ohhboy

A couple of weeks ago I asked you all to ask me things, surprisingly I received a few questions in German. One of the questions I received was ”was verstehst du unter Feminismus?" and therefore I have written this very long answer about feminism, what it means to me and why it’s so important. By the way, the reasons behind me answering in English are: 1) most of you probably don’t understand German 2) Svenja, who asked the question, probably understands English better than Swedish 3) I’m too lazy to explain my opinions about feminism in German 4) I can print this out and just wave it in front of every English-speaking anti-feminist I ever meet.

So, let’s get down to business. We live in a patriarchal world where women are mistreated all the time due to nothing more than what’s between their legs. This is why I call myself a feminist. It’s as simple as that.

Maybe you get a smaller paycheck than your fellow male colleges. Maybe you were the victim of genital mutilation as a child. Maybe your teacher puts you next to the really rowdy boy in school simply because you are a girl and that ought to calm the boy down. Maybe the same teacher looks at your breasts instead of your eyes. Maybe you always hold the keys to your apartment in your hand while walking home from the bus stop at night, just because you have learnt that when punching a rapist in the face, it makes more damage this way. Maybe you don’t even dare to walk home alone when it’s dark. Maybe you have sex with guys who don’t ever focus on you coming, but instead consider the sex to be over once they have come. Maybe you are constantly worrying about your weight and maybe you have learnt that your body is pear-shaped and that you therefore shouldn’t wear a certain type of jeans. Maybe you start to puke or maybe you stop eating pasta. Maybe all the bosses you’ve ever had are male. Maybe you’re afraid of cutting your hair short because you’ve heard that guys don’t really like it that way. Maybe you shave yourself everywhere else without really knowing why.

I call myself a feminist because of all the tiny things and all the enormous things. Because of the fact that these things are all part of a bigger system, all part of the patriarchy that has suppressed women for centuries. I want to live in a world where it doesn’t matter what you have between your legs. Where you can be female, male, or neither, and it still makes no difference in your life. I believe that gender equality is something that benefits everyone.

Without gender equality we will keep on placing each other in categories labeled male and female. We will keep on expecting certain behaviors and character features from women just because we have labeled these behaviors and character features to be feminine. Men will be expected to act in the masculine manner that society has created for them. They will keep on beating other men and raping women, they will keep on catcalling and spanking random women’s asses, they will keep on suppressing their emotions and feeling lonely.

This is what we have created together, these are the roles that we are passing down to the children in our society. And unless we make active choices towards changing this society, it will stay this way. Gender equality is not something that only concerns women, it concerns everyone. And as long as men do not realize this, the society can’t change completely. The change can’t only come from below, it needs to come from above as well. It needs to come from the men with high positions in businesses and governments, it needs to come from the people who have drawn the rules and laws which we all live by. This fight needs to be about female empowerment, but it also needs to be about men coming to terms with how privileged they are, and men realizing that the patriarchy isn’t an opinion, but a fact.

This is why I call myself a feminist.