My Story

In the past few weeks, the fbomb has exploded (haha pun sort of intended). People have been asking about me, about how I found feminism. 

I do want to emphasize that of course the fbomb is not about me. It's about you, it's about what you want to post, want to share and want to discuss with other teenage feminists. But I think that sharing our stories is important - it's important to consider everybody's background, perspective, just generally who they are. So here it is. Be warned, it's long. But nevertheless, it is me. 

When I was 13, I came to the groundbreaking conclusion that America is not the center of the universe. I’ve been lucky enough to have parents addicted to traveling, and have had a stamped passport since I was less than forty-eight inches tall. I couldn’t ride a rollercoaster, but I’d been on several international flights. I had been well acquainted with Europe and the accessible edges of Asia, and still, I never quite looked at them as places where people lived, worked, loved: where people had lives. Call it the sheltered and egotistical musings of a privileged white girl, but it took a terrifying rite of passage to wake me up and realize that the world sounds different than nasal English and looks different than the quaint town of Pepper Pike. The right of passage aforementioned: a speech delivered to the entire middle school student body of my school. The awakening: female feticide in rural India. Let me fill in the blatantly obvious blanks.

So terrified about doing endless hours of research that I began to have nightmares of vicious 3” by 5” note-cards attacking me, I put off working on the speech. From what I could remember, the chapel talks I didn’t sleep through were about sports and Pluto’s demise. I knew I didn’t want to talk about anything like that, but couldn’t think of anything better. I didn’t want to get up in front of my peers with a smug look on my face, my body language and expression screaming “hold on to your seats, folks, I’m about to cure cancer,” but I also didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.

That’s when my Mom, pushing me to face my fear of personified paper products, brought home an article she had read in a dentist’s waiting room and urged me to read and research it. The article, ironically, in Glamour magazine, was about female feticide. I consumed the article in less than ten minutes. When I finished reading, I was depressed, appalled and angry.

How could parents be killing their daughters? I was a daughter. All of my experiences with parents and daughters screamed that this was impossible. But somehow, I still believed it. Maybe it was because I have always been an avid reader, and garnered some self-awareness from constantly considering the perspectives of different characters. Maybe it was because I trusted the article. But maybe, it was because I have eyes, and I had stored over a decade of oblivious observations through an unfocused lens. Through a newly cognizant lens, I was beginning to apply the information. Why didn’t it surprise me that there was violence to this extent against women? It made me sad, but never surprised me. America may be untouched by many problems that countries like India have to deal with, such as extreme poverty or rampant prostitution. But there are some issues that we both battle. The violence against women I was reading about wasn’t in my own backyard, but it didn’t sound foreign.

So I began to research. And by looking at India’s problems first, I realized my culture’s own. From the highway of domestic violence, rape and objectification to the side streets of gender identity roles, homophobia and femininity, through to the less taken path, the capital F, feminism itself, I navigated my way out of my America-centric world.

I was so angry. Anger filled everything. Friends started to notice the change in me; the dark cloud, the way I wasn’t afraid to stare at life instead of look- somehow they figured it out. I wasn’t the same anymore because I’d figured things out. The world ceased to become a place full of references I could define but could never understand and started to really make sense, sense on a level I could feel in my heart, not my mind.

 I was only 13, and that was hard. Not wanting the same things everybody else wants is difficult. Verbally expressing this can be problematic. Dealing with the label you’re given when you and everybody else know you’re different is arduous. But I carried the feminist label with pride. I still maintain that I introduced the word into my grade’s vocabulary. I tried to give it the positive spin that it deserves, but popular culture permeated its way through my words, as it always does, and the ultimate effect wasn’t what I would have liked. Mainly, people saw me as a militant bitch, and weren’t afraid to tell me so.

I dealt with this new persona in a way I wish I hadn’t: I embraced it. I took on the identity of “angry” and “tells it how it is” thinking that if people perceived the way I looked at things in this way that it must be right. This was how I saw feminism, and I thought it was positive. Hey, if things hurt people’s feelings at least I was being honest; every word I spoke was one less lie put out into the media-created atmosphere of fallacies.

I went on a community service trip to India in the summer of 2008, when I was 15. And everything changed again.

The trip worked with many organizations that helped kids to pay for the trip, and also admitted only very bright, dedicated and innovative students. I felt at home amongst these people who only looked interested, not annoyed, when I talked about feminism. Together, we experienced India in a way that I never could have as a tourist. We lived on a rural school campus, and drove along roads where cows would often block the path of our bus. Every day, we visited an organization called Sadhna that boarded and helped adults with special needs, and also funded and supported rural women who had founded their own businesses. The organization, especially the two women who started and ran it, blew my mind. To take on so many different issues, all stigmatized in society, with so little support, monetarily and socially, and succeed, was inspiring to me in a way I’d never previously experienced.

Later in the trip, we visited another organization called Snehalya, which boarded and completely took care of the children of prostitutes, most of whom were HIV positive. Again, people selflessly trying to help people who are stigmatized and essentially ostracized by society. Interacting with both the children, who stole my heart, and the organizers, changed my perspective once again.

Everybody I met in India changed the way I lived in America. I began to look at my situation differently, truly realizing how lucky I am. I realized that many of the things I complained about before were completely insignificant in the long run. At the same time, my feminist sensibility only became stronger. I only wanted to help women more because of what I had seen strong women accomplish in India. And with the additional support of feminist peers whom I had experienced India with, I felt a mini feminist rebirth.

Through all of my feminist experiences, I learned that things aren’t always what they seem: my world, my self, my feminism. Even while the world may essentially stay the same, it changes all the time just by looking at it a different way. Life isn’t a linear story. I find that I’m always evolving into different characters, and with each character I find that the story arc I’m on contorts just a little.

Feminism supports this way that I think about life, and always has. When I needed to be angry about what I saw in the world, needed a label, and needed to flip that word along with my middle finger, feminism screamed me on. When I found that it was time to move on from the anger and try to fix things, feminism commended my progress. Feminism is never just about being angry, or just about trying to change the world, it’s about both, and it’s about other things and it’s about everything.

To me, feminism isn’t a label. It’s the lens through which I see the world.