Are you a feminist?

Are you a feminist?

About half a year ago, I was asked a reltively simple question: Are you a feminist? 
The person who asked the question was a boy from my class and I was surprised. Nonetheless, i decided to answer it. What I knew about feminism was relatively little, my definition being: People who want women to be treated the same way and have the same rights as men. 

Yes, I told the boy, yes, I was a feminist. 

I had until that point never experienced any discrimination because of my gender. Now, in hindsight, there were little things that bothered me already in elementary school. Like, how the teacher always asked boys to help carry books or chairs or anything really. Hey, I remember thinking, we aren't weak. We can carry those things just as well as any boy. But those thoughts were gone quickly, and I was never in a position of feeling like I wasn't or couldn't be as good as the boys in my class. 

Of course. (sarcasm duly noted)

The change wasn't enormous but it was there. I think something changed in the way people started to see me. Oh, she's a feminist, they said, with looks of knowingness in their eyes, like they could predict something was going to happen. I had people say that all feminists were extremists, or that they hated men. Someone told me that men and women were equal, and that the stark minority of women in the top tiers of the world was due to women just not being as good as men. I've heard probably all the women-diminishing jokes in the world. Now I do know that most of these things were said to set me off, but there was something lurking behind all the "fun". Something real. When I try to talk about this to some of my friends they didn't understand me. They still think they should be the one staying at home doing the dishes and not their husband. They don't think it's a  bad thing, they think being inferior is "cute". And that greatly disturbed me.

But when I uttered those words: Yes, I am a feminist, everything kind of changed. 

I want to say it here, because in the real world no one takes me seriously on this.

I am a feminist. I want men and women to have equal options and chances and rights. I do not hate men. I shave my legs and love being feminine in every way. I put on makeup, I wear dresses and I love flirting with boys. I am a woman. 





Being a feminist means to me that I strive for equality, which has not been reached yet. I want every woman to know that her life and her body is her own and that she can reach any goal she sets herself. Feminism is about empowering women, and giving them a voice. It's wanting no girl to feel infgerior to any other peron, no matter their gender. Yes, woman where I live might have the same rights as men, but are we really treated the same?





Here are some questions:

Why is giving birth to a child the end of their carreer for many women, but near to no men?
Why don't succesfull women have as many kids as succesfull men?
Why are most CEOs men?
Why is it that when women have a lot of sex they are immedately classified as a slut, while men doing the same thing are
nearly heros?

Why do I feel like I have to prove something by becoming succesfull?

Why, why, why?