Taylor is a senior at her university, majoring in Women's Studies and minoring in Law, Justice, and Social Change. She is currently applying to Public Policy Programs in order to prepare for a career working on school policies and policies on sexual assault. Taylor is the Vice President of her university's chapter of HeForShe, a global movement started by UN Women in 2014, which she brought to her campus in the Fall of 2016.
ABOUT TAYLOR
I think there was a moment, in the last five years, when claiming the word ‘feminist’ didn’t seem to adolescents to have much importance. We were getting very mixed signals about that word and the movement behind it, from our families, peers, and social media, that it was easier to subtly work on the margins of feminism, and just claim it was for equality. Obviously, every case is different, but that moment of clarity can be really powerful. By the end of the course, Taylor had decided to major in Women’s Studies, her future career is in activism, which is a monumental shift in a short period of time. For me, a class in my first semester of college solidified my decision to major in Women’s Studies as well. There’s something about seeing the efforts of actual people who call themselves feminists, that makes a person feel really proud to call themselves that as well.
Many of the changes that have been made, like voting rights for women, ability to own property, or access to higher education, are important but obvious to most people. The systematic oppression of women and other minorities is not so obvious to the people who don’t experience it, or who have fortunately experienced very little of it. As feminists try to work on more invisible injustices, we are labeled “too sensitive.” But it’s so clear to most of us that these small inequalities build up, and have been building up for a long time, creating an entire system that works against certain groups of people. And it’s so maddening when people don’t recognize that! So yeah, some of us are radical, some of us are ugly, some of us burn our bras. Let us. We are sensitive and angry because we have to fix an entire system that is devoted to silencing us.
My generation is the most educated generation. Most of us come to college, and we seek out and usually find people who think similarly to the way we do. That’s what I did, anyway. The things I learned from these people, the professors, and the classes really put my barely formed opinions into focus. Encountering new people that feel the same way I do about helping people and doing our part to change the world is so empowering, and a large number of young adults are experiencing that. And social media makes it very easy to keep up with and participate in activism, and it keeps like-minded people connected. There’s a lot of real coverage of real people doing real things, and that challenges the negative stereotypes of feminists and other activists that some people may hold. The connections made on both of these platforms are key elements of the newest generations experience of feminism.
"When I came to school as a freshman, my roommate and I lived next to two guys, and one of them said they were a feminist. And we thought that was weird. We believed in equality, but we didn't think we really needed feminism. Then I took Women’s Studies 220 and actually learned what feminism means and what it stands for, and I learned about all the inequalities women face in our nation and globally, and I was so mad! And I thought 'Oh, of course I’m a feminist! How could I not be?'"
"I didn’t necessarily think feminism was a negative thing, I just thought it was a radical movement, and I decided I could believe in equality without that label. But now I know the importance of claiming that word. I think a lot of people still think feminists hate men. They’re radical, they’re ugly, they burn their bras, they’re too sensitive, they’re angry, which, you know, we are angry. There’s a lot to be angry about."
"I think feminists themselves have come a long way in recognizing how identities play into our goals and the movement. The more we educate ourselves, the more nuanced the movement can be, and the more it can apply to different people. I feel like the rhetoric before was like “we need to solve this problem first, then we can talk about this other problem.” As if it’s one or the other. But people aren’t one or the other, they are themselves all of the time. I think trying to divide people along those lines is really unproductive because then you alienate people and you can’t get anywhere in your movement. You can get further including everyone's identities and thoughts."
"Education and social media have influenced the new generation of feminists, because both have made it a lot easier to interact with people who have similar views as you, and to see social media campaigns and coverage of activism. It empowers people from more conservative areas because they see that there are people out there who feel the same way they do, and they’re doing something about it."
Intersectionality came up in all of my interviews, of course. The word itself wasn’t used until recently. Feminists of all generations now recognize, if some of them haven’t all along, that not all women’s experience is the same. Sometimes it's impossible to separate one problem from another because they are often very closely intertwined. Feminism had to move from the promotion of equality between men and women to the promotion of equality and justice for all people. It seems like this really intimidatingly broad movement, and it is broad, but it’s also quite simple. Most of us have discovered that it’s harder to address large problems by one single facet when they are often very intricate and require the perspectives of so many different people if we ever want to solve them.