What I believe feminisms are

I have become involved in the team responsible for the Carnival of Kinky Feminists (first submission deadline is now 1st June).

As part of getting things set up, the organisers were each invited to provide a piece explaining what feminism means to them or how they define feminism (there are some great pieces of writing there!) After some soul-searching and searching through my previous posts on here, I came up with the following concise description of where I see feminisms having their foundation:

I believe that feminisms’ foundations are formed from the combination of women’s action in, and application of, social sciences, politics, philosophy, and activism to their own lives and the way those lives relate to other women’s lives. The common theme is it’s about women. Women in every walk of life have contributed to this foundation by virtue of living their lives and talking about them.

Feminisms tend to be activist both on a personal and a political level, but can be more purely academic as well. However, even the act of dispassionately and accurately recording women’s lives and experiences in terms of social science research, for example, is a revolutionary and activist thing in a world where the male is seen as the norm or default.

I believe that for both men and women, being feminist starts with listening to, and acknowledging as valid, women’s experiences and understanding the diversity as well as the commonality within them.

I am sure it's not perfect - it's just one person's (one man's!) version in just 157 words of the ideas that have been developed over the past 400 years or so of campaigning for women's political and social equality with men. But I think it's a good picture of where I'm at now in terms of how I relate to the word.

I relate to it as a feminist man - so it's an adjective rather than noun for me. I do not call myself "a" feminist. I describe myself as feminist, or having some feminist qualities (I hope).