you don't get it

FINALLY I saw one of the Guerrilla Girls, Frida Kahlo, speak tonight here on campus. I took a new friend (whee) and my aunt, an art therapist and part of my small estrogen-ruled family. I don't know why but I sometimes assume that an enlightened woman is all the way enlightened, when there are isms I'm not aware of myself.

Here's the thing, I think. Here's what I think. Well, first here's what I know: The basic tenets of feminism are role and pay equality and human rights for all regardless of gender of racial background. Regardless of colour! There are a vast number of other feminist issues (in my opinion anything that involves the suffering of an oppressed person is a fuckin feminist issue) and I don't understand - I mean TRULY, I do not understand - the people that react to feminism with aggression, violence, and hate.

The only period of time in which I hated the terms 'feminism' and 'feminist' was when I was trying to reinvent myself in a way that would attract a group of apathetic people, mostly boys. This was my first year of university. The problem is that I have always been a little militant, and very very passionate, and I'm not able to ignore shit. I mean shit like a verb, I think, like, "That is shit." Quickly (after being called a feminazi by a little white shithead) I reembraced my militancy and I'm using it to change shit around which has to be the thing I'm meant to do, otherwise I'm a drama queen for no reason. Anyway

I can see why people would hate the term, especially women and people of colour who feel excluded from it - thus womanism, which I prefer to feminism but I think it's only applicable to WoC - but I think it's infantile. It's an infantile fear. So there motherfuckers!

The thing about feminism is that it too sometimes sounds infantile to me. I don't want people of colour to think I'm excluding them when I call myself a feminist, but I do understand that a white girl is not going to step in and solve their problems, which are intense, complicated, and varied, and generational, and were caused by us and we ain't helping them any. The other thing about feminism is that we breathe life into it, and it's our fucking job to make sure it's all-inclusive.

I'm not sure where I was going with this. My brain is fried from research papers and shit. Just check out the fucking Guerrilla Girls!