I'm not a 'Feminist' (But I need Feminism!)

`Isms' are slippery things. Besides the fact they're constantly being formed and re-formed by the cultural contexts in which they live, just about every member of that culture associates with and defines them differently. That's why I'm wary of attaching my name to any `ism'-- especially any one that I've spent as little time exploring and attempting to understand as Feminism. I don't have the audacity-- or the trust-- that would be required to call myself a Feminist.

But Feminism as a historical and contemporary movement is the ground I stand on. It's the air I breathe. It's the reason why I'm on track to graduate with my my Master's degree a few months after my 23rd birthday; it's the reason why I know that I too am created in God's image; it's the reason why I can participate in acts of intellectual generosity such as poetic perfomance and blogging. That's why I'm a little confused to see so many women proudly denouncing Feminism on the Internet. It feels like watching someone slap her mother. In public.

Now, don't get me wrong. A few years ago, I was right there with them. Feminism had been related to me as the battle cry of a bunch of man-hating power-hungry bra-burning megabitches, and it wasn't something I wanted to be associated with either. As a strong daughter of a family full of strong women, I didn't see what everyone was so upset about, either. I knew what Feminism was, and I knew that I didn't need it. But then, during college, I noticed that all was not right in the world of gender relations-- either in my own context or abroad. In one of those beautiful coincidences of timing, I soon read, and then met, a few real-life feminists (female and male). And I realized that I'd allowed a rich, significant, and incredibly NECESSARY global paradigm shift to be charicatured into an irrational bogeywoman in my mind. 

I read the 18th century writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, who wanted girls to learn their worth and capabilities as well as math and critical thinking, and I was thankful that I grew up knowing myself as a whole and complete person. I met a male Feminist classmate who was nauseated to watch the male third of our class take three-fourths of the floor time in discussion, and I realized how normal it still feels to be underrepresented. I thought about how my mother and my grandmother raised my sister and I while my father was in prison, and I feel their quiet strength pulsing in my veins and reminding me that I can handle anything. These are the faces of Feminism.

Of course, they aren't the only faces. Here I must plead ignorance on specifics, but I imagine that Feminists, being human beings, sometimes hold onto resentments which aren't productive or life-giving. Some may be reactionary; some may be more emotional than logical; some may be terrible scholars or writers or persuaders. Some may simply be wrong. But if associating with ______ism means agreeing with everything that every _______ist has ever said or written, well, then I quit Christianity.* But in both cases I've been comforted by the fact that we don't simply get absorbed by every notion that we stand too close to. There's little risk of me slipping into agreement with all Christians even when I count myself among them, and there's even less risk of being completely defined by Feminism simply because I refuse to uproot myself from the soil in which myself and the feminists (and the anti-feminists) are together planted.

So as far as I can tell, no matter how you choose to associate with Feminism-- as a Feminist, as a gender-egalitarian, as an antifeminist-- the movement is already associated with you. You can take the woman out of the movement, but you can't take the movement out of the woman. Or the man. 

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*I'm not going to lie; I've considered that option. I constantly have to ask myself if I've let it become another 'ism'-- if I'm a Christian or a Christianist.