5 Things

Four years ago, in second semester freshman year, I had to do a presentation on women’s issues for a general studies class.  In prep for the class, I talked to the most active feminist of my year, and she introduced me to Ani DiFranco, who in turn introduced me to a plethora of feminist conversations.  And I was hooked.  Feminism and issues of gender, I discovered, were fundamental parts of my existence.  They related everything, they were at the foundation of every structure in my life.  It was like someone had opened a window blind, and I suddenly realized the sun existed.

However, as I explored my own feminism and began developing my own politics and activism, I discovered a very distinct community, one that I had some difficulty engaging with.  Many individual feminists and feminist groups I encountered were also social groups and had very distinct boundaries.  Many feminists did not want to slow down their ideas or activities to engage with someone less radical or still questioning things that they viewed as basics.  My impression is that most of us feminists have 3-5 things (at least) that we see as fundamental to the feminist agenda–that if you disagree with, we will probably catagorize you, quite quickly, as not a feminist.  Most prominently, one of those seems to be the right to choose.  If a woman claims to be pro-life, it seems that many feminists would view her as either not understanding basic feminist logic or as just simply too conservative.

I think my 5 things are under construction, but at the moment go as follows:

• rejecting passivity and speaking up about our context as women (that seems simplistic, but I think it’s one of the first thing that differentiates an active feminist from a woman who is just quietly analytical about her context–especially in non-feminist social settings)
• promotes freedom of information and access rights, particularly in regards to sexual practices and goods (i.e. birth control and abortion)
• promotes lgbt rights and criticizes traditional constructs of gender as a repressive framework
• calling attention to violence (in all forms) against women, and how it is encouraged by the culture and power structures we live in
• Recognizing how capitalism reinforces those cultural structures and powers and how "freedom" in capitalism often equates to women getting played  (i.e. women as the consumer means we have the freedom to shop and be financially independent Sex in the City style, but we are just objects of the companies we answer to, responding to marketing and cultural expectations of the material girl)

That’s pretty complicated, but I really wanted to see what the Feministing community would say that their 5 things are.  I think this community has really drawn me in because I’ve seen it as more open than any other feminist community I’ve encountered–women engaging on all levels and in all degrees of feminism.  I feel safe asking naive questions here–which I think is HUGE and a significant accomplishment because that means that maybe we can speak to the people on the fence and get more people involved to fight for the feminist cause.

So, what are your 5 things?