It’s Only Beginning

Hi all, this is lfleetwood, and this is my first year writing on the blog. I’m a senior English major attempting to wobble on the curb into the heart and soul of Corporate America as I finish my last year. Things are going well — clearly.

It is difficult to trace when exactly it hit me that being labeled a “feminist” was synonymous to being labeled “human.” As I think back to my freshman year at JMU, I sat front and center in a tiny classroom filled to the brim for “Exploring Gay and Lesbian Literature.” The effect it had on my own views has transcended well beyond queer literature, but also to what it means to be a feminist. The word itself has always felt unclean, dirty, and unchanging. But once I learned more, I knew that I would never be able to get it out of my mind.

My views on feminism have always been tangled throughout with my own heightened awareness of myself and how that fits into a community of women’s voices. But I also knew my own voice has often felt knotted up next to the strong women that I have always looked up to. Their voices of courage and clarity mist over my gaze as I have attempted to find myself in these past years at school away from my southern home.

My own story has held me back most of my young life. I am taught to feel ashamed and afraid. I am taught to expect damnation. I am taught that no one in their right mind would hire me, and if they did, I should expect to be fired if I let my secret out. I love women, and always have since the day I realized it was an option. The right option.

The shame I feel for my own feelings has transcended through my feminist mentality as well. How do I speak out about one portion of my life and try not to leave the other out? I want to break the molds I have been trying to escape from each and every time I “come out” as a feminist or as a lesbian. The process is never-ending and I wish to open with my voice, not a label.

I hope to implement this blog both as a tool to complicate and then understand my feminism, but also to bring light to my own story. Feminism has become my guiding light, and I do not wish to be meek about it anymore. I need my own history and also that of women’s past to come forward and enlighten as many as I was lucky to have experienced years ago. Please tell me, what do you want to hear? Want to know? I have great passion for LGBT issues, but that is not and will not ever be my mold. I want to be more than that, and simply express who I am, tangles, knots and all. Maybe by the end of this year I will be able to stretch my understanding past metaphors and critically examine what it truly means to gain equality for all. But I have a feeling I will always be learning, one day at a time.