It’s Feminist Roots Time!

Today for our Feminist Roots feature, I have interviewed someone I believe I know fairly well, myself. So hold on tight and get ready for a pretty darn exciting interview.

If someone asked me when I became a feminist, I don’t think I’d be able to give them a straight answer. I couldn’t pinpoint a precise moment in time, a scenario or an event that made me decide to identify as a feminist. However, I do think that my upbringing had a lot to do with it. I have three brothers, one older, two younger and, as one might imagine, I grew quite the “tomboy” if you will. I ran around cow fields, played army men, dinosaurs, laser tag. I wrestled and built forts and overall, was rough and tumble and ready to go play with the boys at any time. I played with girls as well of course but I think that I still had a unique experience. I was a lot more rough and tumble than my girl friends for the most part and I wasn’t conscious that there was an invisible dividing line between things girls did and things boys did. But I’ll never forget when I learned that line existed. My brother entered middle school and like most people, it was like a switch was flipped and he became a somewhat different person. He told me I couldn’t play with him and his friends anymore, that they were doing “boy” things.

The reason this is significant in the telling is that I remember that moment so well and I remember that from then on, I determined that I would be able to do whatever it was that boys did too. After all, I’d done it all already. I never formally had any information on feminism until my freshman year at JMU when I joined the debate team and began to read and research feminist literature. Everything that I read aligned so well with how I felt and viewed the world that I knew “feminist” would be the formal label for my feelings. I specifically chose to identify as “Feminist” because I felt that it was time women reclaimed feminism as something empowering and important.

I feel that the most important thing feminism has done for me is taught me to examine things from a different angle, a different perspective than I had before. Now when I read a news story, I wonder what the implications are for women, what a politician is saying or not saying about women. Does the economic statistic reflect the real situation for women as well? On campus, I wonder why we don’t have more women in administrative positions, or why JMU has never had a woman as dean. Yet beyond that, I wonder about the institutions, the culture, and those mentalities that breed a world where women are still largely considered second class citizens.

If you’re curious how a feminist likes to spend her free time, I’m usually reading “Game of Thrones”,pondering the female characters presented within and wondering how George Martin intends for them to be interpreted and trying to figure out how I can interpret them in the context of feminism.

Any questions let me know!