I think I was "born" into feminism, since my earliest recollections involve reading Tintin comic books and telling the other little girls I wanted my Barbie to go to Mars. They all wanted their Barbies to go shopping. I told them what my mom said, that shopping and housework were boring and tedious. Then they didn't want to play with me anymore. I went to play with the boys and they said no, because I was a girl. So that was the beginning of the road for me... getting abused, assaulted, followed home, getting obscene calls, having pervs look through my windows, getting dragged into closets and pinned against walls, floors and sofas during parties, being told I was "too intimidating" because I was an A-student, then getting fired after hearing TMI from the boss about his sex life with his wife, and mine with my boyfriend, pretty much sealed the deal.

Thank you Dominique for your powerful testimony. I feel that often people don't realize that some of us are indeed almost forced into feminism because of the injustice that we experience.

Again, thank you.

1970, I was 4 yrs old.
by 1976, I was an activist, campaigning for Jimmy Carter, teaching my little brother to help with chores (ours was a sexist, boys don't do house chores home before that), going on strike until my father "allowed" my brother to help with chores, starting a petition to remove a sexist teacher from our school (didn't work that year, but, worked to remove a diff. sexist teacher from high school, years later).
etc.

I kind of evolved into feminism after high school/beginning of college. I was never against women's rights but "feminism" was a dirty word to me and something a good Christian girl, never ever admitted to. However, in my family, my father was never the dominant "head" of the family..in fact, my parents are more equals than other couples their age in our community (religious, conservative, Russian culture). When I started really listening to some of the sermons in churches and men talking about their "headship" and their sexist beliefs about women, it didn't resonate with me. I found myself arguing and feeling very indignant. My mother didn't like me adopting the "feminist" label. She is, of course, pressured and bombarded by sexist images of women in our community. Although she has a much more egalitarian relationship with my father, she is not sure if this is "correct." I tell her not to worry about it, that she should try and start growing into "feminism" as well :)It makes me sad and angry at the same time.

This morning, my father and I were listening to a pastor on the radio talking about "headship," the perils of feminism, and unbiblical audacity of women to deny their specific role in their life..supporting their husbands and being under their authority, etc. etc. I was mad that my father was listening to this and I thought he might have believed at least some of it. However, he told me that such a negative (my word) relationship is not something he believes in personally. He added that mutual submission and love were/are the only things that worked for my mother and him. I was glad that he actually didn't buy into it, EVEN though a pastor he respects a lot said it on the radio. I was impressed and touched. My father (with all his faults, I mean, he was raised in a sexist community) is doing his best and I believe, he was an indirect part in making me become a feminist. Through their relationship (and now my father's admission of mutuality) I began to see that sexism and superiority based on religion (or anything else) is not ok.

I was always into feminist beliefs since I was little (starting around 3). I remember noting alot of differences in treatment of girls and boys when I was little and getting angry about it. Especially since I was a "tom boy" it meant often butting heads with people who wanted me to be more girlie. My idol in elementary school was Susan B and in middle school I was into all the pro-female singers in the later 90's. In high school I went through a bad phase in which I became fixated with Fox News and predicatably became very ignorant. I never identified as a feminist because I had either thought all the fights had been fought or was semi-embarrassed to call myself one since it always seemed to be something with a negative connotation. However I snapped out of it when South Dakota was pushing for that anti-abortion law and I couldnt believe that anyone would push something that barbaric into law. I stopped watching Faux News and became interested in feminist issues both on campus and in other arenas. Reproductive rights was my bridge to reigniting my feminism.

You read my mind. I have been thinking a lot about it lately. I think I will soon! Thanks for your story!!

I like this subject. It is nice to see how every bodies views are shaped.

As for me I believe that I have always been a feminist it just did not dawn on me until I was a senior in high school. I grew up in a single mother household and watch my mom basically do everything for herself. She really didn't believe in asking anyone to help her so she would just get a book telling her how to do it and then do it. I mean everything from fixing the plumbing to reroofing the house.

I didn't realize I was feminist til my senior year of high school. I was at church and a boy was talking about something, I really can't remember what exactly it was, that was really base. I told the boy he was wrong and then was told to shut up by the preacher. It angered me so much that this person was allowed to talk about gross inhuman things, but I could not tell him exactly what was on my mind.

My feminist awakening started when I was a little child, I suppose. My house was extremely sexist, and my mother was expected to wait on my father hand-and-foot. She never seemed to enjoy herself, she was always pathetically picking at her food, the only thing she seemed to indulge in was alcohol (My earliest memory of my mother is of her breath smelling like beer) I remember in each of these moments thinking, "My life will be different. I will enjoy myself."
I was also extremely vocal about unfair practices I saw on the playground and in other realms of life, such as in grade 7, when after reading a King Arthur story, the teacher created a rubbish system of "Chivalry" and "Ladylike" behavior for us to follow, and used a gold-sticker-on-chart system to make us follow it. Chivalrous behavior involved opening doors and such, but ladylike behavior included being quiet, meek, and modest. I protested that school was no place to be quiet and meek, since we had to answer questions in class, and for PE we wore uniforms that could be deemed immodest since they showed our legs. I was just scolded, and I proudly had no stars on my chart, in spite of being more chivalrous than all the boys. :)
It wasn't until I entered high school that I started officially calling myself a feminist though. It was a mixture of reading Courtney's book "Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters", seeing how horrifically girls treated themselves to garner the attention of loathsome boys, and all of the popular pseudoscientific evolutionary psychology coming out of the mouths of the male students to justify being jerks that formed a feminist cocktail.
These days I've expanded into many other territories, primarily disability rights, but I will always have feminism to thank for introducing me to fighting back against oppression and intersectionality.

Born into an evangelical christian household in Texas, I've seen a lot of hateful things come out of people's mouths. But I've always known somewhere inside of me that people should have the freedom to do whatever they want as long as they aren't hurting anyone. Then, 12-13 comes around and my best friend coerces me into a sex act. Physical, mental/verbal abuse and rape follow for the next half decade. I didn't know what was happening to me exactly or how to stop it but I did know I didn't like it. I manage eventually by 18 to get away from this person and make new friends who don't treat people like crap and use them. One of them is an anarchist and we start talking about why he is - I latch on wholeheartedly to the idea that social ills are mainly caused by domination, coercion, and exploitation and then I read about Emma Goldman and discovered the zine. Zines saved my life, empowered me to tell someone for the first time that I was abused, and gave me a weapon to use against rape culture. I've been an anarcha-feminist ever since. It's been about 3 years or so now.

I've been a feminist all my life but I didnt realise it till I got to university. I've been quite tomboyish all my life and didnt really suffer or notice any pressure to be more feminine (apart from my mother, but she LOVES girly things and was a little disappointed her only daughter doesnt) even though my friends were trying to make me wear make up and girly clothing, I was just "oh no I dont do that" rather than noticing any pressure to conform. I didnt even consider engineering to be a "man thing" until I arrived at my first class at college and noticed there was 10 women for about 100 men.
It wasnt long till I finally figured out I was a feminist and I've been annoying everyone ever since with my feminist rantings =)

Being male my story might be a little different. I guess you could say that my interest in equality stems from doing a physics degree at university. I could never understand why there was such a small percentage of girls doing a subject so diverse and inherently interesting.

I had a fairly broad set of interests myself. In addition to playing sport, I liked writing and artistic endeavours and was interested in current issues. I also had a creative side that was stunted somewhat. I remember taking a scarf I was knitting into primary school and being teased for weeks as a result. Of course being a nerd gets you teased for anything you do but that more so than other things. But by the time I got to university it was science and science culture that I found most interesting.

Given the really ridiculously small numbers of girls in my classes I didn't get to interact with any of them very often. After some time in this environment I began to think that there simply weren't any that shared my interests. I'm heterosexual but didn't even consider the possibility of looking for a girl friend until I was in my mid-20s. Once a friend asked me why that was the case and I replied that there simply wasn't anyone suited to me. In fact I said something like 'what are the chances of finding a nerdish tomboy who is especially interested in science.' Of course I've learnt you have to compromise a little since then but that was the way I felt.

You might be wondering where I'm going with this and what a boy's insecurities have to do with feminism: I'm getting there.

Well, being a (kind of) regional university, the class sizes got quite small by 3rd year, and that meant increased interaction with some of the female students. (Typically we had situations where there were 6 students total and 1 female.) And what I found from talking to them, was that they shared more of the artistic interests that I had. Things I hadn't gotten to talk about with friends with in... well ever, were now topics of conversation for me. So, girls made really good friends for me.

That got me looking into why there weren't more girls in the area, I mean those that I knew did have an interest in the subject and they did it well, so why not more? A remember asking one friend what she thought was the reason, and she said it had to do with traditions started with the church. I asked why there was 50% female enrolment in chemistry then and got no answer. Basically, I was unsatisfied with the regular answers I got from people, 'Girls just aren't interested;' reply: 'But some are, why not more?' 'They're generally not good at it;' reply: 'I know a few who frequently top the exam scores.' So I went looking for answers, mainly on the net and mainly in the form of scientific studies and surveys (science nerd remember), but there weren't a lot of them. Eventually this would lead to feminism, but not until I added another important line of questioning.

As I said above, I found I got along really well with many of the female students once I got to know them. But this too was frustrating, I was by and large interested in friendship but the interactions that were socially acceptable with female and male class mates were different. This seemed ridiculous to me (It's still something I'm constantly fighting, by that I mean my programming and everyone else's). I couldn't find the logic in why every long term interaction between men and women had to be sexual. Couldn't you be good friends with someone of the opposite sex without romance?

And so it was, armed with these questions that I found the answers in feminism. I found them largely by myself, it is only lately that I've begun interacting with actual feminist sites, but from thinking about things logically, learning a little philosophy, reading some feminist literature, hearing about feminism in the media (even as poorly represented as it is there) and observing the messages that things like advertising send out and thinking about what the affects would be, I managed to come to 80% of the same conclusions feminism has. Interacting with sites like this has helped me think about the rest, sometimes bringing my attention to something, sometimes helping refine my objections.

So, I'm forced to concede that it was primarily my own loneliness that initiated my search for answers. Some of you might interpret this as selfish behaviour, another example of a guy thinking girls should be there for him. Well, hopefully it's not quite like that. There was a genuine concern on my part for why a subject I found so interesting and rewarding was largely off limits to half the population. By extrapolation I figured that there must be other men and women who find themselves in fields they love but apparently without any interest shown from the opposite sex (or in some cases there own) and that in a gendered world this could be quite damaging socially. Ever wondered why male nerds are stereotyped as being awkward around women? It's because if you don't interact with the opposite sex, and you think they have nothing in common with you, you will be awkward! Furthermore I was concerned with why society should have such inflexible rules about the way men and women interact, and that surely was to everyone's benefit to break that down.

Ok, I could say more, fill in some gaps etc. but if I do that there will be no room left for anyone else to post.

I grew up with a stepfather who was very cruel to my mother and I, and he hated everyone. Blacks, gays, Jews, women. I vowed to never let any man treat me badly. All of my friends were boys and I was a tomboy. So I always had that feeling of demanding equality.

I stumbled upon feminism almost accidently. Having grown up in a liberal church that taught us the values of gender equality, gay rights, and the power of compassion, at 18, as I was going through the rite of passage of telling the church what I'd learned from it, and what I would do with my life, I decided that the best way to make a difference is to go into politics.

So, after a few years of being a soldier, something I did as to further my political career, I decided to go to school and still remain in the Army at the same time. I knew of the injustices women faced, from all the lessons I'd learned at church, and figured if I wanted to help enhance women's lives, I needed to know more.

I was a political science major then, and decided to take an Intro to Women's Studies class as an elective. What I learned floored me, because even though I knew of inequality, I didn't know how much it affected women. It was then that I decided to pick up Women's Studies as a second major, and have been in the movement ever since.

But even though I knew of sexism, my commitment to equality was a political one. It wasn't up until a few years ago, when a woman very close to me, and one who I love dearly, confided in me that she was sexually asasaulted, did I start examining the personal nature of feminism, and more into the implicit sexism and gender role challenges. In doing so, I also learned to change my own sexist behavior.

In short, while my commitment to equality started early as a child in the Unitarian Universalist church, my commitment to feminism did not start to truly form until I saw how sexism directly and profoundly affected the woman I loved.

I stumbled upon feminism almost accidently. Having grown up in a liberal church that taught us the values of gender equality, gay rights, and the power of compassion, at 18, as I was going through the rite of passage of telling the church what I'd learned from it, and what I would do with my life, I decided that the best way to make a difference is to go into politics.

So, after a few years of being a soldier, something I did as to further my political career, I decided to go to school and still remain in the Army at the same time. I knew of the injustices women faced, from all the lessons I'd learned at church, and figured if I wanted to help enhance women's lives, I needed to know more.

I was a political science major then, and decided to take an Intro to Women's Studies class as an elective. What I learned floored me, because even though I knew of inequality, I didn't know how much it affected women. It was then that I decided to pick up Women's Studies as a second major, and have been in the movement ever since.

But even though I knew of sexism, my commitment to equality was a political one. It wasn't up until a few years ago, when a woman very close to me, and one who I love dearly, confided in me that she was sexually asasaulted, did I start examining the personal nature of feminism, and more into the implicit sexism and gender role challenges. In doing so, I also learned to change my own sexist behavior.

In short, while my commitment to equality started early as a child in the Unitarian Universalist church, my commitment to feminism did not start to truly form until I saw how sexism directly and profoundly affected the woman I loved.

I am actually in my "transformation" as we speak. From "not-so-blissful ignorance and fear of God knows what" to a fledgling feminist. I grew up with a mother who was the antithesis of feminist. I was supposed to help with chores, not call boys, not do or say anything that would elicit a "what would the neighbors think?" response from Mom. I was taught to be quiet, study hard and be a good girl, a lady. I was also told to lock the car doors when any man who wasn't white was walking by the car. In short, I grew up in a bit of a bubble. I discovered in my thirties that I have a compulsive overeating disorder which, through a wonderful friend, led me to Susie Orbach's books which held the first of my many glimpses into feminism. I am in a weekly group which is mainly geared toward dealing with compulsive overeating, but a big part of that is feeling inferior as women and being expected to be thin and beautiful and appealing to men. I found this website somehow, I don't even remember what got me here, and I now log on daily and try to soak up as much as I can from the intelligent, opinionated, determined and caring women who post here. I hope to become a woman of that caliber myself very soon.

I started off ignorant of course. When I was young, like many I never understood that women had been, and in many cases still were, oppressed. Boys didn't interest me as a child, I would look at them rolling around in wrestles with each other, playing games where one of them ended up dead and I would think: "thank God I didn't come out a boy". They seemed so primitive.

So imagine my horror when several years later history lessons taught me that up until not very long ago women couldn't vote, couldn't own property, had basically no rights and were forced to obey their husbands. All because of men. The sheer disgust I felt at these smelly, primitive beings believing themselves to be above me has made me a feminist ever since.

I became feminist when I was dating my ex. I had never experienced sexism first hand until he started saying things that didn't seem right. He would tell me how to dress, and cut my hair. He refused to listen to my music because the lead guitarist or vocalist was female. When I pushed the issue with him he told me that strong women were a turnoff to him. That was my wake up call.

I was raised by a Feminist mother who, though she had largely shelved her more controversial points of view by the time I came around, made an impact upon me. As the story goes, Mom refused to buy me a toy gun when I was a little boy because she didn't approve of the gender stereotyping.

As I grew older, I came into my own sense of rebellion and righteous indignation. My first encounter with a particularly militant feminism (the kind neither advocated, nor practiced on this site) rubbed me the wrong way and made me recognize how complex the movement was how it was beholden to different voices and ideas. My mother's brand of feminism had been a relatively straight-forward, practical strain, and I was aware of this when contemplating the intellectual complexities of gender studies and its impact in film while in college.

I suppose I became an feminist early on, but it was an immature version that had yet to grow into fruition. That took years and maturation on my own part.

Wow! These are all very inspirational stories. Idea: ask your friends/fam/whoever what made THEM a feminist and get the conversation started!

Thanks, everyone, for the amazing peeks into your journey.

Much Peace.

I was born a feminist, but only in the last 3 years have I been passionate about improving womens's rights. Both of my parents are feminists (my mother to a greater extent than my father) and anarchists, so, from the start, I have had a somewhat unusual upbringing. I was home-schooled in England and Australia until I was 14, and only when I entered high school in country Australia did I fully realise that there was a whole host of expectations I was expected to conform to as a woman that were missing in my family.

Feministing played a large role in developing my passion about feminism. I discovered this website when I was 16 and from then on I became obsessed. It was wonderful to find other people who shared similar viewpoints and shared my frustration about the inequalities women (amongst many others) suffer in this world, particularly in supposedly "post-feminist" countries. One thing I regret is that I never got the chance to grow up in the 60's and experience the feminist movement in its height, but I am confident that the movement is still very present, and strong, even though it is in perhaps a different form today.

I am 19 now, and I will be starting university in 2010. I am looking forward to starting my gender studies degree and introducing more people to the wonderful world of feministing!

There's a video of me at age 3 singing "Wheels on the Bus" that I watched the other day. When I get to "The boys on the bus go 'Yo ho ho!'" my dad says to me:

Dad: Do the girls ever go "Yo ho ho?"
Little Me: No.
Dad: Don't they like going "Yo ho ho?"
Little Me: No.
Dad: Do you like going "Yo ho ho?"
Little Me: Yes!!!

I'm not quite sure when I began calling myself a feminist, but I definitely remember being very aware that all the things I was learning about girls and boys didn't seem to apply to me from a very young age. I guess I just grew from there.

I grew up with feminist values, although in my family we just called it "common sense."

I became interested in "academic feminism" after reading a Catharine MacKinnon essay for a class in law school. Reading blogs and books that analyze cultural issues from a feminist perspective has radically changed me as a person. Learning about concepts like privilege, othering, and rape culture was like turning a light on in my own head. It's very powerful to finally be able to describe phenomena that you always knew existed but could never articulate. I now feel equipped to communicate my feminist values in a way I never could before.

I remember when I was little, I always thought that my mom's parents had the same last name as I do, my mom told me that she had a different last name because she changed it when she got married. I asked her why and she said "That's what you do when you get married," Even eing so young, I didn't like the idea.

When I started university last year, I took a Women's Studies class and that's when I declared myself a feminist. Now I'll be majoring in it.

The way I see it, I've been a feminist before I knew what feminism was, the ideals and views have always been in me.

My mother named me after Emma Goldman. In our house, labour was never divided by gender - it was normal for Mom or me to mow the lawn or help to fix the roof or split firewood. It was normal for Dad or brother to cook dinner or vacuum or wash the dishes. I was always encouraged to pursue my own interests, whether they were non-traditional or more "girly". When the Montreal Massacre happened, I was in elementary school. Mom and I had a lot of talks about it. I asked her; "Why do men think that if women are smart, it takes something away from them?"

My Mom died last autumn, and we filled a two-storey church to capacity with people who remembered her as a strong woman who was committed to working for social justice.

My wife and I got married last year, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that she asked me, flat out; "Are you a feminist?" and I answered, for the first time in my life, "Yes!"
It felt really good. I felt my Mom's presence.