Elizabeth Heatwole
Contributing Writer
I have identified as a feminist since the summer before my first year of high school. The summer of 2018 was a period of enlightenment for me in which I began to gain consciousness of a world outside of my sheltered, Midwestern bubble. Opinions naturally resulted along with this period of growth, and I began to see myself as part of a larger whole — a whole fraught with injustice.
My first encounter with feminism arose unceremoniously through exposure to a feminist Instagram account. It discussed pay inequity, sexual harassment, sexual assault and motherhood. This side of feminism was very different from the pop culture feminism I had been fed: the constant message of ‘girl power,’ which attempted to uplift women but declined to address underlying reasons for inequality.
My awareness of gender inequality did not arise out of a vacuum. I distinctly remember the boys in my elementary school classes being asked to carry heavy things while the girls stayed behind. I remember being denied church volunteer roles because of my gender.
However, my exposure in the summer of 2018 opened my eyes to the vast scope of different and discriminatory treatment of women and men. It validated what I had sensed, yet not spoken of. I believe we, as a society, have progressed since the mid-2010s, and certainly from my mother’s era, in which, when confronted with my father’s job relocation, she was told by a friend that her role as a wife was to “follow her husband, no matter what.”
It is the blatantly different standards that society both implicitly and explicitly holds for women that led me to accept the label ‘feminist.’ In my eyes, it is difficult to fathom not assuming that facet of my identity. It guides me in the choices I make and the way I construct my life and aspirations.
Over the years, however, I have had many friends who possessed the values of feminism yet rejected the label ‘feminist.’ Beliefs, of course, are more important than the label, but I continued to question why the hesitancy might be. I never asked until now. “When I think of feminists, I think of crazy women with short, dyed hair running around … screaming at people,” answered one of my friends. Society’s portrayal of feminists casts us as radical, angry nonconformists who hate men.
Maybe we feminists are radical, and maybe we are angry at the world. But why shouldn’t we be? Society creates systems of oppression based on gender, race and economic status. I am not content with a world that is shaped as such. My exposure to feminism arose from an Instagram account; ironically, it is the same media that furthers narrow-minded stereotypes about feminism. Inherently, feminism clashes with the social order, often being met with societal resistance to change. And through the media and other public platforms, those in power espouse anti-feminist narratives that omit the diversity of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation of feminists.
By limiting the perception of who is a feminist, popular beliefs limit who will be a feminist. There is a lineage of power within the label that spans centuries: American women’s suffrage, India’s decriminalization of homosexuality, Saudi Arabian women’s right to drive and many more successes. Claiming the label is a way of upholding the strides feminists have made and attaching oneself to ideals of protest and social justice. In calling oneself a ‘feminist,’ we are unapologetic of our belief in a more equitable world, and we disrupt the stereotypes that accompany the label.
