Colleen, 20, Ohio I can say without hesitation that just about everyone thinks there’s something wrong with the world. There must be the rare exception out there, but just about every human being—my college classmates, every world leader, workers making 30 cents an hour, the Westboro Baptist Church, my grandparents, and Lady Gaga—can come up with at least one way in which the world is flawed. We can all agree on one thing, and we agree that the world should be better. Of course, we have different solutions to that. Some people focus on economics, or religion, or race, or class, or environmental issues. And some people focus on gender. I think that this can be difficult to explain to people about being a feminist. It’s treated like such a radical thing, to say that you see gender issues at the root of the World’s Big Problems, when it’s not seen as so radical to say that the Big Problems are because of, say, colonialism or materialism or racism. Of course, to be a feminist isn’t to ignore the political/economic/religious/racial, etc. They’re all knotted up in a big ball of Problems together, but I became more and more a feminist as I realized that gender-based oppression lay quietly beneath so much of the messed-up stuff in this world. And I realized that you can find such oppression enforced and endured by people of all classes, races, national origins, and religions. I am a feminist because this pisses me off. I am a feminist because I believe that for every girl tortured by femininity, there is a boy imprisoned by masculinity. I am a feminist because after I graduate from college, I will, statistically, earn as much as a man with a high school diploma. I am a feminist because I believe that women have a right to be angry because for all of human history we have, in most cultures, been subject to domination, and still are. I am a feminist because I want ALL people to have awesome lives.

Colleen, 20, Ohio

I can say without hesitation that just about everyone thinks there’s something wrong with the world. There must be the rare exception out there, but just about every human being—my college classmates, every world leader, workers making 30 cents an hour, the Westboro Baptist Church, my grandparents, and Lady Gaga—can come up with at least one way in which the world is flawed. We can all agree on one thing, and we agree that the world should be better.

Of course, we have different solutions to that. Some people focus on economics, or religion, or race, or class, or environmental issues. And some people focus on gender.

I think that this can be difficult to explain to people about being a feminist. It’s treated like such a radical thing, to say that you see gender issues at the root of the World’s Big Problems, when it’s not seen as so radical to say that the Big Problems are because of, say, colonialism or materialism or racism. Of course, to be a feminist isn’t to ignore the political/economic/religious/racial, etc. They’re all knotted up in a big ball of Problems together, but I became more and more a feminist as I realized that gender-based oppression lay quietly beneath so much of the messed-up stuff in this world. And I realized that you can find such oppression enforced and endured by people of all classes, races, national origins, and religions.

I am a feminist because this pisses me off.

I am a feminist because I believe that for every girl tortured by femininity, there is a boy imprisoned by masculinity.

I am a feminist because after I graduate from college, I will, statistically, earn as much as a man with a high school diploma.

I am a feminist because I believe that women have a right to be angry because for all of human history we have, in most cultures, been subject to domination, and still are.

I am a feminist because I want ALL people to have awesome lives.

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