Finding Our Voices

This year, The Exonian team asked some of our sixth form to write a few thoughts on such light-hearted topics such as identity, gender, culture and growing up in 2021. Strap yourselves in…

by ELEANOR CLARK

eminism. Now I’ve got you

Fscared: you’re expecting an irate tirade against the patriarchy, aren’t you? But just pause for a moment, to humour me, and ask yourself this: if you don’t already class yourself as a feminist, why is that? I would argue – no, drop the conditional, I am going to argue – that it is because you don’t really know what feminism is, and why it is relevant to you, today.

The trouble is that feminism is an old movement – older than many people realise. As such, it has had time to develop strands and factions and, unfortunately, stereotypes. These days, therefore, people avoid the term because its true sense has been lost in a nebulous array of confused, contradictory and often negative connotations. Let’s be clear, then: the principle reason why you should be a feminist – why, in fact, you probably are already - is because if you are not, then you are sexist. Feminism is the belief that gender should not change a human being’s rights or opportunities. If you do not believe this, then, logically, you believe that gender should impact these things.

Yet so simple a solution as this can hardly be sufficient. If it were, we would not have lost our way to disillusionment, and I would not be writing this. What we need is an examination of our preconceptions, not just about women, but about feminists. We have now reached the stage in the history of the movement that stereotypes about its activists are as ingrained, and arguably more pernicious, than those age-old convictions about women themselves that we are all subservient, decorative reproductive machines. We are able, on our great twenty-first century moral high ground, to laugh at these historic images, to cancel outmoded portrayals of women lazily continuing to use them. What we discuss less openly, are the profoundly damaging images most of us conjure up when we think of a feminist. Summon that image now, force yourself to inspect it. How does your archetype dress, speak, act? And how many feminists like that have you actually ever met? The point is, that all of us carry this stereotype around with us, and most of us are afraid of it. The response to that fear, all too often, is to belittle a movement, and a group of real people, who have, at essence, only ever wanted one thing: equality.

Whilst it remains the case that we live in a society where boys grow up to be casually and unthinkingly sexist, what truly saddens me about the state of feminism in 2021 is that it is no longer an inspiring refuge for young women. Feminism is dying, because too many girls are caught by dangerous misconceptions that lead them to avoid it like the plague. And every time that happens, every time I hear a teenage girl furiously deny being a feminist, a little part of all our progress dies. To catch them, our future, we must be direct about why they are being lost. Girls: feminism does not mean that you have to forsake make-up, razors and skirts; that you must cut your hair short and never let a man pay for anything again. Feminism, for you, means choice. Choice about how you dress, about your career, about how you manage relationships and family life. It means, ultimately, an end to vacuous assumptions about tomboys and girlygirls. It means that, finally, you will be free to define your own femininity.