Excerpts From A Memoir I'll Never Write, Part 4

They say if you want something done right, you must do it yourself. So...

For me. 

I'm sure all women can say this, but I remember the day I became a feminist. 

Rather, the day I learned of the word feminism. I was reading Debate.org forums, genuinely speechless at the way nobody thought women could do anything more than wear corsets and carry children. Not to sound precocious or pretentious, but while my friends were writing persuasive essays about class pets, I wrote a scathing manifesto about why women should be allowed to play in male-only sports like football. 

A guy told me I was "too pretty to be doing math on the weekend" that month. 

There's this theory that once you learn something, you start to see it everywhere. My sister always noticed it with her spelling words -- once she learned a new six-syllable word, she'd see it in her book the next day. I suppose the same thing applies to social causes, which means the day I discovered feminism will always be the best and worst of my life. It's the day I learned to fill my camera roll with Emma Watson quotes and vote for Proposal 3 y'all but also the day I realized just how cruel the world could be, and how much energy I'd have to put into making sure I was safe and being treated fairly and smashing the patriarchy all at once. 

I wonder what men do with all this free time. I wonder what they do with the brain space they don't waste on making sure the guy on the street isn't a rapist, and the energy they save not bothering to know anything about anything (not that I'm calling them ignorant. Actually, you know what? I am.). It must be nice to be that sure of yourself, all the time. 

The day my favorite class became my least favorite was more heartbreaking than I'd care to admit. There was a substitute teacher, an inappropriate comment, and the feeling of my body growing like an inflated balloon, too large for me to have control over. A boy who made it a joke. It didn't feel like a joke. Part of me knew I was overreacting, but the overwhelming part of me wondered why his supposed intentions mattered more than my very real feelings. 

A childhood friend told me something last week that made me sick to my stomach. I sat there and wondered how, despite all the inspirational tumblr quotes and feminist movements that had occured during our friendship, she couldn't tell me this. I felt like a performative activist, like a ten year old learning that women aren't "supposed" to do __insert stereotype here__, like the father who doesn't realize until his daughter is born the weight of what he has to protect. I felt like a failure, and realized that I always would. 

I'd always be a "bad" feminist. 

And it was perhaps then that I realized that if I want anything out of feminism in my lifetime, it is for it to become less punitive, for women to stop hating themselves every time they break a resolution of theirs. The only way out is through, and to quote Taylor Swift: we're not going nowhere just because we're not where we want to be yet.

So forget about how loud and socially inept you're being, loves -- we have mountains to move.