Hello!
I’ve been seeing a lot of you around lately, on Tumblr, on Facebook, on the subway, anywhere. I’ve been seeing you in hair salons and I’ve been seeing you on street corners. Essentially, I’ve been seeing you everywhere, and this isn’t a good thing.
Let’s have a little talk.
Calling yourself a “feminist” doesn’t immediately make you one, just like calling yourself any number of labels doesn’t make you one. You wouldn’t call yourself a Christian while violating the tenets of Christianity, would you? No. So why would you do that with feminism? Is it cool, all of a sudden, to call yourself a feminist? Is it edgy? I must have missed something, because those of you to whom this is addressed, suddenly seem to be calling yourself feminists while actually preaching the opposite.
Let’s do a bit of a checklist, quiz type thing.
1. If you judge other women for their sexual practices, you are not a feminist.
Look, it’s that easy. If you look at another woman’s sexual history or her current sexual behavior and you say she’s a slut/whore/any number of negative words, you are not a feminist.
If you think feminism is only for the monogamous, you’re wrong. Those women you call sluts are just as feminist as you claim to be. If you think feminism is for only those women who have casual sex, then you’re also wrong. Feminism is for monogamous women, too. The beauty of feminism is that we accept each other’s sexual practices as valid and okay, while keeping our own. We one sexual partner at a time, or multiple sexual partners at a time, and it doesn’t matter.
Sexual acceptance is a very important part of feminism. You can’t look at another woman and say, “You sleep around too much! You aren’t a feminist!” No, dear, it’s you that aren’t being the proper feminist. We feminists believe in being sex-positive, meaning that we will accept others and their sexual lives and not only not judge them, but accept them as valid.
So, if you think that women with a “high number” or multiple sexual partners are bringing down the cause, or are “sluts,” then you can kindly leave.
2) If you judge other women on their appearance, you are not a feminist.
Feminists come in all shapes and sizes. Thin women, fat women, big women, small women, tall women, short women, women with penises and women with vaginas. We take them all, accept them all, fight for them all.
We don’t look down on any sort of body, be in thin or fat. We believe in body-acceptance. And again, that means that we don’t “not judge,” but we accept. We say, “Hey! I’m 240 lbs and 5’4” and she’s 120 lbs and 5’4” and we are the same.”
We don’t look at women who wear a lot of makeup and say that they aren’t a feminist. We don’t look at them and say that they are trying to “please men” by dressing in a sexy way. We don’t demonise the idea of sexiness, because believe it or not, everybody likes being sexy and if sexy means wearing a ton of makeup and glitter, then damnit, that’s fine. It’s valid.
We don’t look at women who wear no makeup and say that they aren’t a feminist. We don’t look down on them for dressing their own way, for going for a minimalist approach that might seem to be counter-culture nowadays. We appreciate their sexiness for what it is. We don’t say that they are attempting to be anything—they are themselves, and that’s that.
If you judge anybody for their appearance, you can kindly leave.
3) If you are transphobic, you are not a feminist.
There is no place in feminism for transphobia or cissexism. You do not get to say “She’s not a woman because she has a penis.” No. She’s a woman if she says she’s a woman, and that means she’s a part of us. She is not a poser, a faker. She’s not trying to cash in on something, she’s not trying to be cool. She’s a woman in a different body and if you dare say that she doesn’t belong here, then it’s you that can kindly get out.
4) If you participate in rape culture, you are not a feminist.
We all have slips of the tongue and that’s especially easy to do with our language the way it is now, but actively, knowingly participating in a rape culture does not make you a feminist.
If you look at another woman and think, “No wonder she got raped—look at that skirt!” then you are not a feminist. If you think that if she was drunk, she was asking for it, you are not a feminist. If you look at any woman and place the blame on her in any way, shape or form for her sexual assault, then you are not a feminist.
5) If you think that girly-girls can’t be feminists, then you’re not a feminist.
You can be a “girly-girl” and be a feminist. You can embrace your femininity and be a feminist. You can hate femininity and be a feminist. The point is, each woman should choose the life she wants to have, and not be forced into it.
If you want to have the white-picket-fence dream, that’s fine if you want it, but only if you want it, just as if you want the opposite that’s also fine, but only if you want it. The point is that we accept women’s dreams for their lives, whatever they may be, even if they are different than our own.
6) If you don’t believe that we are all in this together, you are not a feminist.
If you think that only white chicks, black chicks, fat chicks, thin chicks, cis chicks, trans chicks, or any number of things, can be feminists, then you’re wrong. If you think only vegan chicks, meat-eating chicks, liberal chicks, conservative chicks, Christian chicks or atheist chicks can be feminists, then again, you’re wrong.
We are all feminists, no matter our religion, our creed, our physical sex, our origin, our backgrounds. What makes us feminists is that we accept, we validate and we move together to fight the attitude that you, my dears, are bringing.
The judging, the fighting, it needs to stop, now. There’s no way we can accomplish anything if we have women like you here, pointing at other women and saying they’re not good enough for ____________________ reason. We’re all good enough, and until we start accepting that we’re all good enough, we have no reason to be fighting, because our biggest enemy is ourselves.
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