What is it about the “f-word?”
Posted on February 29, 2008
Filed Under Opinion |
Bra-burning, man-hating, lesbian-loving… myth.
The f-word is a word I hesitate to use. I can almost feel the whispers behind me, “She’s a feminist…” “Oh, how tragic.” The idea has zombied into an undying reputation since I wrote about it in a column my sophomore year of high school for the school newspaper.
All though I had read The Feminine Mystique that year, my realization of my “feminist agenda” can be deduced to three essential factors:
- My mother is the breadwinner of our family (and I am the only child), therefore undulating a very strong influence on the expectations placed on me as woman.
- Because I grew up in the boondocks, I missed out on societal interactions shaping a distinguished feminine/masculine gender.
- I was tired of getting treated like shit for reasons I didn’t understand.
It wasn’t until college that I realized I wasn’t a feminist. Don’t gasp so loud, not done yet.
Comparing the Civil Rights Movement is relevant. There are is no generic label for Black people who want more rights or to be treated equally as white people. Why? Because it is understood.
Somehow it isn’t for women. But it should be. It’s not that I believe women should have rights; It’s that I believe shit should be like it’s supposed to be.
I hate trembling when I hear “feminism” or when I find out others tremble too; the media during the first and second waves was inhabited by men who trivialized it. Evidence?
Bra-burning? Never happened. Dykes? Never been one. Even women hate labeling themselves that–It means they have to go so far to say as they want to be human some day.
It’s understood.
Here is an interesting video that surveys what people think of the word. The beginning starts with a woman saying she never says she is a feminist on a first date; I told my boyfriend on the second date. He said, “So?”
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