Feminism

I got to thinking tonight about my post, "10 Things You Learn When Your Mom Rides a Motorcycle" and I realized that many of the things I talked about in the post are feminist in nature. Body positivity, being true to yourself, showing respect to other women, not conforming to gender norms, these are all feminist ideals.

My mom (and most other motorcycle riding mamas) is a feminist whether she realizes it or not. In fact I am quite certain that if I asked her if she is a feminist that she would say yes. I don't believe that my mom would have any problems with this word unlike many women now a days. I wonder if it is because the first ten years of her life were in the 70's when feminism was first defined as gender equality. Or maybe this idea of the feminist as a man hater only exists in the minds of my generation.

It certainly does not exist in the minds of the middle schoolers I teach. I remember last year we took the 7th grade girls to a science for girls workshop. At this workshop one of the facilitators asked my students if they knew what feminism was or what a feminist was. None of them knew. They did however, use a common decoding strategy (kudos to them for using those ELA skills!) and associated the word to a similar sounding one that they knew: feminine. So many of them guessed that a feminist was someone who chose to dress particularly girly.

I remember spending an entire class period the next day teaching them the true definition of feminism and showing them Emma Watson's speech to the U.N. about feminism. As a woman who has always defined herself as a feminist, and felt completely comfortable with that definition, I was determined to ensure that all of my students knew what feminism was really about.

I worry that this blog has only seen the traffic it has because it found an audience among biker chicks. It is clear that they loved my post about the things I learned from my mom. I worry that I can not duplicate that success again because I don't have a wide enough audience. I don't know enough about motorcycles or the biker way of life to write a new blog post about it every day, every week, or even every month.

But that post wasn't just about bikers. It was about strong women. Feminist women. Maybe not all of those women would label themselves and their actions as feminist but.. they are. Feminism is something I know a little bit about. Feminism is perhaps something I can write about on a regular basis.

And maybe, just maybe, the world will stop seeing feminist as men-hating. Maybe the world will start to see feminist for the strong, capable, fierce women that they are.