Who I am and what feminism looks like to me

 

My name is Renitta, though I commonly go by Reni; yes, that's what I look like most days (not pictured are the leggings and bare feet). 

If you're here, there's a good chance that you already know me or have interacted with me, either in real life or through social media. Either way, welcome. And thank you.

Full disclosure: there was a time in my life when I would have been offended to be called a feminist, but that's a another post for another day. It wasn't terribly long ago either... but again, another day.

So why am I doing this? What does feminism mean to me?

*note: this is from a discussion piece on feminism for a course, but it still (and will probably always) applies.

Feminism at its core is the notion of equality for all genders. People in popular society associate the word "feminism" with the concept of female superiority. For a while, I found myself offended by the association with even the word. In thinking about the effect that feminism has had on my life and what it means to me, I'm realizing that it's always been a part of my life.

Feminism to me is heroes. It is the women who helped change, form, and shape my view of the world. It is the women who thumbed their nose at what was expected of them and by extension showed me that I was capable of doing anything, regardless of my gender.

Feminism is Eartha Kitt laughing out loud at the very notion of compromising for a man. It is Nichelle Nichols playing the first black woman on television in a very nontraditional role. It is Poly Styrene screaming “oh bondage up yours.”

Feminism is the riot grrrl movement of the nineties. It is Bikini Kill, Huggy Bear, L7, and Ani DiFranco, to name a few. It is the juxtaposition of being overtly feminine while finding a place in the male-dominated punk scene.

Feminism is my cousin, a sex educator who focuses on people of color. It is my mother who worked full-time and raised three children on her own.

I'm recently forty-two as of the time I'm writing this. I am slowly trying to raise a young man in the twenty-first (is that right? I'm never sure) century. I have a full-time job in customer service and am a part-time marketing student; I actually started this blog as a final project for a course, but then the pajamapocalypse took hold and everything fell to the proverbial back burner. I still have notes and sources and bits of research and the skeletons of posts to upload. Now that 2020 is over and the fog is beginning to lift, I'm committing myself to posting more. In the next few weeks, I'll be trying to finish off the posts that I started almost a year ago. As I work through the backlog, I'll be adding new content as well.

Watch this space. Let me know what you think, what you want to see, and what questions you have. Seriously. I do research for fun.

xoxo