The exact moment i became a feminist

Melusina - the esoteric female

I am trying to remember the exact moment i became a feminist. It was definitely in the first year of university. It was when i was reading about language and patriarchy - why i was doing this i cannot remember. But then it hit me, bam! for the first time that feeling of unfairness in the pit of my stomach was finally given a voice and for the first time i felt like i had begun to think and speak.

Then i began to look at women in the media, which quickly became an essay on pornography - back then, even in the early 90s, the public space was being colonialised by pornography. Of course it was going to get worse, to the point where feminists became confused about what consisted of empowerment and exploitation, but that is a different story.

Looking at pornography helped me define myself as a woman, being sexual as a woman, and what was objectification and exploitation. I rapidly learnt the different between the Madonna and Britney Spears, and learnt how to articulate it. I read many wonderful texts on expressing sexuality - and learnt that there were other ways to do this, although the way commercial porn is written is like a sharp short shock to the system.

Looking at porn, the most obvious manifestation of sexuality, was a really good thing. I think everyone over the age of 21 should study porn because it teaches them how to grapple with it. It frustrates me that it is out there in the ether and no one says anything about it.

I think the best part of discovering feminism has been the opportunity to reclaim our spirituality, which includes the reclamation of our bodies. To reclaim what it means to be a woman in all its beauty. All its sorrow. All its contradictions. All its possibilities. All its ecstasy and joy. I spent a lot of time reconnecting and discovering Goddess Spirituality. In my late 20s, i explored Celtic shamanism. A big part of this was reweaving the narrative which had either gone underground or gotten lost, or co-opted... and also to include men in a narrative. Straight men. Cos, you know, i am straight. And they are part of the story right?

I have always said i was a feminist from that point onwards. It was weird when it first began because all my life i had been told that feminists were mad women who burnt their bras and hated men. I discovered this was of course not true, although i agree about the bras thing. However, it was very wonderful to say i was a feminist. It is code for, i take myself seriously as a woman. And i take you seriously as a woman. And i take you seriously as a man as well. Not some caricature. You can have feelings and emotions and you can be more than you have been told you must be. Feminism liberates not just women, but men as well.

In fact it liberates everyone.

These days i tend to wear my feminism more quietly. I am less angry, and less annoyed. Also i think that it is alright just to mosey about quietly doing my own thing.

There are many wonderful things about being a woman and it made me very angry that we are constantly being put back into our boxes. But i can also see this is personal. It is not just women who are asked not to be powerful. The weak cannot be made to understand their own strength cos they threaten the status quo. Well you know what, i would happily go along with the status quo if they made sense. But currently, and actually for the longest time, the status quo has been their own worst enemy. So really, as a rebelle, and someone reclaiming my own power, i am also saving those who are in power. They have got it all wrong, and the thing is they know that they are wrong, they just haven't realised it yet.

So for all those reasons, and more i became a feminist. And still am... and will always be.