Still a Long Way to Go

After some deliberation I've decided not to recount a history of feminism to you here on the blog and instead jump into the subject I'd really like to talk about: why I think it's still important now. A lot of people know the bare bones history of the movement, and if you're interested in its roots, I suggest starting with Wikipedia (I know, I'm not supposed to say things like that, but this isn't a scholarly essay) and then heading to your library. There's far too much for me to get into here, and there's plenty of others who have told the story wonderfully.

What I want to talk about is what feminism is to me personally. I have a pretty simple definition -- equal rights for all regardless of gender. That's the basis anyway. But to me feminism encompasses a lot more than that. It's about equal rights for everybody, because why allow anybody to suffer inequality for any reason? For the sake of (some semblance of) brevity, I'll just focus on why the movement is still important to me and important for the world in the context of gender equality.

Though we have made huge strides for gender equality here in the U.S., things still aren't great for women in the world as a whole. In many countries women are still considered their husband's property or a commodity for fathers to trade. Abuse and rape go unpunished because these women have no rights, no voice, and no one to fight for them. Here it's easier for women to fight back against such treatment, but still difficult in a lot of cases. There's such a culture of fear and guilt that women suffer through when it comes to mistreatment.

As if the fear women feel when walking alone in a strange place or at night, or the guilt many feel after being mistreated -- as if they were asking for it -- wasn't enough, there are also impossible standards of perfection women are held to that men simply don't have to deal with. Women must be perfect mothers, have perfect homes, and most importantly, flawless looks in order to be considered good women.

And don't even get me started on the double standards women have to put up with when it comes to sexuality.

We still have a long way to go when it comes to gender equality, and until everything is just right, feminism will be there leading the way.

Held at the Starting Gate

I am working on putting together a post about why I think feminism is important, but as you may expect, it's not so easy to articulate! So, instead of continuing my series of posts on my journey through the movement today, I'd like to share some information on my sweater.

I ended up going with Knit Picks' "Wool of the Andes," just like I thought I would, and eventually chose the color "Victorian." Here's the picture from their website, since it pretty accurately depicts the color:

That gorgeous, dusky rose goes with much more than you'd immediately think, while being more interesting to stare at for hours on end than grey.

I've taken my measurements, picked my pattern, received my yarn, and I'm so ready to start working on this sweater. There's just one problem; I'm not getting gauge.

I've swatched and swatched, but I just can't match stitches per inch with the designer of the Enrobed Wrap, Amy Herzog. I'm consistently one off in either direction, which doesn't seem like much, but alters the way the sweater will fit a great deal. So now I'm left with four major options:

1. Go with the pattern I've picked and my current gauge and hope that it doesn't make too much of a difference in the finished sweater.
2. Alter the pattern to match my current gauge, involving a fair bit of both math and intuition.
3. Find a different sweater pattern that has a gauge that matches mine with this yarn.
4. Buy a different yarn for the current sweater pattern.

I'm thinking number 2 is my best bet, with number 1 as a close second. I just wish everything had worked the first time!

My Introduction to Feminism

Before I get into what feminism means to me and how I apply it to my daily life, I'd like to talk about how I discovered feminism. Ironically enough, it was because of a man. This man, to be exact:


Dr. John Alberti taught an Honors class titled "Feminist Punk Rock and Women's Protest Music" that I was lucky enough to take my sophomore year of college. It remains my favorite class I took at NKU and honestly changed my life.

Before Punk Rock, I'd only heard of feminism in the vaguest terms. I'm ashamed to say that I thought feminism was only something used for women's suffrage, and then it disappeared. Fortunately, I learned that feminism gained steam during women's suffrage, but boy, it wasn't done by a long shot after we got the vote.

Our class focused on the Riot Grrrl movement of the early 90s. Riot Grrrl, in a nutshell, was a bunch of girls and women deciding they were tired of the music scene being dominated by boys and men and storming the stages for themselves. This musical movement was in conjunction with a literary movement that saw a flood of "zines" being created by girls all over the country in an effort to connect with other girls and start raising awareness about issues such as body image, sexual abuse, depression, and much more.

Riot Grrrl inspired me so much that I decided to write a novella for my Honors Capstone about the subject. During my research, I discovered The Riot Grrrl Collection.


This book is a collection of zines from the period and proved itself invaluable time and again throughout my writing. It allows the reader to see for themselves what made the movement so special by reading the texts, rather than hearing analyses of the texts. Plus, it's just a gorgeous book to own with its glossy, full-color pages.

For class we read Girls to the Front, another book I highly recommend.


It tells the story of the bands, how the movement got its start and gathered steam, and even its eventual fizzling out. It's a great read, and a good primer for budding young feminists.

Besides the literature I was exposed to in class -- which will probably have its own post, because there has been a lot -- I heard a ton of great music. Bands like Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Letters to Cleo, and The Donnas have played their way into my heart since the first moments I heard them. To this day I find myself turning to their music whenever I need a hit of grrrl power, and experiencing them has changed the way I listen to music. If you want to listen to some of it, I've created a playlist on Spotify that I welcome you to check out (just search my name, you'll know which playlist it is).

I hope you'll check out some of the resources I've shared and discover a side of feminism that I never knew existed and will forever have a place of honor in my heart because it introduced me to the movement as a whole.

Panera, Joe, and Feminism

Everyone who works at Panera has a plethora of duties to take care of during each shift. There's a lot that needs to get done and things only run smoothly when everyone pitches in and goes a little bit above and beyond. Because I'm me and I apparently enjoy giving myself a lot of work, I've taken on one more responsibility in addition to all the others.

I'm going to teach one of my coworkers all about feminism.

The other day one of my coworkers, we'll call him Joe, and I were chatting as I ordered food from his register at break. I gave him the number for my MyPanera card and he selected my name when it came on the screen. He looked at it for a second, then asked me what my name was before I got married.

"Shuler. I kept my name when I got married," I answered. He looked confused.

"You can do that?"

I educated him on the practice of keeping one's name and told him why I chose to do so. His interest peaked when I mentioned feminism. He told me he didn't know what that was.

He genuinely  had no idea what feminism was.

Joe is a young guy in the middle of his college career that generally knows what's going on, but he'd never heard of feminism before. I'm disappointed by what this says about our school systems and general public awareness, but selfishly happy that I'm the one who gets to share such a powerful movement with a newbie. We had a good long chat about what feminism means to me and how I got started, and I think our next talk is going to cover why we still need feminism today. 

My conversations with Joe have inspired me to share my thoughts on feminism with you, because you may not know why I feel so strongly about the movement. So soon comes a less off-the-cuff version of what I told Joe feminism means to me.