I’ll begin by saying I genuinely hope this is the last time I am forced to write this kind of bitch-fit. I mean really, I’m getting tired of repeating myself as I’m sure my fellow young fems can agree. For variation, I won’t scream “I’m RIGHT HERE!” this time. As a feminist who’s not always comfortable or accepting of identifying as a feminist, I can speak to why young women do not always claim the title for themselves.
Young women refute the term “feminist” because they have been systemically excluded from the movement; clearly since a number of us are blogging about it today. But as a young woman of color who’s been in various feminist spaces, I know how exclusionary the movement can be. I can’t say how many times I looked at my boss with “that face” saying, “I’m the youngest person in the room. AGAIN” or “Uh, we’re the only brown folk here.” Of course, this is without counting the number of times I’ve been tokenized. Let me give some background: I was the Program Assistant for the Pro-Choice Public Education Project, a national reproductive justice non-profit organization. I worked with PEP for 3 years, since I was 17 and played a viable role in the organization. I was very privileged to have the opportunity and made the absolute most of it. And still there were one too many instances where colleagues were introduced and I was at the receiving end of an “oh-how-nice” and a condescending smile. So yeah, I’ve had a problem calling myself a feminist when the very movement I’ve worked vigilantly for refuses to respect the role I’ve played.
Beyond the exclusion and tokenism are the discrepancies in what older feminists choose to label “feminism”. I’m neither employed nor really affiliated to a feminist organization at the moment. I can’t remember the last time I signed a petition. But I am an English Lit major with a concentration in gender studies. I tweet everyday on women’s issues and hold conversation with my friends – and my partner – about these topics. See, young women, myself included, think “feminism” is an ugly term because the older generation tells us we can’t wear pink and be a feminist; we can’t take our spouse’s last name and be a feminist; we can’t have our activism reside in online social media and be a feminist. Feminism has always been about choices. We work to provide the means by which all women can choose how to live their lives. This includes the traditional feminine roles as well as the unconventional roles. Feminism was created not to eliminate every “traditional” lifestyle, but to create new ones, to give women more options, and to provide them with the spaces to prosper, both with and without men. So when a feminist tells a college-educated, professional young woman that taking her husband’s last name is un-feminist, she’s won’t think feminism is very pretty. And when the older feminist movement tells us tweeters, bloggers, and organizers that we don’t exist, you get a blog carnival dedicated to calling the haters out.
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