"power's not given to you. you have to take it."

On the surface, one would think that an artist like Beyonce wasn’t the most obvious choice as an ally for feminism, but upon taking a closer look, there are few better fits. She is one of the most successful performing artists of all time as well as a mother and wife, embodying the idea that women can, in fact, have it all. Most importantly of all, though, is the fact that she self-identifies as a feminist. Women all around the world have been indoctrinating into believing that feminism is a “dirty word,” one that evokes an image of bra-burning, man-hating women who are unattractive and lesbians. Shailene Woodley, a prominent actress known for films like Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, not a year ago said that she wasn’t a feminist because she didn’t hate men, completely missing the fact that what she was describing was misandry and not feminism.

Who would say Beyonce hates men? Looking at her and seeing she is a feminist as well as a mother, a wife, and a successful woman in charge of her own sexuality, women like her rebrand the term. One of the greatest weapons detractors from feminism can wield is the idea that a person has to choose between their morality and a conventional/successful lifestyle. Whenever I try to speak out on inequality, one of the first insults thrown at me is something along the lines of, “No man will ever want you if you don’t shut up about this nonsense.” My husband, of course, would beg to differ, but they can’t even imagine a world where I would fight this fight if I didn’t hate men.

Beyonce doesn’t hate men. I don’t hate men. There are surely some feminists who do, but in my experience, women who hate men have far less power and number far fewer than men who hate women, even subconsciously. There is power in numbers. The more people like Shailene Woodley that there are, the less worrisome it is to those in power. The more women who come right out and declare themselves feminists in towering lights to crowds of people, the more power the movement has.

There are plenty of valid reasons to not call yourself a feminist (lack of inclusion, trans-exclusionary politics, etc.), but hating men certainly isn’t one, and the idea that a feminist is just someone who failed at everything else isn’t either. Anyone who thinks so can talk to me when they get to headline the VMAs and marry Jay-Z. If anyone has the media clout to reclaim the f-word from the men's rights activists on a Voice for Men, it's Beyonce, especially considering that a lot of those MRAs probably spent many years lusting after her.

"being quiet never got a damn thing done."

People have argued nature vs. nurture for decades, centuries even. I have always wondered when it is that boys begin to capitalize upon their privilege. I see it when little boys chase after little girls and the little girls’ mothers tell them that it is only because he likes them, and then wonder why, years later, many of those girls are in abusive relationships. How can it surprise anyone, when I was told for so many years that a boy was only mean to me because he liked me?

We are so quick to place blame anywhere but the man, and I never really understood it fully until we talked about the Eve myth. We are helpless, but conniving, seductive but weak. Women are scapegoats, the scapegoats of a patriarchal society constructed with us either on a pedestal or degraded into dirt, and no matter what, we are always second to the man.

And I guess this comes back to wondering what the best way is to combat our situation. Do we educate women, and show them that it doesn’t have to be this way, or is that not enough? In my experience, things never change until people are angry, so angry they won’t take it anymore, and civil unrest becomes inevitable.

It wasn’t being intellectual that changed things for the suffragettes; it was being disruptive. They aren’t exclusive, and I think people forget that. We demonize Malcolm X and exalt Martin Luther King, Jr. always forgetting that they shared more traits than we probably are comfortable with. They were, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. Feminists must be the same; voracious learners and fierce warriors. In my experience, those who say, “we would listen to you if only you were polite,” are the most unapologetic liars in the world. It is nothing more than a technique to derail righteous anger.

"she couldn’t get any farther away inside from her skin."

I was seventeen when I was sexually assaulted, and I'm still not sure whether I'm ready to write about it, but I think it probably is good for me.

We had been dating for probably three or four months and I apparently wasn't giving him what he wanted. I have blacked a lot of it out from my memory, but what I remember most is him saying, "I can do whatever I want to you and you can do nothing to stop me."

After it was over, I made us dinner. I felt nauseous, but I made dinner, and told myself I was overreacting, and not until years later did I realize that I was really not overreacting at all. Somehow, the horrible act wasn't the worst part, and neither was realizing how horrible the act was. The worst part was when I tried to tell someone and they dismissed me. I had spent months trying to build up the courage to tell someone what had happened to me... and they told me I had just regretted it and changed my mind.

The weeks following were what made me a feminist. I spent days locked away inside myself, wondering yet again if I had really just blown things out of proportion. Somehow, I felt guilty for what had happened to me, and looking back on it now, I had done nothing wrong.

"Why would you put yourself in that situation?" My friend's words ring in my head still, because that is rape culture personified. I was the victim; I don't even feel like a survivor, even now. I still feel like a victim. And even though I was the victim I was the one who carried the guilt, who carried the burden. Even now, I don't think he knows what he did to me. Our culture protects him. Our culture of rape jokes, and "boys will be boys," and "she was asking for it," has ensured that he feels no shame for what he did to me, while even now, as educated as I am, I can't shake the lingering feelings that it was somehow at least partially my fault.

Brownmiller wrote that rape is not a sexual crime, it was a personal one; and we talked about how the personal was political. My assault made my body a battleground, but even now I don't feel like a soldier. I feel like I was taken advantage of and then told that it was my responsibility to not let that happen. Could you imagine going to the funeral of a murder victim and hearing relatives say, "Well,
he was just asking to be murdered?"