Vocal chords

I DIDN’T CALL myself a feminist until I was 20 years old. Feminism was deliberately and aggressively stigmatised as angry and shrill and unattractive, and when you’re an insecure teenager you don’t want to be perceived as alienating and unattractive, even if it’s for the sake of demanding equality. There were people who were fiercely identifying as feminists in the 90s, but I didn’t have that kind of confidence.

In my freshman year of college, I took a class about politics and social justice and the professor asked the class: “Raise your hand if you’re a feminist”