OK, so I was 7 when in
1986 I started questioning gender roles and challenging them, but I
didn't realize that could be called feminism until I was 11 and got
really into the activism of the late '60s/ early '70s, and then when I
was 12 I (attempted to) read "The Feminine Mystique." I pretty much
considered myself a full-blown feminist by the end of my freshman year
of high school.
--the brevity of this is due to the fact that I originally wanted to put it under "changed beliefs" on my timeline, but "they" didn't "think" "a feminist" was a proper response to the field "became," so I'm posting it here instead
Maybe I considered myself a full-fledged feminist by the end of 8th grade, because the 8th grade yearbook said, in the part where they said what we'd be when we grew up, that I'd be a women's rights activist. Also, I remember this really really sad incident when I was 15 and my mom would let my brother walk around alone at night but she wouldn't let me do it, and when I asked her why, she said it was because I was a girl, and I said that was sexist and she said, "That's the way the world is." I knew she was right, and it made me realize for the first time that it wasn't my mom who was sexist or my school that was sexist; I thought to myself, "there will never be true equality until a girl can walk around alone at night without being afraid" and I knew that wouldn't happen for awhile, and, as you can imagine, it really bummed me out... it still bums me out! I didn't have the vocabulary for it then, but that's when I realized we live in a rape culture.
--the brevity of this is due to the fact that I originally wanted to put it under "changed beliefs" on my timeline, but "they" didn't "think" "a feminist" was a proper response to the field "became," so I'm posting it here instead
Maybe I considered myself a full-fledged feminist by the end of 8th grade, because the 8th grade yearbook said, in the part where they said what we'd be when we grew up, that I'd be a women's rights activist. Also, I remember this really really sad incident when I was 15 and my mom would let my brother walk around alone at night but she wouldn't let me do it, and when I asked her why, she said it was because I was a girl, and I said that was sexist and she said, "That's the way the world is." I knew she was right, and it made me realize for the first time that it wasn't my mom who was sexist or my school that was sexist; I thought to myself, "there will never be true equality until a girl can walk around alone at night without being afraid" and I knew that wouldn't happen for awhile, and, as you can imagine, it really bummed me out... it still bums me out! I didn't have the vocabulary for it then, but that's when I realized we live in a rape culture.
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