My Feminism
It gets pretty personal, but I guess, "the personal is political"
My feminism grows stronger through spoken words, writings and actions of others. With their words and actions, I am able to analyze my own life and deconstruct what was planted into my mind. I believe that each part of our lives has been constructed down to the way we see race and compare “good” hair with “bad” hair and even the way we perceive relationships. Some are a little more obvious then others. My feminism wants to constantly construct and deconstruct for as long as I continue to grow consciously.
Before I was able to give feminism a name or even a reason I would go with my “feelings”. I remember these “feelings” not letting me conform even when it would tear me inside and out. It was in 2001 that I experienced my first awakening “feeling”. I had just turned eleven and changes started happening in my life that made we question marriage and women’s roles. My parents had just announced their divorce and my mom was moving out. I remember feeling scared because I started to realize that my dad felt entitled to the house, car and even us although she paid for bills and was the main caretaker of my brother and me. My dad wanted us to believe that she abandoned us and she didn’t want our family and that she deserved to live alone. It would have been easy to just blame her and it is true, I felt the pain of rejection but the feminist “feelings” that did not yet have a name arose. It was then I made the choice not to ignore her and I decided to visit my mom who was staying at my neighbors. I would stay there from the time school ended to the time that I had to go back home to sleep. I remember at first she would stare at me with an empty soul. I felt like I was visiting a grave site where only bones and traces of organ tissues occupied the space. Then she would cry. And cry. And cry. It was emotionally draining to see her like that and some days I wanted to just forget about her. After about a week of giving her company I started to avoid contact. I wanted to see if I could just forget what I had seen, if I was able to know that my mother was really the one abandoned from society and her family and still be able to move on with my life. Instead I began to find patterns of how other mothers were not valued and how even the role that I played in my fathers newly divorced life was the role of my mother. Unintentionally he would brush off the importance of my new chores that I acquired and even the “motherly” support I now had to give my brother and my mom. It was through this experience that I started questioning norms and understanding oppression. It was my feminist consciousness that gave me the eyes to see my mother as a model of strength and not weakness. These were the thoughts and feelings and eventually the voice that would challenge norms and question authority in my youth. My feminism came in many forms but it wasn’t always recognizable or even visible. It was done in the quiet and silent places in my mind where it felt foreign and unsafe. So when it was quiet I would follow those “feelings” and plan a resistance. My feminism started to quiet the world and lets me hear the voices that were too often drowned out. These voices were the marginalized ones that connecting me to reality.
Sometimes I don’t even know why but these “feeling” and sometimes dreams would draw me to certain people-to build stronger connections. I remember the first time I felt this way. I was seventeen and I was going to my first conference. One of the leaders in the conference had talked to my group about sexism and racism and as she formed these words into sentences they filled me. I felt at home like my thoughts and “feelings” finally made sense.
It was from that conference that I started developing on my feminism and determining how I wanted it to fuse to every part of my identity. I had decided that my feminism wouldn’t be worn like a mask that could be taken off and put back on when it felt safe. I wanted it to be visible and loud and not to just take up the quiet places of my mind. I felt the foreign beast that had no home transformed and become me.
I had to redefine myself. I remember the feeling of stripping at my flesh and digging deeper to find parts of myself that reinforced oppression. Everything that I saw as “normal” had to be put into question and I was scared at what I might find. Since I didn’t want to ignore oppression I had to make sure that I wasn’t using micro aggressions in my language and actions so I had to be aware of myself constantly.
When I started going to college I knew that I would be given the chance to focus on something I was passionate about. I had made some connections with psychology but the study seemed empty. The information was easy to memorize and to apply but it seemed unnatural. This is when I decided to major in Women’s Studies. I had taken a 113 class with the Women’s Studies Chair and she was describing terms and language that I wanted to develop. The authors who wrote the articles that got me through Lois’s class became the tools I would use to develop the language it took to describe the connections I had to the activism that I started getting involved with. It was in the 113 class that I first felt a connection to the university. Women’s Studies was more than a major but a class that created safe spaces for learning and growing consciousness. The relationship that I had with the university was very competitive and individualistic. I didn’t feel like it was a healthy relationship. I wanted a relationship with the university that I could challenge but more importantly challenge me and my feminist thought.
Its not dont yet still working on it :(
