of answers. I usually end up giving out book recommendations, and my hope is they follow suit!

How did you first encounter feminist thought? Books or blogs, youtubers or conversatisions with feminst friends?

Initially, tumblr to be honest. I was a young college activist, and I just straight up went into the feminist tag. It initially seemed I had two options: Liberal feminism or radical feminism. As I branched out into wikipedia, and then books, podcasts, etc. I found way more approaches historically and contemporarily.

Has your feminism changed over your life? For instance, were you a liberal feminist who radicalised?

I was initially kind of on the fence between liberal and radical. I liked some of liberal feminism's goals of putting women in positions of power and changing laws for equality. They had the basic groundwork it seemed. But they were too pro sex industry - and the sex industry was the last straw that drove me to feminism in the first place - so radical feminism, which was blatantly against the sex industry and pro Nordic model, attracted me more. Then I became a radical feminist, and over time, I became a socialist feminist as I began to include a marxist lens. Now I include multiple perspectives, postcolonial feminism and ecofeminism included, but I generally consider myself a socialist feminist first and foremost.

What changes has becoming a feminist made to your life, your perspectives, your activism, your relationships, etc?

being a feminist has led me to question everything, and probably helped hurdle me towards socialism to be honest, as I began to question authority, hierarchy, everything that I was supposed to just accept. It's also made me prioritize women in my life, and never compromise on this matter.

What are your priorities as a feminist?

Liberation of global women from the global economic dependence on men

Abolishing fast fashion, which primarily employs women in the third world under shitty conditions to enrich primarily male shareholders

Abolishing capitalism and the profit motive which keeps workers in poverty and exploits the earth causing climate change

Ensuring that health care and pension is separate from jobs, and universal basic income or other safety nets exist, in particular to enable women to actually choose whether they want to work and put their child in day-care (which needs to be widely available), or spend time with their child (this is a particular concern for me in reference to indigenous and linguistic minority women, who may not share the dominant culture, as economic factors forcing her into poverty to preserve culture or go back to work and potentially have the child be assimilated as very much an issue to me).

Changing the societal attitudes to view prostitution, pornography, and stripping to be misogynistic economic exploitation, including implementing the Nordic model. Honestly, I appreciate Iceland's efforts in this regard, and wish more countries would implement it.

Two things. One: when I was 14, I slept over at my friend’s house. She had a really cool mom who was also a lesbian. I remember I needed something to sleep in and her mom loaned me this t-shirt with a bunch of text on it. I remember I laid the shirt out on the floor and sat there reading it. I have since tried to find the text online but I cant. It was basically a huge long list of all the double standards and prejudices women face. At the end it said “it is for these reasons I am part of the women’s liberation movement.” The examples given were things like “When a man is bossy, he is strong, when a woman is, she is a bitch.” Etc. But they were all incredible points I had never really thought about at that age, and reading them hit me like a punch of wild truth to the gut. It blew my mind. And I copied the whole thing out into my notebook and I recall from that point on just being so much more aware of the ways in which sexism affected my life. Like, oh wait, when the guys at school stand in the hall and comment on the shape of our bodies as we walk by just trying to go to class, or give us number ratings out of 10 for our “hotness,” that isn’t just a generally shitty thing that happens. It is a SEXIST thing.

Oh, and then the next year I got the internet and was introduced to porn. And it didnt escape my notice that 98% of it featured men degrading women. And I felt like that shattered me and made me realize how so many men will never truly regard us as equal unless we keep on fighting to prove that we are.

What drew you towards feminism?

I was raised catholic, my mother was very conservative and her views on women bothered me from an early age. She had quiverfull cult books on her shelf as well as anti-choice books that painted Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood as evil incarnate. She would listen to Dr. Laura Schlessinger on the way to school, and despite that being terrible I also felt no representation in the opposite - the Howard Stern Show. Both these things made me feel uncomfortable.

As I grew I became an accomplished female student athlete. My mother would rail against me being immodest in class when I would be able to wear the same clothes while competing. I noticed how boys and men were often incompetant then wondered why I as a girl was supposed to submit myself to them because god said so. I think the final straw really for me was the right to abortion. I very early on understood that it could not be murder, despite arguing with my mother about it many times. Its self defense!! Murder is not possible when your life is in danger! So I guess the final straw for me leaving the catholic church at 16, and becoming feminist, was the right to aboriton.

What have been your experiences the feminist movement?

Our Bodies, Ourselves was a lifesaver for me, however by the time I was in high school feminism had fully gone to the side of "empowered sluts" which I felt no connection to whatsoever. I have not really had much experience with feminist movements that really serve me its like they were all underground by the time I graduated college.

How did you first encounter feminist thought? Books or blogs, youtubers or conversatisions with feminst friends?

Actually my first encounter with feminist thought was my best friend in junior high. She planted all the seeds of questioning my indotrination, and the rights of women, and she gave me the period talk I never got from my own mother.

Has your feminism changed over your life? For instance, were you a liberal feminist who radicalised?

Yes I was a liberal-ish feminist who radicalized. But truth be told it was always underneath. I had a fundamental discomfort with the "empowered porn star" narrative of feminism from the 90s especially all the explicit music that dehumanized and scandalized women and women's bodie. Woodstock 99 was a major shock to me as I thought for sure it could have been me (one of the hundreds of girls assaulted and raped), and nobody in the media really bothered to address at all the way it harms girls. The Monica Lewinsky thing also deeply hurt me (it happened to me in junior high), again I knew deep down she didn't deserve the hate she got, yet I couldn't articulate to anyone what that was until I later learned outside of school what patriarchal rape culture means. Same with Brittany Spears. Why did she get so much vile hate? She was talented, beautiful and kind.

I graduated school right at the beginning of a major teenage self-harm/anorexia era which continues to this day. Deep down I knew it was all wrong. Especially as an athlete, who had every reason to love her own body.

I have only become more aware of how horrible it all is. Part of me kind of thought that sex work could be liberating, but since I've done it myself now, I know for a fact it isn't. Next, ofc, the whole TWAW thing was something that I honestly sympathized with but never fully believed and didn't think they expected you to fully believe. The level that they take it has only made me absolutely disgusted with how much men hate women.

What changes has becoming a feminist made to your life, your perspectives, your activism, your relationships, etc?

I was always a feminist from an early age. My own mother disowned me because of me leaving her belief system. I have not made friends, lets just say, because I have my views. I am daily shocked at how much our society caters to men and their fragile masculinity. Even other women do it!!

What are your priorities as a feminist?

Good question. I have to think on it. There's so many issues. Education would be my main priority. We have to prepare our younger generations to stand up for themselves and know what truth is.