Me, a feminist ?

It took me ages to identify myself as a feminist. I was always talking about injustices towards the poor, the immigrants, the disadvantaged, the women, the handicapped, ... It was before politically correctness kicked in and I realized that those who were the most likely to suffer were women.

My epiphany came during cégep when I had to research the promotion of gender equality for my first Model UN conference. It was all fine and dandy until I had to debate on that topic with other people who were basically saying that women had enough rights and there was more important stuff to discuss such as I.T.

In university, I finally met fellow feminists who pushed me to assert myself as what I am, a feminist, someone who wants equality for everyone that is male, female or something else as we are all people. However, last year, feminists at the University of Ottawa were ridiculed for not having a sense of (bad) humor. I had never thought that not finding sexist jokes funny meant I was not a "fun person". It made me think about what my feminism was and I realized that every single feminist I know had a different definition of their feminism.

As my friend Becky once wrote

I am a feminist. I don't hate men, I am not a lesbian (although I support and love those who are), I have never burned a bra, I do not want to take over the world and create a radical feminist utopia (although you have to admit, its pretty cool in theory), and I hate it when others project their own skewed perceptions of feminism onto my beliefs, without ever consulting me on what my beliefs really are.

She was right! Some of my close friends think that feminists believe that women are better than men and my little brother told me feminism was evil and that Marc Lépine, the Polytechnique mass-murderer, had a point. This is where it hurts, people that ought to be better educated about issues like feminism don't know anything about it and whose fault is it ? The Fédération des femmes du Québec ? Our mothers ? Who knows! All I know is that I enjoy the rights I have to vote, to study, to work, to be independent. I enjoy wearing high heels and I love to bake and knit but my place is not in the kitchen unless I chose to be there! The world is my place!