“It is important to know who you are. To make decisions. To show who you are”
Malala Yousafzai
I like to joke that I became a feminist because I was nagged into it - a horrible, stereotypical, man-hating feminist made me do it. She is now my best friend (and the co-founder of the FNN, also not any of those descriptors). The truth is, I was always a feminist, but I didn’t really know how to articulate it. I spent my formative years being Not A GirlTM. I was Not A GirlTM, I was one of the boys – I drank beer, I made sexist jokes (obviously, I made great sandwiches) and just tried to be a cool, laid back Not A GirlTM. Other women were catty, they were bitchy, they were stupid, and I was not them. But I was one of them. I spent most of the time with my friends (all men) with an uneasy sense of something not being right. I was uncomfortable with the jokes being made, with how my friends viewed and treated women (not me though); and although I hadn’t realised it at the time, I didn’t like the fact that I had written off half the population as people I didn’t want to spend time with. I saw woman being treated poorly by most men in my life at the time and I knew it was wrong, but I did not know how to verbalise this, nor did I recognise that it was systemic problem.
Fast forward to me arriving at university to study nursing – a very excited ball of unrealised internalised misogyny. But it was ok, I was only going to university to do a course that was 99% woman – what could possibly go wrong?! I completely fell into nursing, I didn’t really know what else to do. I come from a working-class background and nursing struck me as a solid career, something that was very important to me. Also, my mum is a nurse and I respect her immensely for what she does, so nursing seemed like the logical step for me. I will never forget the sheer feeling of discomfort on my first day of university, I was surrounded by women and I felt so out of my depth. Throughout the first semester (before we had to do any placement) my internalised misogyny reared its very ugly head many times and I was pretty fucking horrible - I was not been nice to be around!
When we started placement, everything changed. I saw awesome, badass women everywhere. I saw amazing nurses save lives, comfort people in their worst times, work long hours and generally being awesome. Not just nurses; doctors, physios, cleaners, surgeons – literally amazing women everywhere. As time progressed I began a journey of awareness – I Was A Girl and that was a really good thing. I admired these women and I wanted to be like these women. I remember relaying all this to R and I also remember her ‘I told you so look’ on her face. I hate and love that look to this day. From then I started to move on from just admiring woman that I worked with, but also the woman I went to uni with. As I became more aware of these amazing, bad ass women I was surrounded by, I also became more aware of these women not always being treat as they should be.
The rest, as they say, is history. I opened my eyes, and suddenly I was a feminist. R gave me the “I told you so” look many times. I re-examined (and continue to examine) my past experiences, my attitudes and prejudices, my everyday interactions. I see the way oppression plays across many levels of society and I want to fight back against that. I am a feminist because I work in a high stress, high emotional labour, a “girls” job that is not respected as it should be and we certainly don’t get paid enough to do it. I’ll let you guess why nursing is not respected. I’m a feminist because I spent my formative years not respecting who I was, and thinking that being a girl isn’t a good thing. I’m a feminist because upon reexamining my past experiences the patriarchy has effected and been present in all of them. I’m a feminist because I’m angry. I am a feminist because I want equality for all. I’m a feminist for a multitude of reasons that will be explored in further articles, but mostly I’m a feminist because it’s who I am and it’s who I’ve always been – even if it did take me a bit of time to realise it.
L xx