What do I mean when I describe myself as a feminist?

Someone recently asked me what I meant when I say I am feminist. At the time I gave a woolly answer about fighting discrimination. This answer didn’t quite cut it and I knew it…and so, this is my very brief effort to explain what feminism means to me, and why I would still describe myself as a feminist.

Feminism is…

Nothing more than a pragmatic tool that I use to fight the injustice, the prejudice and the discrimination of our times. I am not inherently a feminist, the entrenched bigotry of the culture in which I was born, raised and live have made me a feminist.

This culture gives weight to comments by campaigning groups such as the often repeated mantra, ‘one in four women in the UK experience domestic violence in their lives‘. As much as objectively you know them to be more, these words are emotionally, just words. That is until you see the black of eye of a female friend who is in a violent relationship.

And then this culture of ours encourages girls to try and hide black eyes teaching them that it is something to be ashamed of.

The only shame here is that this statement stands true today, just as it did 28 years ago when I was born.

I cannot in my own heart accept a culture that allows for such violence. Feminism then is mine, and many others, pragmatic tool (the language and the means) that I have chosen to fight back.

But my feminism stems from much more than just the violence women and girls disproportionately experience. I am a feminist because of all those times I have seen people being limited because of their gender.

To give just a couple of examples…

I remember, at school the laughter at the idea of a girls’ rugby team being set up. Why? Because they were girls and society taught us as kids that ‘girls don’t play rugby’.

I remember in my first job my boss asking me to carry my female colleague’s feather-weight bags. Why? Because my colleague was a women and society teaches us that women are too weak to carry their own bag.

These day to day occurrences, although disturbing by themselves, cannot be separated off from the wider culture that too often leads to the violence I earlier described.

Feminism then is, for me at least, the movement that I have chosen, to try and fight back against this self-reinforcing culture. Feminism is an imperfect coalition of those who are looking to challenge the day to day sexism we all see, but only a few acknowledge. It is the belief that decades and decades of sexism that we have experienced can, and must, be broken down.

Feminism is the pragmatic tool I have chosen to fight the misogynistic status quo.

Until our culture changes, or someone gives me a better tool in which to fight this fight, I will remain a proud feminist.