Is there a point...

Being a feminist has changed me completely. Every class, every party, every conversation I look at in a different way and sometimes it makes it harder to connect to people or enjoy myself. But I don't want to be ignorant anymore. I don't want to live my life a participant in the injustices committed against women everyday.

I will stop being obsessed with feminism when society stops reminding me everyday that I am a woman, and lesser because of it.

...that no one would ever say that if most of what you took in -- or even ALL you took in -- wasmaleculture,male-issues, male-authored books. if all you shopped from were male-owned companies, if you only dated men, if you only said "he" and not "shae," etc. no one would even NOTICE.

Because male-culture IS what has literally taken over ALL of our lives,and more often than not, you don't hear anyone complaining, especially men, even those with women they cre for very directly in their lives. Our visibility is questioned far more often than our INvisibility: personally, culturally.

And all the more sadly, it's usually men (or those who depend most upon men and male culture) making the comments that a given woman is into "too much" women's culture or women's empowerment.

Sigh.

Actually, the person who's given me the most negative feedback on this is my mother. My friends have all accepted this, my boyfriend is completely supportive and my family (those who know) have taken my 'newest obsession' in stride. But my mother will get into arguments with me and tell me that I am biased and blowing things out of proportion. If you ask me, I think it's because I am forcing her to reexamine her situation and the choices she's made, and she doesn't want to do that.

But the thing is, a large part of the reason why we see everything with a feminist slant is because so so many things give us reason to. We live in a male-centred world. And if you start to pay attention to that, you see it *everywhere*. And personally, I am not going to stay quiet about that, even at the risk of sounding 'obsessive' or annoying people with it.

I have had similar experiences too, particularly from my family. Now, I have a VERY supportive family, don't get me wrong. My dad in particular has always urged me to go as far as I can with my studies (but only because he knew that that was what I wanted), has always made a point of highlighting successful women to me, etc. In many ways, my parents put me on the path to feminism.

BUT... once I actually started becoming committed to it-- once I started calling people out when they said something misogynist, when I started getting upset by things that promote rape culture, my parents, and particularly my dad told me that I should be taking a "see no evil" approach, that anything else just upset people and that I wouldn't be able to change things anyway, so I should just be happy with the way things are. My mother told me that I was becoming an extremist for pointing out that it's unfair to automatically give men a larger portion of a meal that had been cooked by women.

The fact is that when you start showing a true committment to feminism, even though it's a completely peaceful movement that is based primarily around education, people feel threatened. Standing your ground on even the smallest issues is seen as a form of extremism.

You are singing my song!

My boyfriend is tired of my "turning everything into a feminist issue" (duh, everything is a gender issues and therefore a feminist issue). I admit that I tend to be a bit more adament than your "I have that shirt in blue" casualness, but I've only been reading "feminist" books and considering the news solely from a feminist standpoint. I've been guilty of committing a vote to a candidate solely upon his or her support of reproductive rights and freedoms.

I personally don't think there can be too much. I worry much more about there not being enough, and sometimes I feel like my zealousness is compensating for a world that doesn't care. When apathy is the status quo, people don't know how to handle a sincere opinion.

"A woman for a general, and the soldiers will be women."

I feel so very much on the same page with everyone here on this, and am grateful that you made the post, Julia.

It's not really that feminism takes over your life. It's that your life has already BEEN taken over, and for every bit of that choke-hold that exists, you gain a bit of feminist perspective. I think that the frequency of feminist expression in our lives is related more to the pervasive presence of patriarchal dominance and less to anything that we are "inventing" ourselves. After all, feminism is a commentary on the present cultural reality.

So no, Julia, I think you're fine--in fact, I think you're pretty much on the same boat as the rest of us.

~Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

I think all of you have it a bit tougher too, in this regard, than women my age and older can.

In other words, by virtue of both ageism, and the fact that when you're BOTH young and female, there is a perception that you are impressionable, that you can be easily swayed, that someone must be influencing you who isn't you, etc. So, you're bound to face this a little more by virtue of a common presumption being that every loyalty of yours, every intellectual perspective, every emotional investment is phasal to you, as well as the presumption that as BOTH young and female? You're pretty powerless.

I got a whole lot more of this kind of stuff when I was younger: the older I get, while I find that when I AM given this treatment, people are a lot less partonizing and a lot more plain old threatened and angry, I do find that fewer and fewer people have the stones to tell me where or where not to put my energy in my life, and what and what not to think about.

(Which is why I SO cannot wait to be a few decades older than this, because lemme tell you, I am going to be one cantankerous old bird that I fully expect very few people will want to tangle with.:)

(Will there be lots of cats involved? Possibly a nifty cane of the shaking variety?)

~Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

I also tell people that I want to be a crusty, obnoxious old woman when I grow up. It's kinda a dream.

For an example of a really cool old grandma, read Susan Jane Gilman's Kiss My Tiara- whose grandmother is super cool.

Love and hugs,
Julia