I remember distinctly the day in my childhood that I became aware of anti-abortion protestors as my father and I were going somewhere in the city. I asked my dad what they were mad about.
“They’re mad that women are allowed to stop their pregnancies.” My dad told me. “They think it’s about killing babies.”
I remember thinking about it for a moment before asking something related, but my dad made a point that stuck with me for the rest of my life:
“Don’t you think women should be allowed to decide what happens with their own bodies?”
That’s when I became a feminist before I even had the words to know what that meant.
Watching my abusive step father cause my little sister to bleed after he threw her into a plastic bathtub.
This just set the seeds, I grew into it in proper around highschool, but I was still a kid then, so through college my understanding and actions I take to protect and empower my sisters developed further.
::: spoiler you can change this part
You have to keep the first spoiler, the second word or words depending on your client, can be changed. On Voyager its bold and says "tap for spoiler." I think on regular lemmy it says spolier spoiler, the second one is what you change
:::
I believed in the general principles already but in a superficial way. Then I realised I was trans just as #metoo was happening and learning what it's like to be a woman while everyone was talking about what it's like to be a woman made me see how much of it I had been blind to.
Caring about other people other than myself and immediate friends/family. Although I was initially hesitant to label myself a feminist before I transitioned. One of the many walls I had up.
Nothing "made" me a feminist. I believed girls and boys were equal before I even understood the concept. It was just that I later learned this is called "feminism".
Women are people.
Men are people.
Women are often treated worse then men.
That's not cool.
Hence, I stand up for equality.
That should be normal, right?!
When i was 13 cars of men would regularly stop me and my friends and try to get us in the car with them. They wouldn't be aggressive, they'd just wave you over, you'd tell them to fuck off and carry on walking and that'd be the end. It was regular, and during the day but by the time I was 16 that had almost entirely stopped.
I've been a feminist for my entire life without fully understanding the words.
I grew up as the neighborhood tom boy. I was a rough and tumble girl who played in the mud with worms and dinosaurs. I had been saying “no” to what is considered to be feminine ever since I could speak. I played with insects from when I was a toddler looking at aphids, so my mom bought me the Audubon Society Guide to Insects and Arachnids. I had so many people tell me that I should act more like a girl and I said no.
It was my parent’s divorce that solidified it. I saw my mom lose her entire identity after and I decided I wouldn’t go through that. I’ve been an advocate for women’s equality and making our own decisions in life ever since, but now I have the proper words for feminism.
It really helped that my mom was a feminist from the 70s.
Suffering the consequences of the internalized misogyny I was raised with. First boyfriend was a pig. The biggest thing was watching other women suffer. For some reason, seeing it happen to others made it click that it's not right, even if I couldn't fully do it when it was happening to me. I'm still getting better, it's a lot of damage to undo. Learning about how much history has been rewritten to disparage women has been infuriating, that anger just drives me further.
24 replies
I remember distinctly the day in my childhood that I became aware of anti-abortion protestors as my father and I were going somewhere in the city. I asked my dad what they were mad about.
“They’re mad that women are allowed to stop their pregnancies.” My dad told me. “They think it’s about killing babies.”
I remember thinking about it for a moment before asking something related, but my dad made a point that stuck with me for the rest of my life:
“Don’t you think women should be allowed to decide what happens with their own bodies?”
That’s when I became a feminist before I even had the words to know what that meant.
Your dad rocks!
I owe that man a lot for the person I am today and I mean that in the best ways possible.
::: spoiler CW Abuse
Watching my abusive step father cause my little sister to bleed after he threw her into a plastic bathtub.
This just set the seeds, I grew into it in proper around highschool, but I was still a kid then, so through college my understanding and actions I take to protect and empower my sisters developed further.
:::
fyi the comment is still visible in full without having to click on a spoiler
Thank you! Turns out the "spoiler" part of the formatting is necessary, which is frustratingly obtuse.
::: spoiler you can change this part You have to keep the first spoiler, the second word or words depending on your client, can be changed. On Voyager its bold and says "tap for spoiler." I think on regular lemmy it says spolier spoiler, the second one is what you change :::
(There's instructions on the spoiler)
Just FYI your spoiler didn't work
Still??? I edited it 18h ago
That's annoying. Yeah it still shows broken.
Do you see the edit flag from 28h ago? Maybe it is your frontend?
2/4 of my instances don't show the update. Odd. I wonder why that is.
I believed in the general principles already but in a superficial way. Then I realised I was trans just as #metoo was happening and learning what it's like to be a woman while everyone was talking about what it's like to be a woman made me see how much of it I had been blind to.
Caring about other people other than myself and immediate friends/family. Although I was initially hesitant to label myself a feminist before I transitioned. One of the many walls I had up.
Observation of the world we live in.
Lissening to women
Men.
Nothing "made" me a feminist. I believed girls and boys were equal before I even understood the concept. It was just that I later learned this is called "feminism".
Same.
Women are people.
Men are people.
Women are often treated worse then men.
That's not cool.
Hence, I stand up for equality.
That should be normal, right?!
When i was 13 cars of men would regularly stop me and my friends and try to get us in the car with them. They wouldn't be aggressive, they'd just wave you over, you'd tell them to fuck off and carry on walking and that'd be the end. It was regular, and during the day but by the time I was 16 that had almost entirely stopped.
Jesus Christ.
Started at 11 for me, I'm tall. Fucking disgusting pigs.
I've been a feminist for my entire life without fully understanding the words.
I grew up as the neighborhood tom boy. I was a rough and tumble girl who played in the mud with worms and dinosaurs. I had been saying “no” to what is considered to be feminine ever since I could speak. I played with insects from when I was a toddler looking at aphids, so my mom bought me the Audubon Society Guide to Insects and Arachnids. I had so many people tell me that I should act more like a girl and I said no.
It was my parent’s divorce that solidified it. I saw my mom lose her entire identity after and I decided I wouldn’t go through that. I’ve been an advocate for women’s equality and making our own decisions in life ever since, but now I have the proper words for feminism.
It really helped that my mom was a feminist from the 70s.
Suffering the consequences of the internalized misogyny I was raised with. First boyfriend was a pig. The biggest thing was watching other women suffer. For some reason, seeing it happen to others made it click that it's not right, even if I couldn't fully do it when it was happening to me. I'm still getting better, it's a lot of damage to undo. Learning about how much history has been rewritten to disparage women has been infuriating, that anger just drives me further.