COPYRIGHT

Published by Virago

978-0-3490-0656-7

This selection copyright © Victoria Pepe, Rachel Holmes, Amy Annette, Martha Mosse and Alice Stride 2015

Introduction Copyright © Amy Annette, Martha Mosse and Alice Stride 2015

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Essay Copyright and Acknowledgements at the back of the book

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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VIRAGO

Little, Brown Book Group

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London, EC4Y 0DZ

www.littlebrown.co.uk

www.hachette.co.uk

I Call Myself A Feminist

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT

Dedication

Introduction

Good for a girl isn’t good enough

How could I not be?

My Journey to Feminism

Hotspur: Superwoman

Stand up and get involved

Why I am a Feminist

Silent screamers

Manifesto for feminist intersectionality

This is NOT a Feminist Rant: The Language of Silencing Women

I Call Myself a Feminist

Talking About My Generation

‘Roti Kamana’: Stories of Survival

I Call Myself a Feminist With My Elbows

A Typical Engineer

Islam is My Feminism and Feminism is My Islam

Staring at the Ceiling: It’s Not Always as Simple as Yes or No

For Our Children, for Our Mothers, for All Still Struggling: We Must Save the Human Rights Act

Are You a Stripper or a Shaver?

Connections Are Everything

The Difficult, Undateable Dating Columnist

Women Should Get to be Rubbish Too

Goodbye to Good Girls

What’s in a Word?

Why I Call Myself a Feminist

What Can Men Do to Support Feminism?

Biographies

Essay Copyright

Acknowledgements

To all those who call themselves feminists – whether they say it out loud or not.

INTRODUCTION

Amy Annette, Martha Mosse and Alice Stride

Some people might argue that we have reached Peak Feminism. That feminism has jumped the shark. That they are fatigued by feminism. They don’t want to hear about it any more. ‘How can we need more of it? It’s already bloody everywhere – we’ve done it now, right? It’s always on Twitter. Like, ALWAYS. I just want to eat my sausage rolls and watch House of Cards in peace.’

We know that being a feminist can feel exhausting, like trying to climb a mountain dragging a suitcase made of lead whilst wearing flip-flops. We all know that life was – perhaps – a little simpler before we became feminists. Ignorance is bliss, and dancing on bars IS fun – as Emer O’Toole reflected in her Guardian article ‘Ten things feminism has ruined for me’.

But we also know right down to the marrow in our bones that we need feminism. It is as necessary as oxygen. It is as essential as water and we gasp for it in the same way when confronted with sexism. It might be the grotesque out-and-out sexism that feels shockingly like a previously unseen football to the side of your head landing with a thwock, ‘THIS IS CLEARLY SEXISM!’ Or it might be the imperceptible sexism; the less obvious, less naked kind. The kind that you know is there humming in the background like a fly that will not be swatted. Thus we need feminism.

We need feminism because girls are shot in the head for going to school. We need feminism because women are burned alive for refusing to submit to grotesque male desires. We need feminism because women are under-represented in every sphere of life except being wives and mothers. We need feminism because one in five women in the UK experiences sexual violence and is usually blamed and shamed for it. We need feminism because we are taxed for our bodily functions. We need feminism because women’s bodies remain politicised, scrutinised, fetishised. There are countless more reasons why we need feminism, infinitely more reasons; and this in itself is another reason that we need feminism.

We know that many young women and men need feminism too. We need to feel included, engaged and inspired to fight for an equal society and an equal world. This is an exciting time to be a young feminist. The world pulses with feminism – a feminist fairground, all bright lights and toffee apples. It seems cool, vibrant, sexy to be a feminist. We have access to ideas and resources and thoughts and articles that feminists in the seventies could only dream about and we have a mind-boggling, accessible platform to shout about it from – the internet. We have allies the world over, and feminism is no longer seen only as a ‘women’s issue’.

So, when Lisa Appignanesi, Lennie Goodings, Rachel Holmes and Susie Orbach invited us to help create a book, we said ‘YES.’ The time felt right, and we knew there was an appetite for a book like this, due to the success of their 2013 book Fifty Shades of Feminism, to which Alice contributed with her essay ‘Saving the Bush’. (Her sister has finally forgiven her for writing publicly about her pubic hair.) But this time, the contributors would all be under the age of thirty. We wanted to champion the young feminist. We wanted to know what this generation has to say: the generation whose only unifier might be that each person has an identity as unique as our Twitter handles.

This book would not be for any certain ‘type’ of young feminist. It had to be all-inclusive – like the crap holiday you went on when you were eighteen with your friends from school, from which you came back with rum and cola for blood and a new-found talent for ‘tactical vomiting’. Our wonderful contributors, these extraordinary women – some of them still teenagers! – are dazzling. They all possess distinct and exciting voices and backgrounds and sensibilities: a smorgasbord of fantastic young women and their superb ideas. We’ve covered all sorts of interesting stuff, and it has come from a brilliant array of perspectives. The hijab! Feminist scientists! Feminism and religion! Fat feminism! Language and sexism! Sex! The self! Suffragettes!

We knew immediately what we wanted this book to BE like. Choosing a name proved much more difficult. If this book were a human, it would have been known as ‘The Baby’ for the first six months of its life. So why did we title this book I Call Myself a Feminist? Because this book is for everyone everywhere – a statement of intent. ‘I call myself a feminist’ is an active, personal and powerful phrase. It is a statement of a way of thinking that we have chosen to become part of us – a part of the many quirks and intrigue that make us ourselves. We are not born a feminist; we become one. This sense of ownership is important: the term ‘feminist’ remains under siege, cast aside for being too inclusive and broad, and there are many who refuse to identify with it. We are challenging this with I Call Myself a Feminist.

We hope that there is something in here for everyone who reads this book. We hope that there is at least one essay that makes your stomach churn and your heart beat faster in recognition. We hope that you’ll want to thrust it in front of your friends and family and bellow: ‘THIS! This is exactly what I have been trying to say! I get this!’

We felt rallied together by this experience, the experience of making a book – together as editors, and with all of our splendid contributors – and we are all united by feminism. We know that young feminists are out there in droves. We ARE you. This one’s for you. This one’s for us.