Hi!
My name is Emma, and I am a feminist.
That’s pretty easy. What I find harder to define is feminism. What is it really? And what is my own particular kind of feminism?
Too often, I think of feminism in negatives: I’m against unequal pay, I’m not for violence against women, or even, I’m not a man-hater.
So I guess I’m trying to work out what being a feminist in a human world is really like. I want a holistic view, not just a laundry list of women’s issues, to paraphrase Charlotte Bunch.
I was inspired by a fabulous quote by the wonderful Queen Victoria:
“The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Woman’s Rights”, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.”
Somehow, I don’t think she saw the irony of her complaints.
I guess I’d prefer to think of the ‘folly’ of women’s rights rather as some inarticulate teenager would, struggling for words to express their admiration: Feminism – it’s mad wicked, ya know?
