Have a great time in Europe!

I know that this is completely off the topic… but…..

I have just read your article ‘Codes of conduct and my new influx of hate spam’ and something stuck out about the lable Feminist.

I think that there is a massive missunderstanding about what a feminist is and most women, especially young women would hate to have the lable feminist attached to them.

I think I struggled with that one for a little while, I didnt want to be a feminist, the word conjurs up images that… well are not very femanine and kind of too in your face.

I have come to realize that being a feminist comes with having breast’s and to be ashamed of the lable does the world and history of brave women a great injustice.

We forget that in the past, women that carried the lable of Feminist with pride actually died for some of the ‘rights’ we so easily take for granted. The right to vote, the right to work and the right to work in positions that were once in the past jobs that only men could hold.

There are great women in history that we overlook, Elizabeth 1 who fought with her army against Spain and won. Her words on the battle field:
‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman ( be fair, these were the days when women were expected to just look pretty and churn milk) but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England).

Theodora, an actress from 6th century Greece became the wife of the Empror Justinian appears in almost all the important laws of the time, making divorce laws more humane to women and abolishing white slavery. After her death the Empror hardly passed any important laws at all.

Rosa Parks started the modern Civli rights movement by refusing to leave her seat for a white man. Other women are Joan of Arc, Eleanor Roosevelt, Esther, Maria Bochkareva, Bessie Coleman, Carrie Chapman Catt.

Mary Mcleod Behune,the 15th of 17 children, born in 1875, the child of slave parents, was the first black woman to run a (American) federal agency. She also served as a consultant on interracial affairs at the charter converence of the United Nations.

There are women who showed the world that you can be a single mother, raise decent children and have a ‘man’ job all at the same time.

Everything we do and take for granted like what we wear, going to college or university, working as a MD of a comany, vote, have children as a single parent, our choice to work or be a stay at home mom and even the right to walk around without a chaperone and have our own savings account was fought for by a woman who was willing to risk her life so we could truly live.

Am I a feminist? Damn right I am! I may not burn my bra or chug down Jack Daniels every night, but I dont have to, because the women who came before me already fought and won that battle.

There are still women out there who are forced into marriages, persecuted and killed for being raped. Infant girls are murdered at birth because they are not as financially viable as boys and in some parts of the world, a womans testimony is not valid in court until it is validated by three men. Even in forward thinking and Western society women and girls are afraid of reporting rape and sexual abuse, not only because they fear their attackers but because of the stigma attached to the crime against them.

Feminism is not over and it is not an outdated idea that belongs in the past. As a daughter, sister, an aunt and a friend I would be ashamed if I was not an active part of this beautiful and powerful movement.