Composed this for /feminisms/, so cross-posting:
Reflections on Becoming a Feminist
Growing up, I was never too idealistic or altruistic a person. I fell into my parents' religion, didn't care much about politics or the world at large, and was casually sexist. (For example, joking with several friends about PMS and that women talk too much, accepting some of the sexist tenets of the Christian religion, including that canard about "virtuous" women being harder to find than virtuous men, and so on.)
Thankfully, I kept learning, having new experiences, and making better friends. With time, I've lost my religion, gained a more open mind, and become politically literate, socially aware, and actively committed to humanist ideals and improving the world. If ignorance is evil, then I've wanted to help fix what I perceive to be two of the world's greatest ignorances and evils: religious belief and sexism, including male privilege. Religion is the far easier of the two evils, as sexism is ingrained in absolutely every part of civilization. Toward the activist end, this year, I've read a few books (and listed several more to tackle), spoken with several women's rights activists, and participated in my university's graduate women's studies program to learn more about the state of "feminism" today. This piece is a reflection about what feminism's come to mean to me.
This subreddit is called "feminisms" for a reason—because many people, male and female, fight for women's rights for varying reasons and in varying ways, across different cultures, religions, societies, economies, and countries. My own "personal feminism" is an activist response to sexism, based upon the ideal that people should be free to pursue opportunities and behavior free of restrictions, privileges, and expectations built on sex and gender. I've found that at the highest levels of feminist organizing and networks, this equality message is basically the same. However, go down a notch to national, state, and local levels across the world, and women's rights advocacy groups become very different and unique.
A group organized to resist sweatshops may be comprised mostly of women (as sweatshop labor pools are), and have nothing about idealistic humanity or gendered privilege in its mission statement. But it still qualifies as a women's rights/feminist group. After all, sweatshop labor pools are female because they're infamously easier to control and coerce; this is sexist. Likewise, a group of Islamic women resisting hijab or wife sequestering may have nothing to do with secular humanism, nor have a scope inclusive of problems faced in other religions. Nonetheless, sequestering and hijab are sexist conventions, and these Islamic women resisting them are feminists. They're fighting for women's rights against patriarchal institutions and oppression. The same goes for Indian groups addressing poverty (for a few reasons, the majority of impoverished people are female), or European groups working on domestic servant abuse.
The need for cooperation is clear, but the variety of causes makes pegging them and the definition of feminism/women's rights advocacy to some universal, high standard difficult. I've learned (though I need to read more on the subject) that there's historically been a lot of friction between "first" and "third" world advocacy groups over the disparity of their aims and perceived problems in society. But I've also watched documentaries on the 1995 Fourth World Conference in Beijing and read about the issues defined and what I saw was a mass of people from every background conceivable mingling with euphoria and encouragement. The goodwill towards one another was palpable, and it made international cooperation and sisterhood seem possible. Now that stonewaller Jesse Helms is gone, perhaps CEDAW even has a chance for ratification.
After learning about international organization and feminist networks, I feel as if there's so much incredible potential in women's rights activism. A universal problem like sexism is certainly capable of eliciting universal organization and response. Confronting economic, religious, and social problems has already enabled many people to transcend restrictive barriers and work together. This is especially necessary now that globalization of business is intertwining the economic and social fates of the world's national constituents. But there's something deeper, too—a truly human kind of organizing. These disparate activists are capable of respecting differences of language and culture while seeking common solutions and productive discourses for problems of sexism and privilege. This interaction promotes understanding and communication, while facilitating the emergence of the most meritorious ideas about economic, governmental, and social issues.
Compare the spirit of this with the recent Copenhagen climate change meetings, filled with suspicions and failures. Granted, Beijing was a meeting of activists, and Copenhagen a meeting of leaders (though, on second thought, this isn't very flattering to leaders, is it?). Humanism invokes the image of the international citizen; the appeal to the fundamental, indivisible human being; the focus on rationality, transcending prejudices and superstitions; the organization around human rights and the value of sentience—is it not there, among the enlivened, optimistic feminists of the Beijing conference? Is the potential not there for international organizing and a confluence of goals towards the eradication of sexism and oppression?
It certainly is. Because of its size and roots, sexism will likely be the last great problem tackled as humanity becomes better than it once was. And feminism will likely be the organizing rally that proves humanity's greatest unification on the road to an illuminated future. It starts here, whether by tackling reproductive rights, commercial and media sexism, the feminization of labor and poverty, or any other problem of sexual and gendered oppression. By being a feminist, I'm hoping to accomplish a lot by working to alleviate the deep ills caused by sexism—but what really excites me is this potential for future organization and humanist idealism. Sexual and gendered oppression bring down all of humanity, and are something all of humanity can get together to address.
