By: Lindsay

“What kind of fucking freedom are we fighting for?”

“I believe that socialism without feminism is no socialism worth having.”

These are the types of things I want to shout from rooftops all over the world. As a Women and Gender Studies major I am constantly bombarded with people opinions about feminism. In fact, I am beginning to receive more discrimination for being a feminist than being queer, and of course my feminist beliefs are always believed to be directly related to my sexuality. Articles like “A Discourse on Brocialism” leave me feeling undeniably frustrated and minimally hopeful. Sometimes I feel like I will never break free of society’s imposed definitions of me. As a woman, I am perceived to be weak, emotional, irrational and if I appear to challenge those characteristics I am immediately put into a category of “angry, feminist, man hater”. I am crying right now not because I’m an “emotional woman” but because the society I live in tells me everyday, multiple times a day that I am and always will be “less than a man”.
On an uplifting note, Autostraddle is one of the only places I feel safe and free to express my opinions without being judged by my sexuality and my feminist beliefs. (I still express them in other places though, because I will NOT let a bunch of White, upper class, able bodied men tell me how I should live!)
All together now FUCK PATRIARCHY!