Birth of a Feminist series

[Series originally announced, with background here.]

Genesis:

the origin or mode of formation of something

Feminists, or women-centred, separatist^** women are:

born into this world;
swiftly and relentlessly undone and subordinated by parents, family, teachers, and society; and then
remade through
- experience resulting from
  - systematic, impersonal misogyny through rape culture, and
  - unique, chance encounters with particular individuals, times, places, and situations, and which can be negative (child abuse, date rape, betrayal by a straight handmaiden, etc) or positive (lesbian friendships, female mentors, etc); and
- self-education – because women’s history is the only history that is not taught in school nor is feminist writing found in the average school or public library.

** I say ‘separatist’ because I’ve come to realize with experience that the more you truck with men, the less you fight for women’s humanity (explained in this post).

Or something along those lines.

If I think about how I became a feminist, that is how I would describe it. I think all girls are born to be free. The majority (excluding those with the propensity for the nastier of the personality disorders) are born with the capacity to be free, intelligent, creative, empathic, mindful, and cooperative.

I think girls are born into the flavour of subordination dictated by their culture/patriarchy whereupon all members are subject to that culture’s indoctrination. But girls are also individually stripped of their birthright to feminism upon entry into the world when all the ‘cutesy’, protective, paternalistic, and dismissive, underestimating treatment particular to their family/group starts.

All girls test out rebellion – a natural response to the language-free remembrance of their real woman-defined purpose as women through what Jung* termed the ‘collective unconscious’ – in small ways. They defy gender-defined behaviour. They break rules designed for them as girls. And they are smacked down by both males AND females in a variety of ways – verbal, emotional, psychological, physical and sexual punishment. For almost all girls, this works effectively to keep them in their chains and then to do the work themselves to keep the chains in place unquestioned.

* [Note: generally speaking, I have little use for the misogynist, Jung.]

For others, for one reason or another, the punishment doesn’t take. The call of the wild, the natural – their real purpose is too strong. And they take a better, but harder, path. The one to feminism. Woman’s natural and rightful state.

This collection of stories was/is my path to feminism. Many of the punishments worked on me, but my feminism was always so close to the surface of consciousness, that in the end, I got back to where I belong.

Pre-Adolescence