Saying "I'm not a feminist - I'm an Equal Opportunist" in a freshman sociology class, and having the professor laugh at me while the rest of the decidedly feminist students smacked their foreheads.

Oops.

I don't think I had a "click" moment either. I was lucky that I always had good role models, so calling myself a feminist was a positive thing.

I did go through a period in my early twenties where I really embraced it and identified with it. That was my click moment.

I do have a moment that I remember, though it's not quite a classic "click" moment, since by my first year in college I'd been aware of feminist politics and identified as a feminist since--well, ever, more or less. But I went to a quite conservative church-affiliated liberal arts college as an undergrad, and the very first fall I was there we had a symposium on "feminism and faith," which was an incredible series of lectures and events on women in the major faith traditions.

I distinctly remember sitting in English class the morning after the symposium feeling totally jazzed up by all the incredible feminist energy that had been part of the event . . . and listening to all the other students humming and hawing, and expressing doubts about whether women could be ordained, and talking about how men were supposed to be head of the household, etc. I was so stunned that people--actual people my age, sitting in my class--were expressing anti-feminist views. I locate my more active feminist identity (as opposed to the "of course I'm a feminist, isn't everyone?" attitude of my childhood) in the backlash to that symposium (and other feminist, queer activist events) I witnessed that year.

Wow. I can't believe that album is 15 years old. Or, to be more precise, I can't believe I'm 15 years older now...

'Exile in Guyville' is one of my favourite albums. Feminist music (especially riot grrrl and indie musicians like Liz Phair) played a huge part in my early identification as a feminist.

I had a good friend whose parents divorced when he was 19. They were fundamentalist. She stayed home and raised seven of his children while he jumped from one corporate job to another. Then he filed for divorce because he met the love of his life on Everquest. (I'm not even kidding!)

After the divorce, my friend came by and somehow got into this angry rant about how liberal judges always side with the mother in divorce cases. Apparently he didn't think his mother deserved custody of the children she'd devoted her entire life to raising. He went the whole nine yards - his dad was now a saint, his mother a thieving whore.

I didn't really know what it meant to be a feminist yet, but on that day I knew that whatever he was, I wanted to be the opposite.

Reading "Sex, Lies & Advertising" by Gloria Steinem in Gender and Women's Studies 101 last fall was my "click" moment.

I had had many feminist thoughts before that point, but Steinem's piece made me realize how hard it was for women to escape the societal expectations placed upon them (and how the editorial content of women's magazines, and you know, the "good" interesting, informative stuff, is/was? way more limited than "guy" magazines). That was when I realized that feminism mattered, and that there were some really messed up things America that were affecting me, like body issues, etc. That's when I said, ha! I'm a feminist! and decided to try to take some action to change things.

My feminist awakening began in my freshman year at Oregon State. A friend of mine dragged me to a women studies class taught by the amazing Amy Leer. I heard her speak and I was absolutely blown away. It's one of those weird things where I can remember every moment of that night where I realized I was a feminist, I wanted to take more classes, and get to know this professor. Now I am a ws major, the director of women's affairs with the student government, and write a column about feminism and social justice. I would have never guessed I would be doing this before my freshman year!

My mother's pain at being passed over for promotion, despite being at least more qualified and more capable than the man who got the job.

She was a teacher who was married with kids. The unstated assumption was that this meant she was already 'fulfilled'.

It wasn't really a feminist awakening. It was something more specific and also more general at the same time; an awareness that social attitudes could result in people being treated unfairly. In our times, collective ideas about women and sex result in many women becoming victims of many kinds of injustice.

Pretty ordinary, actually. Hardly the stuff of art.

On the one hand, I think I have always been a feminist. I remember arguing as a very very small child about how girls were just as good as boys, in church. And I remember my favorite tv show in Jr. High was Xena: Warrior Princess because she kicked so much ass. But I wasn't intellectually aware of what feminism really was until college. I remember friends identifying as non-feminists. And I remember being amused by the term lipstick feminist after watching an episode of West Wing. If I saw that today, I'd be really pissed off. As it is, the memory just makes me sad.

But I think my real "click" moment was talking to an online friend who was applying for an MA program in media studies. And we stayed up until like 3am and she's really the one who introduced me to feminism and opened my eyes about the portrayal of women in film/television. Not the super skinny models in magazines. But my favorite heroines, who when you really pay attention, aren't always so heroic. And I remembering feeling really depressed and confused. Why couldn't Hermione be the chosen one, why did it have to be Harry? And then the over sexualization of women in scifi/fantasy began to seem really glaring and disgusting, where I'd always been able to ignore it in the past and just assume it was a badly written book. I began to notice that it wasn't just one book or one tv show, it was literally ALL OF THEM in one form or another. And it really "clicked" that yes, feminism had freed women in many ways. But that there was also an illusion of freedom, but that many people were still living in the Matrix, as it were and just had no idea. And that's when I started informing all my friends and family and quizzes/evaluations began to label me a radical feminist; which makes me quite happy actually :)

I can't say when my click moment was, I was very, very young, I think I know what shaped my feminist outlook: Wonder Woman.

I'd dress like Wonder Woman, I had wonder woman themed stuff, according to my Mom, if someone was making fun of my friends, I'd run up and click my invisible bracelets. (Yes, grade/middle school WAS hell)I was very disappointed when I learned "Wonder Woman" wasn't a job. It's goofy, but it did shape my world view. I think I was in the 5th grade when I first really understood gender-based restrictions.

While my family has a tendency to define gender roles in a socially traditional way, it didn't really kick in until I was a teenager. By then it was far too late.

Okay, I did not know until 5 minutes ago, when I read your mash note to Guyville, that "Why Can't I" was a Liz Phair song, even though I've heard it a billion times. And I NEVER, EVER would have guessed. Which kinda says it all.

And I love that we both related to 6'1" for completely different reasons.

Okay, I did not know until 5 minutes ago, when I read your mash note to Guyville, that "Why Can't I" was a Liz Phair song, even though I've heard it a billion times. And I NEVER, EVER would have guessed. Which kinda says it all.

And I love that we both related to 6'1" for completely different reasons.

Oh, man, sorry about the double post. TypeKey was messing with me.

Oh Liz! That album was so huge for me! I too was given a mix tape with a few 'Exile' songs on it, by a woman whom I thought was god!

I think one of my biggest click moments was watching the mother who had taken me to pro-choice rallies, refused to buy me barbies and hiked topless, get dumped (at 30) for a younger woman who was a student of my step-father's. Ick.

I remember sitting in the car with my father whan I was 14 or so. As my oldest brother was applying to colleges,my father quizzed me on whether or not I expected to go to college as he drove. I was a good student, and I told him that yeah, I thought I would. He suggested that this would be okay, since I would probably be a teacher, but it would be a waste of money if I was going to be a secretary or a stewardess, which were, in his mind, the only three jobs available to girls.

I sat there and at that moment, I knew he was capital-W Wrong. I didn't argue with him, I didn't pout. I just knew.

It was an epiphanal moment. At once, I understood something that I knew my father never would: I'm a kid! He's a grownup! He's supposed to know more! But I know this. The glow of that moment is still tactile to me.

And I was right.

He's just a hero in a long line of heroes / Looking for something attractive to save...

I saw her at First Avenue in Mpls. back in 1995. She was GREAT.

Just showing some Liz Phair love.

Oh, I love this album so much. I never had a click moment...more of a gradual awareness...which came around the time someone made me a mix tape with some of the Exile songs on it. The same person who gave me her headphones to listen to Ani for the first time. I listened for about five seconds and proclaimed, "she sounds like Janet Jackson." To my great shame.

Oh, I love this album so much. I never had a click moment...more of a gradual awareness...which came around the time someone made me a mix tape with some of the Exile songs on it. The same person who gave me her headphones to listen to Ani for the first time. I listened for about five seconds and proclaimed, "she sounds like Janet Jackson." To my great shame.

Oh, I love this album so much. I never had a click moment...more of a gradual awareness...which came around the time someone made me a mix tape with some of the Exile songs on it. The same person who gave me her headphones to listen to Ani for the first time. I listened for about five seconds and proclaimed, "she sounds like Janet Jackson." To my great shame.

I don't think I had a click moment either, but I had a "WTF????" moment yesterday when I realized that our office's version of the class clown, while he gives everyone a hard time about anything he possibly can, ALWAYS tells the woman who sits across from me, when she gets really busy and doesn't leave as early as she wants to, that she doesn't love her daughter enough to pick her up earlier (I think there's a range when she needs to be picked up from her after-school program). But he NEVER tells any of the guys that they don't love their kids when they work 80-hour weeks. In fact, he tried to convince them that they should go out for beers with him, and says things like, "oh, your wife is there; you don't have to go home now!"

I think if I didn't have a gradual awareness like erinelizabeth mentioned, that might have been my click moment.

I still feel like I've never really had the 'click' moment, but part of this is because at 20 I don't feel like I've seen enough and read enough to properly inform my opinions.
Case in point - my housemate is staunchly against the women's movement at uni, and whilst I know i disagree with her, I find it difficult to tell her why. Equally, I find it difficult to say 'I am a feminist'to her because of the stigma that comes attached to that idea, which frankly sucks.
On the other hand, I've been reading this site for nearly a year now, and its really helped me shape my ideas more, so maybe although I've not had my click just yet, things like this are a step in the right direction

I don't think I had a "click" moment either. I first recall telling my mother that I was a feminist when I was about 13 years old. Her only comment was "Just keep shaving your legs, okay?"

And I do.

I've never been one to tolerate the "I'm not a feminist, but..." statements, and I've also not tolerated when people (generally women, but sometimes men) try to talk me out of defining myself as a feminist because I do one of the thousands of things that feminists don't do... like shave my legs.

I just am a feminist, and it wasn't a reading, a song, a rally, that made me one. In fact I dropped women's studies after one week, I don't listen to music with lyrics, and I don't have much to do with public groups or causes, so without really defining it for myself at an early age, I probably never would have.

My series of "click" moments happened last summer when I was working my first real job. Okay, so it was an internship, but I was pretty impressed with myself. I had to leave the office pretty regularly to run errands, and every time I opened the door I'd get catcalled and have filthy things screamed at me. Even when I stayed inside, the construction workers from upstairs would sit near my desk while on break and talk about the "great view". One guy asked for my number, and when I said no he told me I was worthless. Two guys riding bikes circled me while they talked about how they'd like to "tap that" and threatening to rape me. My boss and various "friends" told me to take all the attention as a compliment. I thought it was bullshit.

The next "click" was more recent. I realized that of the four women closest to me, three had been raped (and in all honesty, I haven't spoken with the fourth about it). No one believed the two that tried to report it. One thought it was her fault because it was her boyfriend who raped her. I feel like I can't do anything about it, but being a feminist and reading likeminded communities like this is the best I've got.

There was no "click" moment for me, really. If there was, it was when I was very small, and I no longer remember it.

I remember my father and mother arguing because he wanted "his daughters" to wear dresses and have long hair. My mother refused, said we could wear pants if we wanted, and wear our hair any way we liked. This was a major point of contention for their entire marriage. I recall my mother telling me, in strictest confidence, that my father had never wanted daughters at all, and when she had already had five girls (three of whom were stillborn triplets) and had the audacity to get pregnant again and birth "another girl" she flat out refused to have any more children.

Maybe that was the moment. When she told me that my father hadn't wanted girls. I couldn't believe that my father hadn't wanted me, or my sisters. I wondered "what is wrong with being a girl?"

i know lots of ladies love to hate courtney love, but discovering hole when i was in eighth grade was definitely a big click moment for me. just hearing a woman scream was so amazing. i grew up with an older brother who loved rock music, but i never knew girls could do it just as good as boys until i was 13 and heard courtney love. flash forward to a year later and kathleen hanna and sleater kinney cemented everything.

actually come to think of it the BIGGEST click moment was probably reading hanna's "jigsaw youth." i could say a million things about it, but i'll just let a piece of it speak for itself:

To be a stripper who is also a feminist, to be an abused child holding a microphone screaming all those things that were promised, in one way or another, "I won't tell." These are contradictions I have lived. They exist, these contradictions cuz I exist. Every fucking 'feminist' is not the same, every fucking girl is not the same, okay??? Because I live in a world that hates women and i am one... who is struggling desperately not to hate myself and my best girlfriends, my whole life is constantly felt by me as a contradiction. In order for me to exist I must believe that two contradictory things can exist in the same space. This is not a choice I make, it just is.

I was raised by a feminist single mom, so I identified as a feminist as early as junior high. But the idea that feminism was more than intellectual assent to equal pay and abortion rights came my sophomore year at Berkeley. I was talking with a friend of mine, a women's studies major; I claimed "I'm a feminist too". Knowing me as she did, she laughed so hard that milk squirted out of her nose. I was offended.

She told me that I had no idea what feminism really was, and that if I wanted to start to "get it", I should take a women's studies class. My feelings hurt and my sense of adventure challenged, I took Women's Studies 10 at Cal back in 1987. And fell in love with feminism as academic discipline, as worldview, as a foundation for personal and global change.

I happened to be listening to this album as I read this, so I took it as a sign to finally comment. Is it wrong that I found out about this album from a guy long after it first came out (in '93 there was no room in my buzzing brain for new music )? Whatever, I found it and listen to "Never Said" way too often, just because I love her "I've had it with your shit" tone of voice. Probably because I never found mine until around the time I heard this song.

I didn't have a click moment either. Thanks to some awesome teachers in high school and amazing friends, I emerged from the Reagan era with a lot of pointed questions and demands. I had a series of "welcome to your new headspace" moments that one day made me realize eyeliner sucked and my boyfriend had no right to know where I was all the time, among other significant revelations.

It was a rocky road, though. I come from a fairly traditional clan. I feel like I had to work hard, and sometimes in secret, to learn the stuff I wanted to learn, find the kind of people I wanted to learn from and spend time with.

15 years? *thud* I'm older than I thought. Ha. I love, love, loved (and still do) "Exile in Guyville."

I think my "aha!" moment came when a local clothing shop owner gave me her copy of Susan Faludi's "Backlash: The Undeclared War on American Women" when I was 16. Up until then, I'm not sure I was aware of how many backwards things still were/are.

i was raised by a feminist mom and the values she instilled in me didn't have a name, they just were.

but my click moment, when my whole world changed, was hearing bikini kill's "CD Version of the First Two Records" for the first time in 1993. zines and essays by tobi vail and kathleen hanna quickly followed. i now had words to back up the convictions i had held my entire life. also, hearing huggy bear's song "herjazz" was a particularly BIG CLICK moment.

Finding out, in high school, that it was not legally possible for a husband to rape his wife. Until 1991, marriage = consent according to Missouri law.

Finding out, in college, that a woman getting her tubes tied needed proof of her husband's consent. The reverse, of course, was not the case. I believe that law has since been changed as well.

But that these changes have been made that recently (shut up, I'm not that old) just shows how far we have to go still.

I had this moment in jr high when a frank black video came on tv and I thought it was the greatest thing ever that this fat bald man was allowed to be on tv. Cause then even all the angsty tough girls at the time on tv and in movies were all Winona Ryder super skinny and hot and made up and I was like 'no this is what I want, to be good enough at stuff that I could be ugly and fat and bald and still be on tv.'

That was the closest thing I can think of.

What the hell happened to Liz Phair lately, yesh.

Love, love, love this album. I found it about 10 years after it actually came out, and I couldn't believe it existed.

I don't think I had a "click" moment... My mother raised me to be a feminist, but never really used the word feminist. I just sort of came to identify with it in middle school, mostly because I couldn't possibly have been anything BUT a feminist after being raised by my parents. A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with my mother about that, and she confirmed that it was always her (and my father's) intention to raise my brother and I as feminists.

Attending the Pennsylvania Governor's Conference for Women two autumns ago (my senior year in high school). I was walking around the convention center saying, "I'm interested in that issue, and that one...wait, these are women's issues...wait, I'm inviting Planned Parenthood to my conservative backwater high school..." I'm glad my identity finally caught up with my feminism.

I was very bookish when I was a kid, and my two favorite books were "Matilda" by Roaul Dahl and "Catherine, Called Birdie" by Karen Cushman. Both were about strong, unconventional girls who wouldn't take crap from anyone. I read them over and over, and I guess it just sunk into my brain.

Then in middle school I got into graphic design and advertising (I was a weird kid) and read about artists like Barbara Kruger and Kiki Smith, and I read Lynn Peril's "Pink Think".

But I was always an unconventional kid. I refused to wear dresses after second grade and never grew my hair out past a few inches. Identifying as "feminist" didn't happen until college and I started reading feminist blogs.

Count me in as another who has always been feminist. But I distinctly remember two instances of "clicking."

The first was when I was still really young. My brother loved He-Man and I tolerated it to some degree. I was more interested in being strong than being pretty and wished they would have a cartoon with the world's strongest woman. Then they came out with She-Ra. I was like, "Yes!" I identified with her so much. Oh, how I loved being able to play with action figures who had special powers rather than Barbie, who could wear nothing but heels. I even got the Crystal Palace one year for Christmas. *love*

My second "click" moment was in taking my first women's studies class. Reading articles about women, for women, and by women showed me just how hilarious, intelligent, and pissed off women are. I loved that these articles questioned the status quo and asked me to think about the world rather than sleepwalking through it.

i was a hardcore little feminist as a child. when i became a teenager i went through the whole "i'm not a feminist but..." phase. it wasn't until i got married that a lot of the inequality became obvious. i was expected to give up my goals so he could pursue his. his and his friends behavior really opened my eyes. they came back from iraq with a bunch of misogynist jokes and stories they thought i'd appreciate. i got sick of seeing his best friends talk about and treat women like dirt. but my real "click" moment came when i got pregnant and couldn't get an abortion.

My "click" moment came after I got out of my first serious relationship and realized what odd and unnecessary gender expectations we have for women in relationships. That summer I went on a feminist reading binge, which started with my all time favorite Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century, by Betsy Israel. I highly recommend it.

Music was definitely a big bridge. It was Ani for me. Her lyric "What does my body have to do with my gratitude?" just hit me so hard after a few bad experiences. She really articulated how it felt to be a complex woman/person/artist in a way I hadn't seen before, so I was grateful for that.

Also reading great stuff by Riane Eisler and meeting a kick ass life-long friend who said what she thought and didn't care who called her a bitch. It was her more than anything else that caused the click. Just the concept -- Ohhh, you mean I don't have to please everyone? I can just be myself with no apologies?? What a relief!!

Okay and not to suck up or anything but my "click" moment happened when I was reading [u]Full Frontal Feminism[/u]. It was a book that was recommended to me by a friend that I worked with. I was doing a project for one of my thousand of English classes and dissecting the different theories in literature and one of the theories was Feminist theory.

She recommended this book to me. I work in a book store so I grabbed it and as I was at the cash register I began to read (luckily we were slow) and after about the first chapter I went...well I'll be damned I'm a feminist.
I had been one of those I'm not a feminist but...But when I read this book I realized just how much of a feminist I really was.

I saw just how much of the sexist media had affected even my reluctance to call myself a feminist. Reading that book really changed the way I think and the way I am. I'm a feminist and I'm proud of that.

My "click" was only a few months ago. It was because of a feministy personal zine called Culture Slut by Amber Farthing. I always thought feminists were man hating hairy legged protestors with picket signs, just like the media wants us to think. Since then I've been struggling with the term feminist and what it means to me, although I've always felt strongly about feminist issues - I just never put it all together in one big picture.

(you can find amber's zines at http://helloamber.etsy.com/)

my whole life I've been "feminist-friendly", but it wasn't until I got into high school and had the amazing Ms Rob ("Don't call me Mrs. Robertson, that's my ex-mother-in-law") that it finally clicked that being a feminist was an AWESOME thing. She asked us in class one day if we thought it was okay for women to propose marriage to men. When someone offered the argument that it simply wasn't the tradition, Ms Rob said, "Just because it's tradition doesn't make it right."

That statement has been with me ever since.

She also shared with us how she used to get under the skin of male fellow faculty members by holding the doors for them or by refusing to walk through held doors. "I can hold a door open myself!" she'd say. I LOVED IT! I think I also had an extra-special experience with her because it was her last year of teaching before retirement, so she said anything she wanted to.

I also remember her "Just another bleeding heart for peace, love, and social justice" bumper sticker on the wall behind her desk. This was in a public high school in a Texas town of about 50,000 people, too.

Becky Robinson, you made me a feminist.

two words: kathleen hanna

I always had feminist values but didn't know that's what they were. I didn't know how to name the way objectification bothered me, and I thought everything was pretty much equal now, and I had a bad impression of feminists. Then I got really into my religion, Christianity, and I ran into some verses that I found sexist. I ignored them for a while, like everyone else, but then I came back to 1 Corinthians 11. It's weird, that's not the one everyone else makes a big deal out of, but that was the kicker for me. It set me off on a couple months of agonizing over what the Bible meant and whether to believe it or myself, and as I was going through that, I was also learning about the issue of sex trafficking with, surprise, a Christian group who wanted to help. So from there I started learning about other women's issues and I became aware of how serious and widespread the problems are; very depressing, and it pressed me to come to a conclusion about Christianity, in which I saw some common threads with sexism in general. Then I sat down with a Bible and read through the first five books (Torah), and kept notes on everything that had to do with women and sex. I looked at my notes and decided it looked like the morality of ancient Hebrew men, not of God, and not of myself. I even found it very ironic that we were trying to fight sex trafficking in the name of a God who supposedly gave people laws that support the major ideas I found it necessary to oppose in fighting sex trafficking. I tried to find out how feminist Christians reconciled their beliefs, but I didn't find anything convincing for me. So I unbecame a Christian and became a not-a-feminist-but, but only for a minute, because then I saw something making fun of those and I decided they were right, I should call myself a feminist. So I did. And I'm so glad.

music has also contributed to me seeing myself as a feminist. when i bought mirah's advisory committee, i listened to it again and again on repeat. i've always agreed with feminist goals, but i didn't use the word feminist to describe myself. when i was a dj and music director at my college radio station, i played music by both females and males. i remember getting complaints about too much "chick rock" (i did get more thank yous than complaints) and one guy sent me an email about how the music i played "had so much estrogen it will make you grow girlie parts." click. i adopted that as my motto and started an all female artist rock block. that was a few years ago and i have since changed my major to women's studies and strongly identify as a feminist.

@toozdae
i'm so sorry. i really hope that you are in a healthy environment where you can make your own choices.

I didn't have a click moment either.
Instead, I was blessed with a number strong women (plus a few good men)who constantly showed me how to be a fair and compassionate human being.
The word feminist seemed to describe these folks and the women I aspire to be.
Not unrelated, a good chunk of my formative childhood and adolescent experiences occurred at Girl Scout camp. The tag line these days is "Courage, confidence, character."
It's pretty tough to instill those values and not consider yourself a feminist.

Wow, editing needed to happen.
To clarify:
1) "number of strong women"
2)"the woman (singular)I aspire to be"

I was just rereading my comment and realized that it probably will make no sense to anyone that doesn't know me, but I'm still not rewriting it.

"Click" :

In my all-girls Catholic high school, I learned about liberation theology from my only self-identified feminist teacher (a man). We read about Oscar Romero and the necessity of having a preferential option for the poor. I absorbed, but didn't GET IT, until I saw an "Adbusters" magazine for the first time when I was 18. I felt like the top of my head had been blown off. It was the "Empire" issue from like 2000 or 2001... Also, in high school, I had a teacher teach a "Christian Lifestyles" class. Could have been total smut, but she turned it into a discussion on what the MEANINGS behind xian traditions are and whether you want to incorporate them into your life, how & if to structure a marriage / relationship, etc. Feminist Catholics? Who knew? Not me, at 16.

So I guess I came to feminism mostly by way of post-colonial theory and liberation theology (although I didn't know what those were, nor what feminism was really) and the moral imperative for activism on those fronts. Feminism seems like a great vehicle and the best framework to address the issues I care about, which center largely around women's experiences.

"Click" :

In my all-girls Catholic high school, I learned about liberation theology from my only self-identified feminist teacher (a man). We read about Oscar Romero and the necessity of having a preferential option for the poor. I absorbed, but didn't GET IT, until I saw an "Adbusters" magazine for the first time when I was 18. I felt like the top of my head had been blown off. It was the "Empire" issue from like 2000 or 2001... Also, in high school, I had a teacher teach a "Christian Lifestyles" class. Could have been total smut, but she turned it into a discussion on what the MEANINGS behind xian traditions are and whether you want to incorporate them into your life, how & if to structure a marriage / relationship, etc. Feminist Catholics? Who knew? Not me, at 16.

So I guess I came to feminism mostly by way of post-colonial theory and liberation theology (although I didn't know what those were, nor what feminism was really) and the moral imperative for activism on those fronts. Feminism seems like a great vehicle and the best framework to address the issues I care about, which center largely around women's experiences.

"Click" :

In my all-girls Catholic high school, I learned about liberation theology from my only self-identified feminist teacher (a man). We read about Oscar Romero and the necessity of having a preferential option for the poor. I absorbed, but didn't GET IT, until I saw an "Adbusters" magazine for the first time when I was 18. I felt like the top of my head had been blown off. It was the "Empire" issue from like 2000 or 2001... Also, in high school, I had a teacher teach a "Christian Lifestyles" class. Could have been total smut, but she turned it into a discussion on what the MEANINGS behind xian traditions are and whether you want to incorporate them into your life, how & if to structure a marriage / relationship, etc. Feminist Catholics? Who knew? Not me, at 16.

So I guess I came to feminism mostly by way of post-colonial theory and liberation theology (although I didn't know what those were, nor what feminism was really) and the moral imperative for activism on those fronts. Feminism seems like a great vehicle and the best framework to address the issues I care about, which center largely around women's experiences.

My click moment, honestly, was finding Feministing. This, coupled with having to work closely with someone who made me realize, on a personal level, that misogyny and sexismare not only alive and well but cultivated and encouraged, made me aware that this is not really the kind of world I want to be a part of. We can do so much better. So I can either complain (And, you know. I do, sure.) or work to change the status quo. So that's what I'm doing.

Ok I mangled the grammar on my last comment something awful. Apologies.

Watching "Fando y Lis" by Alejandro Jodorowski when I was 17. It made me get extremely, extremely upset about the way Fando treated Lis, and about the way she was so submissive about it. So blind and still in love. It all made click inside me. I live in a town where hundreds of women die each year because of domestic violence and thousands of them suffer in silence. It also happens to be a town where women were expected to be quiet, beautiful and virginal at the same time, and where everyone and their mothers had eating disorders and violent relationships. Oh, coincidences!

I read Marilynn French's The Women's Room when I was fifteen, a sophomore in high school. My parents are missionaries and I was raised to be very conservative. A friend of mine made me read the book and said "Meg, you only think you're a Republican." And this book blew my mind. I ended up stealing it from the Illinois State University library (I know, bad!) and underlining almost every page. I've never experienced anything since then that has so radically or suddenly changed my complete world view. I reread it as an undergrad, in different contexts, and while I have found things that, as a more modern feminist, I don't necessarily jive with, I always experience that awe.

Around that time also a friend gave me a crazy bootleg live Ani DiFranco in Sweden (or somewhere) mix-tape, and I loved it. I'd never been exposed to anything so empowering.

God, I love being a feminist.

Watching "Fando y Lis" by Alejandro Jodorowski when I was 17. It made me get extremely, extremely upset about the way Fando treated Lis, and about the way she was so submissive about it. So blind and still in love. It all made click inside me. I live in a town where hundreds of women die each year because of domestic violence and thousands of them suffer in silence. It also happens to be a town where women were expected to be quiet, beautiful and virginal at the same time, and where everyone and their mothers had eating disorders and violent relationships. Oh, coincidences!

Wow, what great stories. They're really reminding me of a lot of things I had forgotten.

It was a gradual thing for me too, but there are a few moments that really stand out for me.

First time I ever realized that it was okay to be really different from the other girls: Met a guy on New Years Eve my senior year of high school and decided on the spot to hang out with him. We smoked some weed together and then went and made out in his basement. In the middle of making out, I freaked out and started to cry, apologizing for "not being normal" because I thought I was the only girl in the world who was comfortable enough with my sexuality to be rubbing on a guy I was attracted to! All these things I'd been told and absorbed from society made me feel like I was a freak for doing what I was doing, could get raped or would just be considered a slut, etc. The most brilliant thing of all is that this guy was really nice about it, told me that it wasn't weird at all, and really made me feel better about it. He may have just been trying to get laid (though he didn't, since I'd been educated enough about sex to decide to wait until after I graduated so I wouldn't have to worry about pregnancy) but the few other times I saw him, he was always really nice and friendly.

First realization that I was being treated differently because I was female: I was 19 and wanted to open a bank account. I went to my local bank but didn't have two of any of the particular i.d. cards they took, so the guy refused. A few days later, passing by again, I dragged my boyfriend at the time in with me. Talked to the same guy, who this time took a long look at my pissed off boyfriend and decided to let me open the account!

First moment I knew I was a feminist: On another community website that I used to spend a lot of time on, there was a weekly feminist thing that I would make a point not to miss. I still didn't consider myself feminist but all the things that were talked about there fit really well with my beliefs. Then, the person who ran it attacked me for saying that I was interested in feminism because I'm a humanist (according to her, you could only be interested in feminism if you were a feminist), and attacked a ton of other people for various absurd reasons that all seemed to amount to a completely rigid idea of who a feminist was and what a feminist thought. So me and a few other women who'd been mistreated got together and started our own section. I realized that I couldn't get that offended about what I saw as the distortion of feminism if I wasn't a feminist myself.

I can't remember if I ever had a huge 'click' moment--I know I began identifying as a feminist sometime during my women's history class during my freshman year of college. My professor was a kick-ass second-wave feminist GENIUS, and was also always saying hilarious things. And I had never met anyone before who identified so completely as a Feminist. Most other people who applied this term to themselves did so intermittently and some of their actions tended to contradict what I assumed feminism was all about (and I wasn't far-off.)
But I probably wouldn't've considered taking her class if it weren't for my academic adviser, another brilliant feminist woman. By the end of that semester I was battling crazy MRAs on their own blogs, signing up for The Vagina Monologues, and proudly wearing the Feminist label. So it wasn't as much a moment for me as it was the catalysts who gradually brought me to it.

No single click here, either, but sibling rivalry definitely helped move things along: Seeing my little brother congratulated for "man of the house" garbage when my dad was away rankled something awful, as did the toy distribution - for some mysterious reason, our parents kept storing "my" Legos in his room. And "our" microscope. And computer games, and books, and so forth.

The rest just followed once I got past the idea that hey, maybe it wasn't quite so right and natural for the boys to always get the good toys and first dibs as I had been led to believe.

click: first grade, 1985 - we sing "Yankee Doodle Dandee" and, when we get to the part that says "let the girls be handy" the Wonderful Mrs. Fagebourg asks us, "What do you think the girls can do?"

Feminist deconstruction for six-year-olds! Love it!

I'm another one who was a feminist as a tiny girl (Free To Be You And Me got heavy play at my house). My parents raised us to believe that we could do anything, no limits. I never heard "girls can't do that" from an adult during my childhood. The only time I did hear it was from a little boy at a company picnic for Dad's work - family lore says that I told him, "I can so be a (whatever the profession was) - girls can do anything that boys can do!" - His mother came over and thanked mine, and said that she hoped her son learned something. Heck, we even had a female pastor at my church (she was one of 3 pastors, and was married to another one of our pastors).

I became radical much later, in college. I'd done a lot of Bible study, and fortunately ended up as a Protestant at a Catholic university that had a Judaic Studies scholar from Israel on the payroll. I have to thank Dr. Eric L. Friedland for teaching me to get to the source material and learn about the context in which it was written. His teaching tore down the part of my faith that was based on badly informed traditions, and built it up stronger based on something much stronger.

Long story short, I decided that 1) I'm really proud of being a feminist - anyone who tries to use that label to put me down is going to hear about it, and 2) No one can tell me what God's plan is for me except for God. I won't take some man's word for it.

Sorry if that was incoherent. I guess that some people lose their religion when they find the bias in it; I found mine because of it and I've worked really hard to help other Christian women find their liberation. I'm a proud feminist Christian.

I had always figured I was an odd bird because I didn't fit into the stereotypical Girl mold. Since I am a history major & was drawn to the Joan of Arcs, the Susan B Anthonys, & the Calamity Janes but it bothered me that I didn't identify with most of the historical figures I was learning about. In an attempt to find history that I could intimatly relate to, I read Rosaland Miles' "The Women's History of the World" & got so pissed off about how much history is ignored or deemed unimportant in traditional history classes because it involves women & women's issues. Shortly after reading the book, I referred to myself as a feminist outloud (in a bar, no less) and the instant reaction the f-word caused solidified my feminist identity. It's been full-speed ahead since then!

I never had. I came out of the womb a feminist...or at least I had my click moment so damn early in life that I can't recall it. I've just always had a knowledge that my biology was not a weakness.

Like a lot of the others, I too was a feminist pretty much from the get go (Yeah, Free to Be!). But my "click" moment came when I graduated college and began working with young teenage girls in the community. I could see all these issues they were facing but it didn't seem to have a name or a voice, and then I read "Reviving Ophelia" by Mary Pipher, MD. Totally opened my eyes! After that I began studying women's issues and feminism and realized how much of it affects not just the kids I work with, but ME, as well!

This is my first post (although I have unofficially posted in my head many times...).

I transformed into a feminist on the spot when my partner and I got married. We were opening our gifts the next day and one of his friends bought me a *beautiful* book: "How to be a Coach's Wife." Yes, you read that correctly. (Not Oprah's Book Club???)

It was in that very moment - after all the careful consideration we took in planning a wedding that chucked oppressive, patriarchal traditions, that I grew into my radical feminism. After all of our work, a person could still legitimate me as a piece of property and it infuriated me.

My life has never been the same since and I look back and wonder how it took me so long...Ah, I love it and now it inspires me.

Love the site too - thanks!

After I was raped, I became really introspective and super-aware of my body and my womanness and what all that meant. I was grasping at straws. I was reading Cunt, by Inga Muscio for the gazillionth time because it was the only thing that made me feel like it was actually ok for me to be angry about what had happened to me, and other women, and the little things that happened everyday. And one day I was sitting around reading, feeling angry, and I noticed how much power and energy I was generating from that anger, and how much I could do with it. And then I was a feminist.

when i was 14, i lost my virginity. it was one of those awkward teenage moments where we didn't even get fully undressed because my father was upstairs washing dishes. and we used two condoms, one over the other, because we thought that meant double protection. the next day, even though he promised not to tell, he went around school and told everyone he had "popped the cherry". and, of course, everyone thought he was super cool and i was shunned for being a whore. to this day, typing it makes me feel the anger and shame all over again.

then i realized that the bullshit was something called a 'double standard' and that i didn't have to put up with it. here i am, 12 years later--i'm fucking proud to call myself a feminist. with all of the identity crises that occur over and over for one trying to find her place in the world, feminism has been the constant and grounding source of who i am.

The click:

When I was a kid, I thought I hated girls. I bought wholesale that girls were supposed to be pink and frilly and frou-frou, and sometimes classes at school would have totally lame days where we made history "relevant" to the girls in the class by talking about what a wedding would be like during some historical period (I am not kidding about this, and this is maybe sometime in the mid-90s) and I wanted to get back to the "serious" work. I was a serious tomboy, liked running around and climbing trees and playing baseball and scoffed at the fact that I had to play on a different sports team than all the boys. I hated pink, I hated barbies with a passion, and I hated anyone who treated me like a girl. I thought that clearly everyone was saying girls were stupid because girls did things stupidly, and that if I could just do things right then I'd be accepted as someone with just as much of a claim to respect and humanity as any of the boys. If I could only throw hard enough, be good enough at math, be "cool" enough around my guy friends... this changed somewhat as I hit puberty and became interested in boys romantically, but the basic structure was still there. There were little things, though, that over the course of years started to wear away at it -- boyfriends treating me like just some "chick" they could do or not do whatever with, my dad giving my brother advice on what women are like (which was usually all bunk), my teachers' continual insistance that my proficiency at math and science was JUST AMAZING for a girl and that clearly I owed it to someone somewhere to become an engineer just to make a point (even though I knew I didn't want to study these things past high school), watching guys I knew fall for girls who spent all their time worrying about how to catch guys and none of it just being themselves, the kinds of horrific things that everyone hears from random guys on the street or even friends' dads and such at some point... I could go on. Anyway, my myopic view was doomed to fail, and I think the last straw that finally toppled it happened when I was 18 and a freshman in college. I was listening to Ani DiFranco (who I actually don't like all that much, in terms of sheer enjoyment of music, but I was interested in what all the noise was about) and there was this line, which might not have even had anything to do with the way I took it:

Every time I move, I make a woman's move.

And I thought to myself: Yes. Every time I do anything, it's necessarily a woman's thing. I can't not throw like a girl. I can't not "have a woman's touch" or whatever the hell all that means. I can't not do all the things that are taken to be insulting or derogatory just by virtue of being done by a woman. I can't not "be a pussy." On and on. And neither can any of the other women out there, and it is not. our. fault. All of my struggling when I was a kid actually had nothing to do with me not wanting to be a woman, and everything to do with me wanting to be taken seriously in a world where women are not taken seriously.

I realized all this, and I was *mad.*

I don't think I ever had a specific "click" moment, either, more sort of a series of experiences spanning over my entire life. I don't think I'd say any one was decisive.

First, I was raised by a woman who had no end of shit dumped on her by the men in her life, but was never broken by it. Instead, she found the strength to begin remaking her life into something truly remarkable for herself and her two daughters. I don't think she ever explicitly identified herself as a feminist, nor, thinking about it, am I really sure where I first heard the word.

What I do know is that the entire idea made sense to me the minute I first became aware of the word "feminist" (probably in my early teens, if not before). I hadn't heard of Betty Friedan or Catharine MacKinnon, and the only reason I knew of Susan B. Anthony was that I collected coins at the time and noticed that she was the only non-mythical woman on US coinage at that time.

In my teens, I started to become more aware of the role of fundamentalist clerics in politics, and started immersing myself in the stuff they were dumping into the culture, and finding it both enraging and rather terrifying.

Ultimately, it was probably the combination of my mother's influence and my exposure to a lot of rabidly misogynistic shit that were most important in confirming my identification as a feminist in the initial stages. Everything else just served to confirm that I was on the right track.

More like an awakening: when I realized how selfish I was being by dating a woman in Freshman year of college for my own emotional, patriarchal needs. Thankfully, I realized it early on before we really did anything and before I caused any real damage.

Realizing that ALL the women close to me in life - mother, aunt, grandma, best friends - had survived rape, eating disorders, breast cancer, or some combination of the three. Myself included.

I knew I was a feminist the moment I stood up to my mother. Weird way to have a click moment, eh?

It was my senior year of high school and a few months after my dad had to be put in an assisted living facility following a devastating stroke. My mom kept adding to the stress of the situation by busting out 1950s gems like "What on earth are we going to do without a man around the house? How are we going to fix things? Who will mow the yard?" I was shocked. I remember my sister and I telling her we can do it -- we always helped dad out before his stroke. Her response was we were just girls, and could never handle all that work.

All my life she had been this strong person, someone I looked up to and wanted to be like, but that moment I learned how much she'd been living her life within the confines of gender expectations. Even though we were are smart and capable, she still felt like there were "boy jobs" and "girl jobs."

I never thought that climbing on to a huge John Deere and mowing a huge six acre lawn could be an act of empowerment, but dang, I felt pretty fierce. It was also the first time mom ever said to me "you were right."

That was the moment I needed to see realize double-standards still existed for women, and would keep on existing unless we stood up to them. I also realized that feminism was an active, living thing, more than just ideas in a book but something we do every day -- and that every action, no matter how small, had the potential to change someone's mind.

I knew I was a feminist the moment I stood up to my mother. Weird way to have a click moment, eh?

It was my senior year of high school and a few months after my dad had to be put in an assisted living facility following a devastating stroke. My mom kept adding to the stress of the situation by busting out 1950s gems like "What on earth are we going to do without a man around the house? How are we going to fix things? Who will mow the yard?" I was shocked. I remember my sister and I telling her we can do it -- we always helped dad out before his stroke. Her response was we were just girls, and could never handle all that work.

All my life she had been this strong person, someone I looked up to and wanted to be like, but that moment I learned how much she'd been living her life within the confines of gender expectations. Even though we were smart and capable, she still felt like there were "boy jobs" and "girl jobs."

I never thought that climbing on to a huge John Deere and mowing a huge six acre lawn could be an act of empowerment, but dang, I felt pretty fierce. It was also the first time mom ever said to me "you were right."

That was the moment I needed to see realize double-standards still existed for women, and would keep on existing unless we stood up to them. I also realized that feminism was an active, living thing, more than just ideas in a book but something we do every day -- and that every action, no matter how small, had the potential to change someone's mind.

I was raised Catholic (not the easiest faith for a feminist), but my mom didn't take me to church until I was in 2nd grade, first communion year. So one time, staying home with my dad (who never goes to church--I thought that what all dads did), I was playing with this toy cup thing, and I started pretending I was a priest and it was the chalice (::eye roll::). And when I asked my dad if I could be a priest, and he explained that only boys could, but girls could be nuns, I remember being mad, because nuns couldn't do all the stuff at mass.

And instead of changing faiths, I just became a feminist. I think I started using the f-word sometime around 6th grade and have to continued to since, sometimes with waning enthusiasm (middle school can be rough...)

I'm amazed at how many of us had our feminist roots in everyday experiences.

My "click" moment happened when I was a teenager. I had know that when I was very young there was a lot of sexism in my family even though I didn’t have a label for it then. I noticed that I was treated different then my brothers. Boys could do this and girls could do that…separate but equal crap…though in my family growing up women were not equal There was men’s work and women’s work and somehow the woman’s work was always inferior to the men’s. My dad was verbally and physically abusive. There was the usual power and control stuff but it seemed especially aimed at our gender. Bitch, whore and cunt were common words used. Words used to intimidate and shut us up. I know he wanted me to shut up because I always sided with my mom because I didn’t think the way he treated her, talked to her was right. I would tell him that he was wrong for doing it. I had a pretty strong sense of what was right and wrong back then…still do. I got put down alot by him for standing up for mom and myself. I also noticed that my brother’s sports and activities were more important. They got the new sports equipment every year while I made due with the same ones year after year. My parents went to their sporting events while I can count on one hand the times they went to my softball games while in high school. My brothers also got more freedom. Freedom to do anything they wanted to do (actually I just think they couldn’t control them) while my parents tried to shelter and control me. They also got to speak up with little challenge or interruption while if I tried to say something I got silenced. I wasn’t allowed to get