What do we mean when we say ‘feminist’? Is it about equality for women, or can it mean more? Is it a political framework, or a way of life?
In a couple of weeks, Feminist Summer School opens up and I’ll be talking all about what feminism has meant throughout the decades since women fought for the right to vote, and what possibilities there are for a truly inclusive, progressive, modern feminism. There’s still time to join us! You can click here to find out more.
I wanted to share the main framework of what feminism for our age looks like - a feminism that is dynamic, representative, and that takes men, women and non binary people into account. Here’s my feminism, in ten points.
It’s my body, what I say goes.
What kind of birth control to use, whether to be or not to be pregnant, whether or not I want to adapt my body with surgery or hormones, whether I want any particular kind of touch. Who decides what should happen to a body? The person who lives in it.
All Mothers Work (only some get paid).
Mothers shouldn’t have to feel forced into paid work if they would prefer to be raising their families, but often the choice feels outside our control due to economic pressures and societal expectations. We need to shift the balance in our society and in our families to value the labour of caregiving, whether that’s done by women or men. Mothers especially bear the brunt of this, but of course it affects men’s ability to do caring labour as well.
If it’s not intersectional, it’s not our feminism
For our feminism to be useful, inclusive, and transformative, we must take into consideration the multiple layers and strands of people’s identities. Nobody is just a ‘woman’. Everyone has a specific reality made of all the ways society can categorise a person, all mixed together: a racialised identity, a class location or history, a body which is enabled or disabled by society, a sexuality, a gender identity, an age, a parenthood status. You can’t pick and choose to focus on one part of your identity and neglect the rest - you are always already all of those parts all combined, and the way in which they combine affects how you see the world, and how the world sees you.
A Woman is a Woman when she Says she’s a Woman
How do you know you are a woman, if you are a woman?
How do you know that you’re not, if you’re not?
And how would you feel if someone else spent a lot of energy trying to convince you that you were wrong? If people targeted you for hateful speech and treatment simply because you know yourself to be a woman? If you knew that you faced a high risk of physical harm, violence, and even murder just because you are living as the woman you know yourself to be? Would you feel frightened, angry, sad, gaslighted?
Now think about your beautiful, amazing child. Imagine someone threatening them because they are wearing clothes that make them feel like themselves, using the toilet that everyone else of their gender uses, being known by a name that makes them feel at home. Imagine them feeling isolated, targeted, afraid. Imagine them wondering if it’s worth carrying on in this world, since it’s so hard just to be who they are.
There is absolutely no space for transphobia in feminism. You would do anything in your power to make the world safe for your child. Make the world safe for trans women, and for the children who will grow up into trans women and men in a few years’ time. A woman is a woman when she says she’s a woman. And that’s final.
Nobody has a right to make you feel bad about your body.
Any shape, any size, any lumps or bumps or scars. Anything your body can or cannot do. Parts you have and parts you don’t, whether you choose to cover up what you’ve got or leave it au naturel. Makeup or bare skin, long or short hair, pregnant or not pregnant, wrinkles or dimpled hands. No matter what body you’ve got, it’s a bit of a miracle when you stop and think about it. And strong or recovering, young or old, large or small, there’s no reason for anyone to make you doubt for a moment that your body is just fine how it is.
To end toxic masculinity we have to change how boys are raised
Feminism isn’t about women - it’s about everyone. If we want to end patriarchy, we have to start with how we’re raising our boys. Did you know that by the age of 5, boys start to put on the ‘mask’ of masculinity with their friends, refusing to show emotions fully or play with toys that are coded as ‘feminine’? Even before our children are born, people start to load them up with gendered objects, language, and imaginary futures.
How do men learn patriarchy? Through the words they hear as boys, the toys they were given, the clothes they were allowed to wear. Through the things they were shamed for: usually a fear of being called a sissy/girl/gay. Through the continual lessons about what it means to ‘be a man’: strong, powerful, stoic, in-charge, aggressive, making sexual conquests.
The good news is that this is learned behaviour, something rewarded by our culture, and nothing innate. We can change the way we raise our boys, and destabilize the future of patriarchy as a result.
Equal pay is not enough. We need balance in our homes and families, too.
It goes without saying that women should earn an equal wage to men for doing equal work, and should have equal access to the boardrooms and staterooms that men still overwhelmingly dominate. But beyond getting paid equally for the work we do - which is vital - women must not be the sole bearers of the emotional and mental load of keeping a family going.
Patriarchy has told us for generations that if we want to ‘have it all’ (a family and a paid career), we have to ‘do it all’, and it’s exhausting us. It’s not noble or heroic to be the only one in your family who knows what size shoes your kids wear, where they need to be on a Thursday morning, and whether there’s any more milk in the fridge.
Feminism doesn’t tell us that we should want to or be able to ‘have it all’ - it tells us that the very notion of ‘having it all’ is something concocted by smug old-guard patriarchs to teach us ladies a lesson about where we really belong. You don’t need to prove to anyone that you’re a good enough mother/employee/daughter/partner because you have nothing left at the end of a long day of working, caring, planning, organizing, feeding, maintaining, and cleaning. What you need is balance, someone to do an equal share of the labour that patriarchy doesn’t value: caring for children and older relatives, remembering all the important dates and details, supplying all the food and entertainment, washing all the dirty things, building community.
You’re not failing if you feel like you’re drowning in the unpaid but essential labour of everyday life. Asking for others to do their fair share is a feminist act.
We all rise together. Competition is a patriarchal construct.
Patriarchy says that there’s not enough for all of us, and that only a few women get to have power, money, happiness, dreams coming true. When we compete with other women and use our energy to feel jealous of other women’s successes, we are doing sexism’s work from the inside out. The notion that there isn’t enough of something for everyone is a political and social construction, and it works to keep people from banding together and destabilizing the system that keeps some folks on top and the rest of us struggling.
So resist. Support other women. Reach out to the people you admire. Cultivate feelings of friendliness towards the happy. Connect, collaborate, and build a raft so we can all rise together.
Listen to women.
Listen to children. Listen to Black people, Latinx people, Indigenous people. Listen to older people, immigrants, disabled people, mothers and fathers. Listen to queer people. You don’t need to have all the answers or solve all the problems - but you do need to listen, read, reflect, and grow.
The Personal is Political.
Start with yourself, your family, your community. Be an accomplice for good. Understand the mechanisms of social power. Acknowledge unearned privilege, work to correct the imbalance of power, and use what you can’t shed to amplify and support others. If you’ve got the most privilege in a situation, put yourself on the line.
If you want to change the world, go out and be a feminist.