When did you decide to take a stand against patriarchy? Did you think differently about this before? What made you change your mind?
What made you a feminist?
r/AskWomen
When did you decide to take a stand against patriarchy? Did you think differently about this before? What made you change your mind?
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When I realized that, although I knew that I was a full and complete person, much of the rest of the world was going to insist that I wasn’t because of my gender.
Leaving Christianity behind meant that I was finally able to see my own worth and be on my own side
I am not religious or Christian anymore, but I do feel it necessary to note that I think Jesus himself and I would’ve really vibed. And I know he would’ve been on my side. He also said he didn’t want everyone to form a religion after him. So he never wanted what he said to be used to control people, the way that people are using it now.
Entering a heavily male dominated field.
I didn’t really change my mind per se. I was just sort of neutral before.
My mother and father.
My mom says I was born with red socks (redsocks is the oldtimey word for feminists in my country)
Finding out how many women I know were sexually assaulted at one point in their lives, and also having multiple family members in relationships with abusive men 😣
Observation of the reality and the status quo. I’m a feminist fiction writer now.
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Happened super early for me, apparently. I remember being pissed whenever teachers made “harmless” comments on how the boys needed to help them carry chairs since the girls couldn’t, getting separated into boys vs. girls in gym class because we’d be too weak to handle the same sports, scolded for playing in the dirt at recess because it’d dirty the skirt I hated wearing anyways.
I just noticed very young that I was treated differently for being a girl. Becoming tomboyish was especially rough but solidified my feelings about it before I even hit middle school.
Leaving my home village, going to university in a city and having courses on gender equality being offered to me.
I grew up in the US deep south, and I got tired people trying to fit me in this perfect box of femininity. I didn’t like being told what my role in society was because of my gender. Men kept wanting to change me to fit their ideals. My grandmother would openly say she’s my grandfather’s property. Then the Me Too movement solidified things I was already thinking, so I think that was really the turning point that made me a feminist girl’s girl.
I think around 9 at a friends house something hit me for the first time: men have a family and keep their hobbies, women have a family and their family is their entire life. Im sure you can argue “no, that isnt true, cos blah blah blah” I get it, we’re all different. But it was the case in every home I visited my friends in, including my own home. That was my first understanding of different genders, different rules. Then it kept piling on from that moment: a lifelong mission to speak up against the injustice of it all 😝
Fighting for my salary. And not feeling bad asking for a salary bump when I got a new job.
Seeing a lot of violence, a lot of injustice and inequality towards the women I grew up with, no turning point, grew up already a feminist by living&breathing misogynistic opinions.
I grew up in a conservative country. The way I got treated as less than ever since I can remember made me a feminist from a very young age. When you get treated as a ‘thing’ more than a person, you want equality immediately
Not a woman but i heavily believe that people dont deserve to be treated differently for things beyond their control, in this case gender. This has resulted in me being a feminist since by comparison the world’s a damn misogynist on average (sans georg)
Never wasn’t, I just learned the word for it
Because everyone saw my worth in what i can do, like cleaning, cooking, giving birth, and i knew from the beginning i didn’t want to do any of those things. I also resent the idea of being seen just as some tool that can provide service to others. I wanted to break free.
Seeing my mother who had a lifelong illness have to go to work and then come home and do all housework, childcare, and take care of both her and my stepdads elderly parents. While my stepdad gets to go to work, then gym, then come home to a hot dinner and clean house and still complain. He gets praised for working hard and “taking in a child that isn’t his”. While my mam got no thanks from anyone, only criticism when she did try to stand up for herself.
Then I saw how my ex would insinuate that I would stay at home with children (if we ever had any) and quit my job. When I asked how much my salary would be to be a stay at home mother, he told me “I’m not going to just pay for you to get your nails done, you can find a part time job or some way to make your own money” 🙃
I dont like how much power plays have negatively impacted relationships. I like them in the bedroom, but outside of that i just think its weird to treat women less than, certain religions enable that behavior too. Its not cavemen times where men were hunters for vulnerable pregnant women an small kids. Modern society is different and social norms should adapt to that imo. Women are able to provide food and homes for family units, but modern society has not adapted toward protecting preserving family units. Instead theres a lot of selfishness for the sake of wanting “power” rather than being a team. I also notice that alot of emotional labour and happiness still falls on women, instead of men taking some of that burden equally. It makes them miserable to be around.
I was born that way.
Edit: for more context: my older brother turned me into one the day I was born by being a 4 year old bully and trying to eliminate me. But I really don’t recall a moment when I wasn’t a “feminist”.
My physically abusive father purposefully putting my 8 siblings, mother and myself in poverty; and our community and the courts turned on us and backed him…he was a firefighter, so no one believed he was beating us.
All the boys got the coolest toys while I got dolls and dresses. My poor mother was heartbroken when I told her I wanted to be a “tomboy”
If I’m being honest it started as a way to piss some of the men in my life off. Now, it’s because women are better to work with and/or rely on in most aspects of life.
I grew up in a patriarchal society where female fetuses are killed because they were considered burdens. My parents have two daughters including me, and relatives constantly reminded them that they had no sons. This radicalized me.
Realizing that men are taught (most times unknowingly by their parents, government and society) to see women as weaker, dumber, property. And that they are entitled to pick any one or more of us for their benefit, and that we’d be grateful to them for choosing us, as we are waiting to happily serve them. And they have to do this to earn any approval and respect from other men. The entire game starts and ends with them, and has been that way for thousands of years, so much so that they’re calling it “nature”.
It’s fucked.
I am the daughter of a pentecostal minister and grew up in a quasi- cult built around controlling all the women in the church. It was sinful to adorn ourselves in any way that could make us look attractive to the men. Yet many of us were sexually abused (I was for many years). 90% of the women in our church married early, only to become hard working divorced, single mothers who continued to serve the church happily as the men either left the church or were remarried to better looking women.
It took me years to reverse the conditioning and release internalized misogyny. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever choose to be married. I am too afraid of what may lie dormant in the unprovoked mind of a man who contractually has access to me forever. I’d rather always have an exit plan and build skills to make my own money, and choose free companionship. I am the only one of my friends from back home who didn’t marry early and who instead focused on a lucrative career. My two best friends are in nightmare marriages with 3 kids each and look 20 years older than me from what they were put through by their husbands but refuse to divorce them.
I encourage all women to have a back up plan to be independent, even if you plan to be married and have children. Women are filled with love and compassion for others, and men may never collectively be able to give us the same thing back. Take care of yourselves and other women and stop tearing each other down for the attention of men. Because men ultimately only care about receiving attention from other men, not you.
Being born a woman
When i got married and had a baby girl.
I was raised by a single mom. That was just normal in our home
I feel like I was born this way. I remember being a kid and yelling at my dad for not helping my mom. And for as long as I can remember, I used to tell my dad that I would never marry because I don’t want to be a slave to men. My parents were quite conservative in terms of gender roles
So I’m I trans woman, I mention that because my childhood was a bit… shall we say, atypical 😅.
I became a feminist (before I transitioned) basically when most of my friend group was female and I was old enough to see how the world works. Where I grew up at least, men were pretty fricking sexist. ESPECIALLY in private 😔 So it kinda took longer than I’d like to admit. But yea, one day it was just kinda like looking around and being like “WHY ARE WE TREATING PEOPLE LIKE THIS!?!?! Wtf society???”
But, fwiw, even then I didn’t have a good understanding of what sexism was like. After I transitioned (in my late 20s) and people started treating as a woman… HOLY CRAP. It’s utterly insane how much disregard and disrespect people have for woman without EVEN REALIZING they’re doing it. I’ve tons of examples, but I basically went from being entirely unquestioned almost always, having to correct people when they called me “Doctor” (student at the time), to having to double prove almost every little thing (and then still not being taken seriously sometimes) almost overnight… Just wild. And that’s even before policies…..
I was always sort of feminist, men and women are equal, you can do anything a man can etc. But I tended to brush off bad male behavior as an individual failing. That guy is just a jerk, etc.
Then a couple of years ago our division was essentially overtaken by a good ole boys club. I saw talented women at the peak of their careers driven out in ways that caused significant losses to their retirement benefits just to be cruel. I was ignored in meetings.
And many of the new hires, all straight white Christian men, are incredibly incompetent. I used to think the mediocre white man was a myth and exaggeration. I believed everyone had to work hard and perform well. Lol that’s just for women and minorities. Some of my coworkers don’t know basic functions of their jobs and refuse to learn or try. But us women get yelled at for every minor thing.
I don’t know, I just finally snapped in meeting watching three guys sit there blankly and the women doing all the work. That moved me from chill everyone is equal feminist to destroy the patriarchy feminist.
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When I was around 15 someone shared a video of a youtuber who made sort of feminist-101 type videos and I was hooked, I watched all of them and then got a bunch of books from the library about feminism. Unfortunately I think in recent years she’s become pretty conservative.
My mom sued my dad because he was constantly threatening, insulting and following her. She presented evidence that he was insulting her, and one of the words he used was “zorra” (I’m Spanish, zorra means bitch, also the female fox). EVERYONE would know that when you call someone zorra, you’re insulting her. Absolutely everyone.
Except that jury. He said that it wasn’t even an insult, he said that it was only a female fox. That’s when he dismissed my mother’s complaints for her safety and her kids’ as paranoia and we had to move 300 kilometres away to be safe without anyone’s help. I’ll never forget that.
A women’s studies class I took in college
Lame as hell, but it was the Spice Girls.
I was 10.
I don’t really know if anything “made” me a feminist, so to speak. As long as I can remember, I’ve had more or less the same core beliefs and values in my soul and in my mind. Of course they’ve become more nuanced with life experience and as I’ve gotten older, but at the heart of it, my beliefs have always been that of a feminist: someone who believes that all gender identities should have equal rights. That also bleeds into any and all walks of life.
Ironically: my dad. He’s deeply religious, but he always treated me as a capable person, not a girl to be pretty and docile. He made me question social norms through philosophical discussions and thought exercises from a young age (9-10yrs old is my earliest memory of such deep discussions), and had me do traditionally “male” tasks like gardening, painting (walls and stuff), woodwork, basic household wiring, etc. that I enjoyed immensely.
For me feminism essentially boils down to: we’re all human beings with different needs and skills, and it’s our responsibility as conscious beings to work together to create and adapt systems to the needs and capabilities of the individuals that are part of that social structure, regardless of what type of human it is and is attracted to.
It’s just come out naturally bit by bit over the years. I think it’s always been there. I was surrounded by a lot of women (lots of Aunties) before I was 5 that may have shaped things a bit.
Feminism is the political social and economic equality of genders
How can you (general you) not believe that? If you had two children, a boy and a girl, surely you would want them to have the same rights and opportunities? That’s all there is to it
I don’t know that there was a day 1 for me to become a feminist or whether gender equality was always obvious (yet not attained)
I grew up in a more extreme patriarchal religion that forced women to dress modestly, act modestly (for example banning women from singing or dancing in public, banning women from holding leadership positions within the religion), forced women to get married young, have a ton of kids, be the primary parent towards those kids, etc. There’s a facet of the religion where the men don’t even have jobs and their “responsibility” is literally to just participate in the religion while the women work and financially support their families alone on top of also having endless kids and being the primary parent raising them.
They could never shut up about how they think feminism is evil, so that pushed me to become a feminist.
came out the womb a feminist I just didn’t know how to talk yet lol
I had to take a male relative to open my bank account (with my money that I earned).
I live in a country where there’s 10 (reported) feminicides a day and the government is so incompetent that a group of women had to get together to look for bodies while risking their lives. That sums it all up.
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Seeing domestic violence growing up and realising how strong women are in the face of adversity.
☆ Seeing my mother allow past partners to disrespect her all for the sake of having a bf
☆ Realizing that my mother’s internalized misogyny had rubbed off on me when I was a teen, and that it made me feel icky inside
☆ Realizing that I wanted more out of life than just being assigned the mother and wife title
☆ Seeing past friends be so male-centered to the point that I could never make a genuine connection with them
☆ When I learned the truth about men, and read a pleathora of stories from women that had their life goals and dreams taken from them because of men
☆ Dealing with extreme misogyny in the workplace
☆ Being expected to do more housework than my younger brother
☆ Having curfews and restrictions that never applied for my younger brother
My mom
When a guy at my work said “Oh it’s just a bit of a boys club around here” when people were ignoring me trying to tell them that the financials for the company were really off.
Basically got patted on the head and told I was a “good girl” and to focus on just my work. It was a complicated, widespread issue and I was 22/23, I had problems getting people to understand what I was saying was so wrong. I am also a baby faced person so have always had trouble with people taking me seriously anyways.
The company found a £30 million pound tax bill the CFO/accounting team “misplaced”/forgot. Plus there were credits in the system that hadn’t been paid since 2013- at the time it was 2018. It collapsed into administration and they were so desperate to stay afloat they brokered a last-minute deal with the competition selling the company for– drumroll £1 because of how much debt they were under.
We supplied drinks to British Airways/Heathrow… Most restaurants… Most hotels… Most pubs. The client base was worth more than the company.
My manager said I should’ve spoken up if I knew- I quit on the spot (already had a new job lined up) which was ultra infuriating since I had told him multiple times.
I was then promptly labeled a bitch for “not making it clear” and for being frustrated when people tried to blame me for it.
Women are the scape goat for everything.
it’s a hard question to answer. in my case, it’s like asking, “when did you realize you weren’t a transphobe, racist, etc.?” if you’ve never been fed a narrative that women are inferior to men or less deserving of things men are entitled to, then you have always been a feminist because i think egalitarianism comes naturally to people, and people who grow up in a cultural milieu where women are made to feel inferior but remain feminist are tough as nails and extraordinarily good people to resist what is so often and easily internalized, especially from childhood
Being a woman and being raise by an awful man
Being born
Being born. Having common sense.
I don’t know if I ever wasn’t, even as a fundie Christian kid. I saw how differently boys and girls were treated, what was expected of girls, and the box we were squeezed into and I resented it from the start. I have a big family and am the only girl so the differences were very easy to spot.
Summer after junior year, I was taking college prep classes for a program. One of the classes was about critical race theory. My professor asked my class to list all the things you that came to mind when we think of the phrase “Black Lives Matter”. And we all added to the list: disproportionate policing, civil rights, black men, etc. Once we were all done, she pointed out that no one had written anything about black women and their experiences. Even in a movement that was supposed to highlight a group, it still managed to center men.
Growing up in a fundementalist religion that forced women to be 2nd class citizens. I wondered why there seemed to be no religions thst forced men beneathe women. Left home and went straight into the military and happy to say I never stepped foot in a church again.
What didn’t?
Men. 🤣
Being able to drive, wear what I want, work and live as an unmarried woman, while there are women out there who aren’t able to show their faces and are considered little more than breeding stock.
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I believe women are equal to men it’s literally that simple.
I was born🤷🏽♀️. But really, my mom was one and I never knew anything else. My dude wasn’t necessarily one but he’s become an ardent feminist over the 20+ years we’ve been together and we’re raising our sons the same. I’ll be damned if we raise shitastic men. But again, I was just raised like this so it’s common sense to me.
I didnt want to wnd up like my mother.
honestly it hit me slowly at first, like little moments that didn’t sit right being talked over, being expected to be polite no matter what, or how my guy friends never worried about walking home alone. but what really lit the fire was seeing the way women around me were treated in relationships and at work. it stopped feeling like “just the way things are” and started feeling like bullshit i wasn’t gonna tolerate anymore. once you see it, you can’t unsee it. 🤷🏼♀️😔
Easy. It was a combination of books and women in my life patient enough to let me stumble to the most effective reality: feminism is not the source of my suffering, it’s a powerful solution. That and a fuck ton of books and women sharing their stories and experiences about patriarchy; you don’t know what you don’t know 🤷🏽♂️ Now I know better, so I live better.
When I learned most men were not like my dad and brother.
Gestures around broadly.
My grandmother had MS. When her husband was in the war, she couldn’t open a bank account on her own, so she had to get an uncle to do it. Then when Roe vs Wade happened, she walked via her walker to fight for the rights for women. She herself was very religious and would have never, but she knew how important women’s rights were.
I’m old. Glass ceilings, clear assumptions about my abilities based solely on my gender, the male gaze, open harassment, these were all very real things that society deemed normal and acceptable when I was growing up. Women gained most of their rights during my lifetime (voting predates me, but the right to my own money, a bank account without a male cosigner, no fault divorce, equal opportunity employment, spousal rape being illegal…these all happened in my lifetime. I became a feminist because I recognized that I won’t be treated as a full-fledged person otherwise.
When I saw that my services were taken for granted but my opinions put down. I am good enough to work for them but not good enough to advise or suggest.
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The book “boys and sex.” Of course I’d consider myself a feminist for years, but not how I do now
Idk just grew up being told to be kind and shi and apparently that’s “feminist ideologies”
Really silly, but my brother was a Boy Scout in the 2000s. I spent time doing what the troop did but I wasn’t allowed to join the group or go camping.
And before anyone mentions girl scouts it wasn’t the same back then. I wanted to go fishing, camping and rock climbing not play tag in a school gym.
I have a very sexist family.
At some point I realized that the women!!! of my family shouldnt be pinching my butt and joking how men would be so lucky when I was older. Among other more normal but still bullshitty stuff.
I’m not, I just grew up with the expectation that the world should be fair and equitable for everyone, which I suppose is the definition of feminism.
I don’t remember converting. I remember as a kid hearing that women changed their names when they got married and thinking “well I’m not doing that” and I didn’t. I tried doing makeup for about 3 months when I was a tween and remember thinking it was bullshit so I stopped. Shaved my head at one point just to win an argument and two different people were like “since you’re a feminist…” Which no one had ever said before and I had not given it any thought, and would not have described myself that way. So I have just always done what I wanted and I guess that’s feminist? But I do identify that way now and I don’t know when it happened.
I really became a devout feminist once I entered the workforce. I was the lone girl in an all-male workplace for years. I was (and still am sometimes) harassed and mistreated by guys who will never have a clue that they did anything wrong. There’s no way I could ever not be feminist.
Autism.
I grew up in a world full of strange and arbitrary rules about who is allowed to do what and why. I found that asking questions about those rules, and why they exist, is a course of action that is pretty heavily discouraged, even moreso if you’re a child, and even more than that if you’re a neurodivergent child.
As I got older, I found the feminist framework to be the most effective lens through which to interrogate the bullshit rules imposed on people as a result of their gender, and all it seemingly asks of me is to be unwilling to support the imposition of those gendered standards, and advocate for the liberation of those constrained by such standards.
Small thing growing up with a lot of siblings.
What was expected of me and my sisters and what was expected of my brothers.
The bar was just lower in some ways and higher in other ways. It was really frustrating.
Honestly I think I was around 11-12 when I discovered what a feminist was online. Been one ever since and converted so many women who used to say “I’m not a feminist I believe in equal rights” because guys always used to say being a feminist is for sluts or just to be better than men lol
Men.
I noticed the double standards and privilege when I was a young girl
I grew up Mormon and I was taught that my whole purpose was to be a mother and to serve god and my husband. I felt like I was so much more than that and I started to realize how the world saw women. It wasn’t just the church. I realized that matriarchal societies are possible and have the ability to thrive through sisterhood and that a women’s purpose does not have anything to do with a man. Now I’m 21, atheist and a feminist until the day I die. I will always support women who choose the lifestyle I left behind because feminism is what gives them that choice.
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When I realized what being a woman meant at 11 after being molested for the umpteenth time
Not wanting to let men have power because they have balls. Doesn’t make sense, so never liked it. And now it’s more because of Andrew rate than anything else.
like someone else said, i never wasn’t i just learned the word
a lot of it did have to do with the subtle double standards my family would force on the women. some of them werent super obvious, but they were obvious enough that it bugged me even as a little kid
My mom❤️
Being a little girl and feeling/seeing the ways I was treated unfairly compared to the boys in my life.
My mom. She drilled it into our heads to not make the same mistakes that she did.
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My mom. Terrible mother, but always told me that women are equal to men. She taught me to see what’s going on and to try to help.
I was in seventh grade, 12 years old. I was the only female trumpeter (and had head chair for the entire year) in band, with six male trumpeters in my section. The male trumpeters would forget their instruments all the time and our conductor would let them borrow rented ones. However, the first (and only) time I ever left my trumpet at home my conductor told me he was very disappointed in me and assigned me 15 pages of writeoffs: “I will not forget my trumpet.” Anger brewed in me when writing it, and my (single) mom was angry as well. I turned it in and told the conductor that it wasn’t fair he never punished the boys but punished me unfairly. I then quit band. I never went back. While sad that I retired my skills, my mom completely supported my decision. I started noticing how people treated women differently, specifically my mom. My mom has always been better than men in a lot of things she did, and her support and seeing her navigate it directly caused my feminism.
(Edit: spelling)
Respect for myself and empathy for other women