How and when did you become a feminist?

I don't think I 'became' one - I'm sure I was born one. Yet still, even now, I'm surrounded by those who just aren't, sadly.

Hetty58 I could weep for those that fought before us for the rights too many are prepared to just give away in order to " be kind" Don't see too much kindness towards natal females.

I became aware of being a feminist after I came across a copy of Spare Rib in a local newsagents, in 1971 or 72.

When I was about 4, my dad said to me that by the time I was grown up there would probably be women ministers and doctors.
I was mystified as to why there weren't already such people.

Probably with my mother’s milk. Both my parents believed in equality of opportunity and supported my sister and me and my three brothers equally to achieve what we wanted to achieve.

I think I was one from the start in that I was aware of inequality and unfairness from an early age.
At primary school, boys did art whilst girls did needlework is an example. There was no choice. At secondary school we were channelled towards being domestic goddesses, sewing, cooking and cleaning. Boys did woodwork and technical drawing.
My parents were keen for me to do well at school especially dad who had won a scholarship to grammar school but couldn't go due to poverty and the need for him to go out to work.
Mum was a traditional Italian mamma and I was expected to help around the house whilst my older brother wasn't.
I finally rebelled when I was 17. I was told to clean his pig sty of a bedroom on my day off from work. I refused. Poor mum was horrified when I told her that he should do it himself!
He didn't, his future wife did it for him!
She saw the light a few years into their marriage and discovered feminism in a big way....as did my brother.

Probably in childhood-difference in treatment of the boys in our family started my interest.
School was quite forward thinking for girls there because I did technical drawing and metalwork O levels, along with ‘domestic science’.
Strangely though, the boys weren’t allowed to choose domestic science or needlework or secretarial studies.

I would probably have said I was a feminist when I was quite young, looking back I dont think that was true. I think I became a feminist after the birth of my first child.

That's a really good question GagaJo and having thought long and hard TBH I don't know. I think it started with being aware of inequalities and being a feminist before understanding that's what I was, if that makes sense.

Growing up with six brothers was a start, noticing how my mum favoured them without any insight.
When I was young there was a mad American comedy show on TV called, 'My mother the car.' It was a ridiculous premise where a guy's mother died and came back as a vintage car. My mum used to say, 'If I come back I'll come back as a man.' I remember her saying that very clearly. She never saw the irony of giving the girls chores whilst my brothers lorded it over us.
At school girls weren't allowed to do metalwork or tech drawing etc but the boys were allowed to do cooking. We saw it as patently unfair.
We sort of knew about feminism even then but somehow couldn't apply it to our own lives very much.
Only after my children were born did I begin to wave a feminist flag and I am happy to say now so does my daughter.

I think for me, being born mid 1960s, I assumed everyone was equal. My mum taught me to see black and Asian people as beautiful and as the oldest child, I was more able than my brother who had an SEN.

My school reinforced the sexed division of DT lessons. Girls did cooking and sewing and boys did woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing. I don't recall caring, because I didn't want to do any of them. I was forced into taking Childcare as an O Level (I didn't go to the exam) which mostly bored me rigid. I was never the maternal type. But the thing I DO remember from it was the nature v nurture debate. I actively tried to bring my DD up as a capable person, in the same way I would have done a boy. She is also a feminist.

Of course, with true equality, the concept of feminism is redundant.

I think many of us will have been feminist from a young age, but not identified it as such or given it a name until we were older. Even if home life was absolutely equal treatment, unfairness based on sex would inevitably have been encountered in the wider world.

Spot on Hetty58.

I was born into a family where both parents worked - via a complicated system of alternative shifts such that one or other was at work and one was at home with my sister and me. Dad taught us to 'grow your own' DIY and Cooking. Mum was the baker, seamstress, painter and decorator. Of course the roles were not set in stone and all four of us pitched in when needed.

It was only when I entered the world of work that I discovered that I was a second class human being, not allowed to enter various professions, kept down under a glass ceiling, paid less than a male colleague, and not in the pension scheme. forced to leave when I was pregnant (no maternity leave then) etc. etc.

The injustice that still resonates with me, is that my Mum, who was 2nd to her female cousin in her last year at primary school, was denied her runner-up Dux medal, when the school, for one year only, awarded the medals to Best Boy and Best Girl. It was some compensation when both my sister and I won the Dux medal outright at the same school.

I'd always noticed that my brother got free passes and the rest of us didn't. Looking back I think my father was more egalitarian than my mother, she was the one who unwittingly reinforced the gender roles and divisions.

I was a single parent to my eldest, when I got married my husband wanted to formally adopt him. The only thing was that I had to formally adopt him too. That was the point at which I became an active feminist in a thought out way.

My mother has always had a preference for males. My brother was the favourite, but even when she had cats, she favoured the boy! Weird.

My father. He was a true feminist well before it became acceptable if not fashionable, for men to believe and promote women’s equality. I was allowed to do what a boy would have been allowed to to, I was allowed to study and travel abroad on my own, never judgemental just told me the facts, unusual for a man born at the end of WW1. Sadly my mother was the one to reinforce gender roles.

Hetty58

Of course, with true equality, the concept of feminism is redundant.

Absolutely, but are we defining true equality as equality of opportunity (with all necessary encouragement) or as 'equity' where everything is shared out equally despite differences in – thinking carefully how I put this – effort and ultimate value to society. The latter is sometimes called equality of outcome which, I think, is impossible anyway.

Still on the fence about the idea of universal basic income. In many ways it seems like a good idea but I can imagine problems arising because of some people making more of their basic income: thinking of the parable of the talents here.

Don't tear me to shreds. I'm throwing out ideas to be discussed if anyone wants to ?

And of course all that's not just a feminist idea.

I'll get my coat.

Various flash points in my life, apropos of being brought up a catholic realising mid teens that most religions are deeply patriarchal, with a male hierarchy and a raison d'etre to keep women in their subservient places.

Working in offices and feeling that there were a whole host of men, this was back in the sexist seventies, who were happy to sit on their arses and let women, often busier than they were, faff around them bringing them cups of coffee and washing the cups up afterwards. I was part of a protest group who refused to do that, sometimes undermined by older women in the office who thought that's what female members of staff were there for

Realising that I didn't want to be one of the appendage type girlfriends who were prepared to troll along behind a boyfriend watching sporting activities that bored me stiff, coming to terms with the fact there are "some" men who have an expectation, of love me, love my interests. Not for me!

Riling against the page 3 culture that was very prevalent in the '70s, although on reflection of what's around now that all seemed quite mild.

Feeling deeply that women of all cultures should be in control of their own lives and destinies, sadly that doesn't happen for many women. Since learning about atrocities such as female genital mutilation for example, in retrospect I feel some of the things that gave me rage back in the dim and distant past pale into insignificance

Realising how important birth control is for women,

This might sound like a daft question, but did anyone else start to feel much more rage and disgust at how imbalanced it all still is once they entered menopause and all the hormones settled down? I am convinced that female hormones make us into borderline Stepford Wives - all compliant and tolerant! I have long been a feminist in many ways but I was never this bloody angry about it all.

Yes, I recognise that from when I worked at Lloyds, Terribull. I refused to go along with it and got a reputation for being bolshy. Better bolshy than a doormat though.

I have been the opposite NellG. I have calmed down a lot since menopause. I know the inequality is there but as an introvert, don't have to rail against it as much, because I don't participate anymore than the bare minimum anymore. If I come across it, obviously I still challenge it.

Yes, Terribull, I agree. The discrimination most western women face pales into insignificance in comparison to what goes on worldwide.

I am reading Difficult Women by Helen Lewis at the moment. All the women who got things done and made changes were considered difficult or bolshy.