How I Learned to Speak My Mind

The moment it ‘clicked’: when I knew I was a feminist

Seeing as I just finished the book “Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists,” I figured the best way to start this blog would be to write about my own moment when it just… “Clicked.”

I grew up with a lot of strong women in my life. In my family, especially on my mother’s side, women were outspoken, strong, beautiful, passionate, educated, and at times bordered on controlling. They pushed me to do well in school and instilled in me a passion for reading. You may think this would have fostered a strong affinity with feminism, but in fact it did just the opposite as I was growing up.

For much of my life, up until a few years into high school, I didn’t want to live up to all the expectations everyone had for me—I knew I was smart, but kept feeling like being smart meant I would always have to succeed…at everything. So, although I kept doing well in school, my ultimate goal became to fall in love and live happily ever after. I see now that I was trying to take “the easy way out”. I knew that, as a girl growing up in the 90s and now in the 21st century, I had vast opportunities and options. But, I was afraid. I was afraid of not being good enough, and of not being able to compete with the boys and men of the world. Daydreaming was my forte, and in my dreams I did want more…but in reality I simply wanted to get by and fit in with all those girls who just didn’t understand me.

It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I started to question things. I had been going to a Christian youth group with my best friend for the past two years, and during that time we started to notice that girls and boys were not exactly treated as equals. For instance, girls were banned from wearing bikinis during our weekend hotel youth conferences, because the pastors and their wives said we would be tempting the boys and ‘making them think impure thoughts.’ Also, my guy friends were huge hypocrites—they would nag about abstinence to us but then they went ahead and had sex, and if we swore even once they would say it wasn’t “lady like.” My friend and I had the last straw when her older sister decided to get married when she was just 18 years old, claiming it was “what God wanted.” So we began to wonder, what about what we wanted? So what if I swore or wanted to wear a bikini or speak my mind instead of going along with what I was told? That’s when the light bulb went off, and although I didn’t suddenly identify with feminism, that’s when I began owning who I was. I had always been quiet out of fear of not being “feminine” enough if I got angry or spoke my mind…I had wanted boys to pay attention to me and had been more concerned about what others thought of me than of what I thought of myself.

So I became outspoken and I swore when I wanted to. I ditched the innocent look in favor of black clothing with bright accessories. I was a little too sacrilegious for those last two years of high school, and I went a little wild. I began to experience life the way I had always wanted to—with passion and laughter and learning and hope. And you know what? I made friends. I got along with other girls better than I ever had, because I ditched the jealousy in favor of liking myself.

As I grew from this little rebellion against the system, I eventually found my way into an Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies course when I got to college. It taught me those things that you always know in the back of your mind, but you just don’t realize their truth until someone says them out loud.

My feminist identity was solidified when I took Feminist Theory, with an amazing professor and some of the most interesting and intelligent women I’ve ever met. We talked, we shared stories, and I think we all fell in love with the movement.

The thing I love most about feminism is learning to question the way things are, and to never accept being treated differently based on gender (and also based on class, race, creed, or political beliefs). It has taught me stop punishing myself for not being “good enough,” because now I know that I am. With feminism I feel beautiful because of my mind, my compassion, my interests, and my sarcasm.