Anyone who follows me on twitter will know I'm a sucker for a good feminist debate. I'm that person who quotes Caitlin Moran on a regular basis, thinks rape culture is a perfectly legitimite topic on a night out and has no qualms with pointing out when a colleague has made a sexist remark.
Recently I've become very conscious that a lot of my views have come about since I started working in the Student Movement. A few years back, when I began my time as a Student Officer, I didn't really appreciate the feminist argument (I was too preoccupied with the worry that the Women's Officer might want to ban pole dancing). Fast forward to today and it's become an integral part of my life and what I believe in. It would be silly to pretend that these beliefs haven't been influenced by the environment I've worked in for the past three years. Students' Unions are absolutely brilliant for their stance on equality and desire to make everyone feel safe and included. I think they're fairly unique in that sense. As a result this is often on my radar. Even when there's a topic I don't feel particularly strongly about, when I'm with people who don't come at it from an officer/adviser/general Union-ista's stance, I will often get defensive on behalf of the minority group in question. A good example is the gender neutral toilet debate. Not something I spend a great deal of time pondering however last night I found myself automatically explaining the merits of it just because it came up in conversation and, well, I felt I should.
I'm often surrounded by people who have similar views to me on feminism and so there's no real need to defend my beliefs on a day to day basis. However when I'm with different groups of people, there's a need to legitimise what I'm saying with well-reasoned arguments. This is where I often fall down. Feminism is now in the spotlight and there's a plethora of well written pieces in support of the movement. In my excitement to discover all of this, however, I've almost forgotton where my own beliefs actually stem from and why they're important to me (and not the author of the vagenda blog, for instance). I've therefore often bypassed the core arguments which have made me feel a certain way and headed straight to buzz words like 'safe space' and 'equality' in order to uphold a view which I'm not fully certain is even my own.
Take my previously cited example of rape culture. Last night a friend said something along the lines of girls being stupid for dressing promiscuously. I'll admit, I found it difficult to distinguish my emotional response ("I can't believe you just said that!") from a more reasoned rebuttal. This could have been down to the fact I'd already had a couple of glasses of wine or, quite simply, because I'm not normally in an environment where I'm required to defend this topic.
I think it's important that we all challenge our own views. Not to fit in with what others think but to feel comfortable that they really are our own. In the same way people with a religious upbringing may question whether their faith stems from those around them, I'm now questioning why I hold certain beliefs. I'm hoping this will strengthen my feminist argument so that next time I'm sat there open mouthed at a friend's comment I can actually put together a coherent response.
(For the record, I'm a feminist because I believe that both genders should be valued equally, which they currently aren't, and not just because I quite liked Caitlin Moran's witty take on female body hair.).
