Dawn of a New Way of Thinking

I find the term “bad feminist” to be a particularly interesting term, one that I can very much relate to in my life. To give a little background, I am the epitome of privileged and like Deidre says in her blog post, I was absolutely blind to it up until a few years ago. My entire life, I have been given everything I could possibly want. My parents put me through private, catholic education. For high school, I went to an all girls school that held feminism to the highest degree. And by that I mean feminism was practically the bible. I was once called ignorant by one of my classmates by saying that I wouldn’t be offended if my date held the door open for me. In my mind, I always saw that as feminism: the desire to do everything yourself, to shame men for doing nice things for me, to take control of situations and be bitchy just to prove that I could, to say that women are better and superior to men. Now, I know that isn’t what feminism is. By coming to college, I’ve realized that but that didn’t stop me from very much relating to this book of short essays about being a bad feminist.


“I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.” This is the quote that has most impacted me from any book we have read this semester. It made me stop. It made me think. It made me define who I am and what I believe in. In the high school I went to, you were either a feminist (and you were only a feminist if you were incredibly radical) or you weren’t. I had always said I didn’t believe in feminism until college. But here I am in a women and identity English class, trying to define what I believe. I don’t stand up. I’m not going out and telling the world that women should get equal rights. I just live and exist and hope things will work out eventually for my gender. It got me thinking, is that a feminist? I am a feminist in my own way?  And I think I kind of am, a pretty damn bad one at that, but I am. I believe that all women should be equal to men. I believe that I shouldn’t have to put up with “women belong in the kitchen” jokes. I believe in the equality movement. I believe in all of that but I simply choose not to act on it. And maybe, contrary to what I’ve always thought, that makes me a feminist, just a really really bad one.

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