On the first day of this brand spanking new 2016, in the wee hours of the morning, my first meal was a *~reheated~* piece of Elio’s frozen pizza on a paper. In fact, in the first 6 hours of 2016, I managed to shatter three of my three resolutions very discourteously and still have shin splints to suffer for it. I like New Year’s resolutions, I like the splintering noise they make as they burst into smithereens at 2:00 a.m. on January first.
I do like the idea of evaluation, in whatever interval or way that suits you. However, at the start of the new year, with inundating catalogs and lists of how you should correct all the things you weren’t even sure you were doing wrong, self-reflection can be more daunting than motivational. This year, we can re-center our goals and values without being so hard on each other or ourselves. That being said, 2016 can be the year of inclusive feminism.
Feminism itself is dynamic and fluid, so what are the modes of which we must try to navigate it? Feminism hasn’t been perfect, and we must face the tough and tender truths of how the movement has failed to rise to our needs and expectations.
Womyn of color, queer womyn, and transgender womyn have often been excluded from the f-word. We must face this reality so that we can surmount it together. We cannot ignore it, as resentment will seep into the lines from fake and forced smiles projected when feeling uncomfortable, unrecognized, and silenced, as we grow older. Among those truths that divide us are also the truths that unite us, the small and large inequalities and injustices structured in our society that seek to diminish womyn.
Feminism has helped me find my voice. Not in its brand, as feminism isn’t a caricature or a political buzzword. No one comedian, politician, or teacher taught us what it meant to be a feminist in 2015. Rather, a cacophony of voices demanded to be heard and we must work to not let ourselves or anybody else obstruct the importance of issues our fellow womyn rally against. Feminism allows lives and ideologies to weave together across oceans, over mountains, and into the dark corners that sometimes go overlooked.
So in 2016, let’s take womyn who identify as feminists off pedestals, as they too will make mistakes. We shall stop trying to tear them down because they like trap music, because they don’t always know the right answers, or because they give blowjobs sometimes. We must understand that we cannot preach what freedom or liberty looks like, as it differs across cultural boundaries and to exclude these perception denies us the unity our feminism needs. Our feminism needs different feminisms, it needs to not have a capital F, and it needs us to want more for the womyn next to us. We must not foam at the mouth with envy when our fellow womyn succeed, but struggle to celebrate how wonderful we are in our humanity and fallibility.
We can be bad feminists, as Roxanne Gay beautifully describes in her book of essays by the same name. But let’s not settle with being good womyn because to our society, good womyn settle, are inconspicuous until they’re in a bathing suit, and are content to earn 77% to what men earn.
I’m a feminist and I believe I am trying to do right. I believe I deserve the same as men. I believe on not being too hard on myself or other womyn. I believe in fighting for what we deserve, in doing things that make me feel good and not settling for what we’ve been told we get, and in exploring my flaws.