The short answer is yes, but to understand why I think the story behind why is important. Just telling you won’t capture why I am, because stories are more captivating, they are the most effective form of advertising and people who are natural storytellers are rated the friendliest.
Feminism was something I had encountered, like many things I now consider myself, in high school. There were the typical guys who would cry out “feminazi” about any girl who stood up for herself or who was mildly assertive. That was when I first became acquainted with the term. It was an awful introduction in all honesty. People also would react in horror to Marxism and thought Buddhism was cool, but just didn’t make sense (almost everyone was a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant at my high school). I now label myself as many of the things that people found odd back then.
Anyway, to get back to the story, I came to understand feminism as this negative thing that was pro-woman and to be pro-woman was to be anti-man. That is what I believed for a long time. I was incredibly sexist. I think most men are sexist until they realize they are, then the change happens. So, I don’t blame those kids back in high school for their problematic thinking, I get where they’re coming from.
The culture industry, which consists of things like music, movies and the news, promote an anti-woman narrative fairly often. As an avid hip hop fan, it is no surprise I had underlying, sexist beliefs. I remember saying I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton over Obama because she was a woman, never mind that I was like 8 and couldn’t vote. I had no other reason, just that she was woman. I had some work to do. (I did vote for her over Trump, want to clarify that.)
Anyway, it wasn’t until I started to deal with some of the underlying issues, that I have with my mother, that things started to change. I am still correcting many of the behaviors I learned from her and from the village that raised me, but I don’t blame her for anything anymore. I realize my actions are my actions and mine alone. That shift in thinking is important to understand, because it is at the core of why I am a feminist, and why I believe many men in this country are resentful of the label. People love to blame external factors for their faults. While external factors certainly do matter and should not be overlooked, people who believe they are in control of their own life are happier. Countless studies support this. And giving people the agency and tools to be in control is one of the most important things a person can do for mental health.
I started to make these connections around the time I graduated high school. I had been kind of a mess up most of high school. I didn’t do anything, even if I was interested in it, for fear of failure. My parents and teachers often described me as “a smart kid who just didn’t care.” One teacher even wrote to my mother that he thought I had the “potential to change the world if I tried” and he won an award for covering the Serbian genocide.
I had an existential crisis right after graduation. My identity was merged with that of a high school loner. Yet, I had no high school anymore. So, it was time for me to make a change. I went out that summer and got two jobs. I worked 7 days a week, many of those were for 12 hours a day at an amusement park, and I would only request off to go to my job at a baseball stadium. I got to the point where I considered my stadium job as a day off because I got to do more than sleep when I was home. I had 4 days off that whole summer, and they were all for college related reasons.
The reason I explained all of that is so everything else is put into perspective. Becoming a feminist wasn’t a short or easy thing for me, but I got there and that is what is important. Fast forward to freshman year of college. I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I got there. Unfortunately, most of what I wanted and still want to do encompasses countless interests. So, I picked two fairly general degrees, Multiplatform journalism and Psychology. I was fascinated by both ever since I picked up a Malcolm Gladwell book in 8th grade, but I never believed I could get anywhere close to his level.
Now, I see that it isn’t easy, but I can get there. I don’t know if getting to his level will get me a job anymore, but I can get there for me and that’s enough. Anyway, after high school I pushed myself and ended up writing a paper a day that entire school year while barely sleeping. I would later find out, by my junior year, that pushing myself so hard for those two years would make me dissociate from my body. So, don’t do what I did. Take care of yourself.
I started to prove to myself that I could work hard, and I was smart. This led me to apply to become an editor for the school paper, twice. Both times I got rejected, rightfully so. I wasn’t ready back then, but it made me go out and do my own thing to prove to them they were wrong. I started a local music podcast, more or less, in spite of the paper. I wanted to show I could get more contacts then their entire staff (I did), that I could do more interviews (I am the best interviewer on their entire staff now, you can ask the people I interview that though) and have a bigger profile than they did. (I failed at that one, but money and time were against me.)
Anyway, these discoveries culminated in a class I had spring semester, sophomore year: Psychology of Gender. This is the class I have learned the most from in all of college despite it being insufferable at times. At that time, I also got closer to someone I interviewed, a local fashion designer and gender non binary individual. This really opened my eyes to the constraints gender places on people. I started to realize I forsake the feminine aspects of myself all the time. One of my favorite shows growing up was Ugly Betty. This last summer I binge watched the entire show Jane the Virgin. In the past, I would have felt ashamed to admit that or cringe while I was watching it. That class started me on a journey that I am still on, toward self-acceptance.
Then I studied abroad in Ireland and took a class in Social Policy. In this class, my professor was a gender policy specialist. His favorite topic of conversation was patriarchy in the Irish welfare state. By the end of the course I understood what patriarchy was and really got the whole “fuck the patriarchy!” idea. It hurts men too because inequality hurts everybody. That is when I understood that the feminine root in feminism, was in reaction to the patriarchal system we are all living under.
At that time I decided to accept the term feminism as part of my label. I still think taking up that label may be perceived by some women as disingenuous and is the only reason I don’t usually talk about it unless asked, but I am a feminist. To be a feminist does not mean that you prefer femininity over masculinity. Both are necessary qualities for a society and person to possess, but being a feminist means to rebel against patriarchal structures that hurt families when maternity leave isn’t a universal law in this country, or in the countless rape cases where people don’t stop to think that this is a person, not a statistic we are talking about.
Which brings me to another idea. The whole tea analogy of consent is disingenuous in my opinion, because while it does teach consent, it does not teach the reason why consent is important. Consent is crucial because this is an autonomous individual who should have the same rights as everyone else regardless of if they have a second X chromosome. This idea can be applied to so many other situations as well.
I still have work to do in how I see women. I am not going to say that the years of sexism I learned are gone. In fact, I’m sexist in a totally different way now. I’m deathly afraid of talking to girls when not in a setting that requires it, which goes back to my self-esteem. I think many of the men that buy into these harmful “feminazi” narratives need a self-esteem boost, and to be honest with themselves. I wasn’t honest for years and I wish I’d have started this journey ten years ago because maybe I wouldn’t be at the stage where you swing the opposite direction and now view women as superior. Had I started earlier, I might be past that stage of overcorrecting already. Bottomline, I’m getting there every day and I do consider myself a feminist. However, that label might mean something different to me, than what many think of, when they hear the word feminist. My only hope is that I can expand the definition, rather than contract it.
Sean recently graduated from Duquesne University with a major in Psychology and Multiplatform Journalism. “With Psychology I focused on why people do what they do and with Journalism I focused on how they communicate that. The intersection of my studies was people. While I am interested in video games, films, music and many other forms of art, for me, nothing beats an authentic story grounded in the human experience.”
For more information about Sean, visit: www.seanachaidh.me
Cover Photo: Kara Schutter
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