Thoughts on my experience of DIY feminism:

A week and a half ago, Malala Yousafzai became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize: two years after she was shot on a school bus by a gunman trying to silence her campaigns for girls’ education in Pakistan. In light of this, and the increasing dialogue on feminism this past year, I have felt compelled to ruminate on issues of feminism myself, notably on this issue of how we as feminists deal with ignorance to our cause and the necessity to celebrate and make easily accessible ‘the knowledge of women’ celebrated by Malala as ‘what allows women to struggle for freedom without being co-opted by false pretension or by the brute exertion of power for its own sake.’

I am new to feminist society. Prior to coming to university though I undoubtedly benefited from feminism, I didn’t really know anything about the feminist movement. I knew feminists existed of course, and in sixth-form I came across the first person I knew to call themselves feminist. I wasn’t, however, aware that feminism also dealt with more or less all forms of discrimination, particularly against race and sexuality, I didn’t know that it’s actually LGBT*QIA and I had no clue what the ominous sounding kyriarchy was. And yes, since this is the LSE I guess we can all nod in collective disapproval of why that was; ignorance. I mean all I had to do was pick up a book, right?

Except, not really. You see, never having been aware of existing in any kind of feminist society or forum, ‘feminism’ as a concept just didn’t cross my mind. In my still young relationship with feminist society, I’ve come to learn that most challenging feminist issues can only be improved upon by education. Where a reasoned, logical explanation supported by evidence and/or personal experience fails to inform that’s where we use the term ‘ignorant’ – not where someone is making an enquiry in order to learn about something they have no base nor background in. Some of us don’t have the advantage of attending schools where feminism (not even a mention of when women got the vote) is on the agenda; not because the school is too tied up in the patriarchal agenda (at face level anyway), rather because the school’s main priority is to improve on last years’ 30% GCSE pass rate. It doesn’t occur to some of us in late adolescence to go and read a book on third wave feminism when we do start to develop a real socio-political understanding, because of our rigid focus on attaining a few seriously impressive A Levels in order to ‘prove’ ourselves to all our self-righteous middle class peers who typecast us as being violent, a bit dim, and lucky-to-be-here because of the place we call home. Maybe that’s a little self-pitying, but that’s my experience.

So it’s because of that experience that when I read “It’s not our job to educate you” as a response to a question about transgender people on Oxford University’s fantastic Cuntry Living Facebook page, I couldn’t help but confer that the respondent was disregarding their ‘privilege’. That term is now something I feel I can comfortably describe myself as having, not because I’m an old white man but because I have been educated somewhat in and by feminist society. I’m glad of it, and I feel that I have become a better, wiser person because of it. The brick wall that a person can sometimes face when attempting to learn about feminism – as embodied in responses like this, and which by no means reflects what feminism stands for in my opinion – is problematic and works to shut feminist society off from genuine enquirers; something which I experienced last Michaelmas term. I feel this is why it took me several months before I felt I could freely attend FemSoc meetings or had anything of value to contribute. I’ve heard it suggested that new members of feminist societies should perhaps remain quiet initially and instead do their bit to learn before they speak out, which is logical, but as I said earlier, the problems feminism deals with can only be improved by education: education requires enquiry and enquiry requires a voice. Maybe that’s difficult for some feminists to accept, but that’s because privilege usually exists with the privileged reflexively unaware of it.

Despite this, fear not! This problem is easily dealt with. We members of feminist society simply need to remember that legitimate enquiry does not equate to ‘ignorance’, which is offensive. I’m not saying internet trolls should be given the time of day, and I’m also not saying that discrimination should be excused simply because someone is unaware (and I write that with irony marks in my head), that they are being offensive. All I’m saying is that because we have this privilege by our very access to feminist society and its wealth of knowledge, legitimate enquiry into that nexus should be met with, at the very least, some form of answer rather than “it’s not our job to educate you” or any response of that vein, every time.

Our shared wealth of knowledge Malala celebrates is something we feminists should not be blind to. Existing positively in societies or forums where there is more than one viewpoint, identity, life and educational experience is a huge benefit as I now know being privy to that. So when enquired of and required of, we should take the opportunity to guide the enquirer positively into our feminist society by education, not by immediately rejecting and shutting down. We should never be apologetic or dampen our beliefs for the benefit of another’s comfort but we can try to understand their lack of enquiry into a topic and from there, educate.