I’m a feminist, and that’s the only reason my boyfriend and I are dating

Well – that’s not entirely true. The title of this post should read “I’m a feminist, and that’s the only reason my boyfriend and I started dating, whether he realizes it or not” — but that was just way too long.

Let’s back up a bit, as there are many pieces of this story that need to be put in place in order for this all to make sense. I’m sure your newsfeed and inboxes were all bombarded, just as mine were, with International Women’s Day posts (because one day is toooootally enough, right?) and Emma Watson’s #heforshe campaign (if you haven’t seen her explanation as to how chivalry and feminism can co-exist, do yourself a favor, take a hot second, and watch this clip. She really gets into it at around the 5-minute mark). All of these campaigns and postings have caused me to reflect on my own personal take on feminism, and how it impacts every other aspect of my life, because, yes people, your personal views do impact EVERY. ASPECT. of your life (again—whether you realize it or not!). It was during these reflections that I began to truly realize why a recent, seemingly trivial, exchange I had with my boyfriend bothered me so much.

Cut to one of the few nights we’re both home and going to bed at the same time (a rarity, to say the least). Climbing into bed together, he makes some comment about a particular woman (whose name I wish I could remember) being a feminist. To which, without hesitation, I reply “Well, I’m a feminist.” To which he chuckles. “What?” I ask. “Nothing, nothing,” he responds, rolling over to fall asleep, thus signaling the end of the conversation.

There were several things about this conversation that surprised me. First of all, why would a person’s take on feminism be anything to comment on? Especially when said comment is made completely out of the context of said person’s belief system? Second: Why was her being a feminist a negative trait? (This I obviously inferred by both his tone and his chuckle at my response.) And third, why was my attempt to continue and clarify the conversation so quickly shut down, and my views dismissed?

To be completely honest, I know the answer to number three. He said something he didn’t think would offend me, which it obviously did (needless to say my tone, coupled with his 3+ years of dealing with/deciphering it most likely gave this away), and he was tired and wanted to go to bed without having what he assumed would be a fight. (And they say women are passive aggressive!)

I also suppose I was a bit taken aback because, although I had never explicitly said the words “I’m a feminist” to him before, I had always assumed that my attitudes had reflected this belief (but we all know what happens when you assume…). We had discussed how unfair I thought the wage gap was. I had told him stories about how, as an undergraduate, I had highly educated female professors telling me not to wear any jewelry, or mention anything, even casually, that would give the interviewer any reason to believe I was in a relationship. If I did, these women argued, the interviewer would assume that I would put my relationship ahead of my career and follow my boyfriend if his job required him to relocate. We had had conversations at length about how different it was for us to walk through city streets alone at night. How could he be surprised that I was a feminist?

The definition of a feminist is an advocate of “social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.” We’re not all out there burning our bras and wearing pant suits and trying to blast through that ever-present glass ceiling (but God bless the women who are—I know I, for one, look horrid in a pant suit), but that doesn’t mean we don’t support the cause in our own way and share the same belief. I was honestly a bit surprised my boyfriend doesn’t also consider himself a feminist. Looking back on how our relationship came to be, if we had played by rules of our assigned gender roles, there is a very good chance no relationship would have budded at all.

Let’s back things up a bit, shall we?

We met at the end of April 2011. He was good friends with my roommate’s boyfriend and came down to visit during one of my college’s biggest drinking weekends of the year (May Week, the weekend before the weekend before finals—and no, that’s not a typo). He was funny, good looking, didn’t give off any weird, serial killer-type vibes, and was seemingly the only other token single hanging out in our little group that weekend. We talked, joked, hung around, and at the end of his first night there, I did what we girls are supposed to do when we’re interested in a boy—drop passive hints that we assume they’ll totally pick up on and wait with bated breath to see what they’ll do. He went to sleep and I went home alone. The following day was a blur of day drinking and party hopping. Instead of sitting there batting my eyelashes all night, I was much more forward. Much more direct. With both my body language and, well, my words.  And this time at the end of the night, I told him I was leaving the party and heading home and asked if he’d care to join me. He offered me a ride (which, in retrospect, was a HORRIBLE idea — see day drinking comment above — but luckily we weren’t going far). I accepted. We got back to my apartment. And the rest, as they say, is history. A drunken weekend that turned into nearly 4 years, a shared apartment and two lovely little fur babies.

Now, you may be asking yourself, how does this make me a feminist? To answer this question we need to look at the typical, accepted boy/girl dynamic. In most romantic/attraction-based interactions, the male in the equation is typically expected to make the first move. The female is supposed to politely indicate whether or not these advances are welcome. The situation moves on from there. You know what would’ve happened if I had waited for him to make the first move? Nothing. Nothing would have happened. I would have ended up going home alone. Again. He would’ve crashed on a couch, woken up Sunday morning and driven back to his college down the cape and I probably wouldn’t have seen him again, except for possibly in passing. If I didn’t believe it was acceptable for women to be socially equal to men, to buck established gender roles and go after what I wanted (yes, in this case it was a boy, but dude, whatever), well, who knows where I’d be now.

The moral of this long rant and ramble is this: go after what you want, regardless of your gender and regardless of whatever it may be that you want (cute guy, new promotion, child, you get the idea). Feminism is about promoting equality between the genders, not man-hating or bro-bashing or whatever other misogynist terms threatened men throw at women who just want a seat at the table. But ladies, this isn’t something that’s going to be handed to us. It’s through our day-to-day actions that real change is going to occur. Now go out there and get what you want!

This post originally appeared at twentyfirsttwentysomething.wordpress.com.

Header image credit: Moyan Brenn