Reevaluating my views: Feminism

Looking back over old blog posts, one thing I've realised is that my views on feminism have changed somewhat in the last year. While I feel that the "glass ceiling" debate is no less important than it once was, and that women should certainly be able and encouraged to achieve the same high-ranking professions as men, it is far from being at the crux of my passion for feminism. Perhaps this is because the world in which I now exist is different from the world I existed in a year ago: I can scarcely call myself a "recent graduate", and when you consider that most "recent graduates" in these desolate times find themselves exploiting their newly-acquired wealth of knowledge behind the counter of their local McDonald's, a career in the boardroom is hardly on the cards for me. Male or female (but still largely male), a career in the boardroom now tends to be reserved solely for former private school students and Oxbridge graduates... But that's a different argument entirely.

I recall, seven-and-a-half years ago, uttering that sentence opening that now causes me to (metaphorically) bang my head against the wall in frustration: "I'm not a feminist, but..."

I grew up on the Spice Girls, with a mother who had a kind of montage of feminist postcards framed and pinned up in the hallway, and who left her diary (pictured above) lying around the flat for impressionable girls' eyes to fall upon. I threw out peace signs like it was Christmas and challenged the boys in the school playground to races (I was a freakishly fast runner... y'know, for a girl). I pulled people up on their casually sexist remarks from the age of seven, and I knew that I was just as smart and just as capable as any boy. And yet, feminism was a bad word. To be a feminist was to be angry, hairy and wear dungarees.

It took going out into the world and seeing the injustices women face (and that I would now invariably face) with my own eyes to change my mind. It took being pushed and shoved on buses and tubes because I am smaller than 50% of the population and therefore less likely to start a fight; it took, not just being sexually harassed more times than I can count, but becoming so accustomed to sexual harassment that I began to expect it, and then barely think twice about it when it happened again; it took being criticised for taking an interest in football instead of fashion; it took finding myself growing up awkward and imperfect whilst being held up against impossibly perfect images of women and being told that I am not good enough if I am not like them; it took being 15-years-old, haemorrhaging my way through the worst period I have ever known, and being told by a (male) doctor that I must be having a miscarriage, there was no other explanation for it, in spite of the fact that I had told him repeatedly that I was a virgin; it took being used and exploited by men, or being treated as something fragile instead of something strong. It took expanding my mind and allowing myself to be unafraid of stigma to accept that, yes, my thoughts and my views and my attitudes make me a feminist, whether I choose to shave my legs or not. I am happy now to admit that I was wrong, just as I am happy now to admit that I was misguided a year ago. Feminism is much bigger than I thought it was.

Every woman (and man) will have their own individual relationship with feminism, whether they recognise it or not, but we have to see past our own relationships if we are going to get anywhere. For some, for the more privileged, that relationship will be "Can I make it to the top?" Will society ever stop assuming that "doctor" is male unless "female doctor" is specified, or that "nurse" is female unless "male nurse... I wonder if he's gay??" is specified. I might be one of the more privileged, because for me, I often find myself wondering if I will be one of the illustrious 17% of playwrights who happen to be female this year, and I get arsey when people address me by the title "Miss" instead of "Ms". Lucky me to have such a concern, I guess.

For others, the corcerns will be "How can I afford to have a child when I can barely afford to live myself?" and "I am being assaulted every day in my own home." For the majority of us, rape is something we fear when we are walking home late at night on our own, and the messed-up world in which we live tries to tell us that we are somehow more vulnerable, or somehow more at fault, if we are dressed in a certain way, and that perhaps if we hadn't gone down that alleyway, we might have been able to prevent it. For others, rape is something to be feared when we wake up in the morning or go home in the evening. It is not just a fear; it is a guarantee, and an unbreakable cycle. Conviction rates are still pathetically low.

Feminism for some is the right we in Western society have come to accept as our most basic: the right to healthcare, the right to our own bodies. If we want an abortion and if the pregnancy is early enough, we can have one; we have access to contraception, and whether practice is the same as principle, we can refuse sex if we do not want it; we do not lose "value" at the loss of our virginity and we are not told to marry against our own will. This is a reality for some that we are guilty of turning a blind eye to in favour of the "glass ceiling", and just as the more privileged feminists try to convince men that feminism benefits them too, we must also remind ourselves that feminism is working to free more than just the white, more than just the middle and upper classes, more than just your mother or your daughter or sister or niece.

Feminists, if we want to free ourselves, we must also free our sisters.