My Journey To Feminism

Before I hopped on this whole feminism wave, I always said, ON THIS VERY BLOG that I wasn’t a feminist because I didn’t understand it enough. To me, feminism, was a heavy cause, one I wasn’t deserving of until I fully understood it or was committed enough to take it up. Part of the reason for this was because I wasn’t always exposed to feminism. I knew about it but I didn’t know about it, if that makes sense.

It wasn’t till last year that I started engaging with and making friends with people who were feminists & it was through my conversations and interactions with them that I slowly started to gain interest in the whole concept. I spent a long time critiquing feminism in attempts to understand it, looking at all the ways in which it was flawed and the ways it should be & has been since the beginning of time. I spent so much time in this phase were I was a feminist but I wasn’t a feminist.

I was a feminist for a very long time but I wasn’t a feminist because I hadn’t consciously decided to be a feminist. I had feminist ideologies, I enjoyed the benefits of feminism, I put women first and acknowledged misogyny, sexism and all the ways in which women are marginalized. I was angry for all these things but my anger had no name. I was a feminist who wasn’t a feminist. When I finally decided to be a feminist and told my friends I was now a Feminist they said they weren’t shocked because I already was but that wasn’t the case, although I might have seemed like I already was a feminist, I just hadn’t decided to be yet. Being a woman passionate about equality & aware of sexism did not equate to me being a feminist. Let me explain.

I was reading yesterday about how back when the whole feminist movement started, women would meet up and have what was called consciousness rising were they would discuss sexism, how it has affected their lives & how they too had sexist thoughts & behaviors which they had to actively unlearn before declaring themselves feminists.

In the book Feminism is for everybody, Bell Hooks emphasizes on how just because someone is a woman does not make them feminist. Feminists aren’t born, they are made. One has to make the conscious decision to unlearn & eradicate the patriarchy in their daily lives before they change the world. She also mentioned how women can be a threat to the feminist movement too, when they don’t unlearn, when they don’t denounce the patriarchy & they uphold sexist thoughts & practices yet still infiltrate the feminist movement.

Feminism isn’t limited to women either. Not all women are feminists. In fact, men who have actively recognized and dissociated themselves from their privilege & work to actively end sexism are better allies to feminism than women who uphold the patriarchy. Feminism isn’t a status quo, it doesn’t come at birth. Lives are at stake.

So it made more sense, I knew about feminism, I was all for equality but the most important thing, one thing I hadn’t done was UNLEARNING. Before I could actively try and eradicate the patriarchy from society I had to do so within myself. I had to let go of sexist and misogynistic thoughts and ideologies. And that’s the thing with taking up causes, it requires a lot of learning and unlearning. A lot of it.

I still haven’t learnt or understood everything there is about feminism. I read on feminism everyday, I have conversations on feminism, I follow feminists, I’m still learning but one thing that’s different about me now is my consciousness. I’m conscious of the ways In which I thought before that don’t align with my cause, I know that the fight starts within, within myself. I have consciously made the decision to be feminist. And I’m loving it.