This is it.

Let me preface this by acknowledging that I am not an authority on the subject of feminism – but I am feminist, and these are my views on some of the big misconceptions that stand in the way of people’s understanding of feminism.

Image from blogs.siuc.edu

Is the F word a dirty word? When I asked my now boyfriend on our first date if he was a feminist, he said no, he was an ‘equalist’. But shouldn’t that be the same thing? Isn’t feminism, at its heart, about equality? I am still surprised when people, especially women, tell me that they don’t identify as feminists. So I’ve written down some thoughts on why that might be… Feel free to add your own in the comments, or feel free to disagree!

1) Men and women are equal now – we don’t need feminists anymore

Despite the fact that we have come along way since the fight for women’s suffrage, there is still a lot to do in order to realise full equality between men and women. For one thing, the pay gap in the UK has been around 25% since 2000 – that’s 12 years with no improvement. And at the moment, women make up just over 15% of board members.

Looking at the disturbing idiocy of sites like unilad.com (this link goes to our posts related to unilad, not to the site itself), shows there is a lot to be done to get rid of misogyny and sexism. It is incredibly ignorant to assume that just because we have the vote and can drive in the western world, women and men are treated as equals. We still need feminism.

If you have a spare 15 minutes, DO check out this amazing video of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivering the mother of all smackdowns to the leader of the opposition concerning his misogynistic and sexist hypocrisy.

2) Feminists hate men

This might be one of the biggest (and most disturbing?) misconceptions about feminists. Feminism at its most basic is about equality - not supremacy. Hating men would have absolutely no positive impact, as the only way we can achieve equality is through men and women working together. We need men to be on board with us if we are ever going to change things – so hating them will achieve absolutely nothing.

Besides, I like men. They can be really fun and sometimes they make you eggy crumpets when you’re hungover. And my dad makes the best pavlova in the world.

3) Feminists are militant fun sponges  

“Feminists do not know how to have fun. Every conversation is an angry rant from an uptight woman who’s probably just in need of a good shag.” Yes – that is actually an argument someone used in front of me during a discussion about feminism. I almost had to laugh. In the same conversation he used the word ‘feminazi’ and ‘man hating’. Au contraire, mon frere. Most of my female friends are feminists and they are some of the funniest, coolest, kinkiest people you will ever meet. And boy, do they get laid. I’m absolutely, passionately, and resolutely feminist in my views, but I don’t bring it up in every single conversation and I don’t shout down people who don’t agree with me.

Yes, some feminists are militant, but that’s a good thing. We need some of us to be the passionate ones, that march and scream and shout about it. But it’s also ok if you’re not that way inclined. No one wants to spend seven days a week angry. I like talking about feminism because I like to understand why people don’t identify as such (for me it is the default position – I am usually amazed that people don’t realise that it’s essentially about equal rights for women AND men). But I have never once yelled at someone for not agreeing with me.

4) You cannot be a feminist and a housewife

This is another popular myth – even among people who identify as feminists. Feminism is about equality, and part of equality is having the right to choose what you want to do. I believe as a modern woman that you have just as much right to choose to be a stay at home mum as you do to be a rocket scientist. Being a housewife used to be the default – it used to be the very symbol of female oppression. Well, I don’t think it is anymore. You should be able to choose what you do. See the movie Mona Lisa Smile for more on this.

It annoys me when people suggest that baking cupcakes or wearing aprons or going to sewing classes is a step backwards for women. It’s not. It’s not symptomatic of a mass regression into the days where women were expected to be at home all day – if anything I think reclaiming such hobbies is a positive thing. If no one is standing over you demanding that you darn socks and put dinner on the table by six, I say sew on. The current fashion for twee is harmless – it is not the first sign of the apocalypse, and it is not damaging to the feminist cause. You can absolutely enjoy knitting and baking while simultaneously campaigning for equality. To suggest cupcakes and feminism are mutually exclusive is to make women one dimensional. Equality should encompass the freedom to choose your hobbies.

5) Feminists are all hairy-legged bra-burners

Bra-burning has to be one of the most ridiculous myths. Bras are designed for support, not restriction. If you’re small-breasted, let your boobs fly free – but if you have rather larger breasts, bras are fairly essential for comfort. Besides, a quality bra is expensive – so bra-burning really isn’t a sustainable activity in this economy.

And the phrase ‘hairy-legged feminists’ is one that just seems to roll off the tongue, like ‘chocolate chip cookie’. Shaving and waxing are 100% personal choices that generally do not have a much of a bearing on your views on equality. Some women don’t shave in order to make a point about beauty standards, others just prefer to be au naturale – but the thing to remember is that women that do shave/wax and women who wear make up etc are just as likely to be feminists than those who don’t. Shaving your legs, waxing your bikini line, and having a minor addiction to Lancome does not make you a bad feminist – it’s a personal choice. The bullshit argument that says women wear make up and shave to please men is nonsense. I do not get up in the morning and think, ‘I reckon the patriarchy will be pleased by my freshly waxed eyebrows today’. (Though if you are thinking that at 7am then you might want to have a word with yourself.) It’s none of your damn business if someone, feminist or not, decides to let nature keep them cosy or not. It’s about the freedom to do what you want and not prevent others from doing their own thing.

So, what are your top myths about feminism?

Protestors against street harassment in Washington DC. Image from sarah-graham.co.uk

I don’t remember the first time I properly started to think about (street) harassment and how it affects me. It might have been this excellent post by @pleasedonteatjo, or this totally fabulous example of solidarity from @laurenbravo. Either way, until recently, I’d always just ignored it. Accepted it. Let it slide. But since we’ve been talking about it more, I’ve started to get annoyed. I’ve started to get really bloody angry. Because it’s not okay to treat a woman like she’s nothing more than the sum of her orifices. And nine times out of ten, that’s what street harassment is. It’s not a friendly man complimenting you on your fine choice of lipstick – it’s a bloke saying something creepy under his breath just as you walk past him; it’s a group of lads yelling ‘suck my cock’ from a passing car; it’s the nutter in a corner shop, telling you to bend over.

It’s not okay, and it’s scary as shit. I’ve finally gotten the confidence to actually start shouting back (though only in crowded places and/or broad daylight – it would be stupid to put yourself in actual danger by provoking the wrong person). Having witnessed @alice_emily in a spectacular moment where she told off two harassers on Charing Cross Road, I’m now in full support of reacting angrily.

But what about the times when you can’t really shout back? I was at a bit of a mental house party a couple of weeks ago. I only knew a handful of people, and I was having a good time catching up and snaffling a lovely G&T. As the night went on, the party got busier and the pupils of the people around me got wider. I was standing by the bathroom at one point, when an absolute scrotum of a man walked past me and full on brushed my left breast with his hand. Not an actual lengthy grope, but a distinctive, single stroke down the length of it. I jerked, stunned and did a sort of ‘what the fuck’ gesture with my arms, but he was already gone. I stood there for a second, wondering if anyone else had seen. They hadn’t. I felt indignant but sort of helpless. There was no chance for me to chase after him and berate him – after all, it could have been an accident (it wasn’t).

Later, that same man pushed past me again and this time, did the exact same stroke-as-he-walked-past right up my bum cheek. Again, I felt immediately very uncomfortable and I think I actually said ‘what the fuck’, but he was already off and away. I mentioned it to my boyfriend, who wanted to know who it was. I didn’t tell him, because picking an argument with someone who’s high off their ass on coke and already bug-eyed is never going to end well. I told myself if he did it again, I would crush him (drunk me may be a bit of a drama queen). Thankfully, we left shortly after. I continued to seethe.

I’ve talked about harassment a lot with my boyfriend, who is always horrified. He never sees it. We joke that he’s my talisman, because it does (obviously?) happen less when he’s with me. But the following day, we were walking down the escalator at a tube station, me with my maxi dress hitched up so I don’t get sucked in and vaporised, and it happens. Just as I walk past an older man in a suit, he says ‘lovely legs, sexy lady’ with a weird, hungry smile. I am instantly annoyed, throwing a ‘fuck off’ over my shoulder. As I get off, I turn to the boyfriend. “There! Did you see that?!” He didn’t. Because it was sneaky. It wasn’t a man in a hard hat yelling ‘tits’ while hanging off some scaffolding – it was a fairly ordinary looking businessman saying something quietly when I am less than a foot away from him. It’s not street harassment – it’s sneak harassment.

Last week, on the District line, I put my hand up to hold the rail above me. It wasn’t particularly crowded and there was lots of room. The man nearest me put his hand on the rail too, touching mine. I instinctively moved mine a few inches along. He moved his along so our hands touched again. I moved along again. He followed. Then put his foot against mine. Everytime I moved, he would follow. I became so uncomfortable, that I switched carriages. Should I have said something? What am I meant to accuse him of? Excuse me, strange man, but please stop harassing my phalanges with your sweaty palms? Please don’t put your hushpuppies near my pumps? Please don’t breathe on me when there is clearly several feet of empty space around both of us?

I have no problem at all with chatting to strangers, or a stranger complimenting someone on the way they look. I know a couple that met on a tube, another that met in a lift. It’s perfectly okay to speak to strike up a friendly chat with a perfect random. But it’s not cool when you’re subtly putting that person in an uncomfortable position. Deliberately pressing your crotch into someone on a crowded tube is not only unacceptable, it’s icky. Kind of like when your cat presents you with a dead mouse. But it’s hard to find the balance between telling someone you’re uncomfortable, and making things really bloody awkward. As Brits, awkwardness is just something we don’t do. I hate it. And when I can call out harassment, I do. But when it’s sneaky, you know the person’s getting off on the fact that you can’t say anything. They’re getting away with it in broad daylight, because you risk embarrassing everyone on the train if you actually say something, or wrongly accuse someone. It’s a social-political nightmare.

So what do you do? My boyfriend suggests staring them down, but honestly, if someone’s creeped me out, the last thing I want to do is look them in the eye for any length of time. I’ve thrown a few casual glares around, but is it enough? How can we fix a problem when it’s barely on the radar? Or do we just have to get on with it? I don’t want to have to accept that sneak harassment is something that just happens. I want a solution! So, any ideas?!

Yesterday, Jezebel posted a brilliant piece, titled, ‘Is pubic hair coming back into fashion?’ (NSFW). If you haven’t, go read it now. To summarise, this year has seen a handful of models pose with actual pubic hair. Which is apparently totally shocking, in an age where we watch programmes with (fictional) prime ministers, er, assaulting pigs.

The post naturally sparked some bush chatter on Twitter, with some expressing disgust and others welcoming the idea. There is, and has always been, something of a divide on the subject. But what irritates me is that we shouldn’t be shocked to see a neatly groomed lady garden. We shouldn’t be pointing and staring at something so natural. We should be totally unaffected. After all, a full bush is nature’s way of keeping your goodies warm.

But alas, mainstream culture and pornography have put the naked vagina on a pedestal and here we are: surprised at the sight of something ‘Other’, which 99% of adults naturally possess. Almost all modern pornography (I, er, imagine) depicts women (and in many cases men) with no public hair whatsoever, and the knock on effect (described wonderfully by Caitlin Moran in How to be a Woman) is that women are forced to buy back their sexuality with expensive and painful waxes. But how much of that is our fault?

This song makes a fantastic point and it’s totally brilliant. Watch.

It’s not a secret that women are particularly susceptible to body issues and insecurities. Both sexes are inundated with society’s picture perfect idea of beauty – the women are all ultra slim with disproportionately large breasts and the men all look like Ryan Reynolds. But is the pressure to wax away your love rug coming from men, or from society at large? Just who are we waxing for, and why?

When I tweeted about the magical muff yesterday, I was surprised to receive three DM’s from male friends, extolling the virtues of the vagina naturale. Had I been wrong all these years? Did men really not give a shit?

“If someone *likes* being completely bare, that’s fine (and despite the fact it doesn’t do it for me, no guy who’s not a dickhead will actually complain to you),” says one of my male Twitter amigos. “But the idea that it’s every man’s fantasy is just so, so wrong. From my perspective, a guy in his early 20s, I don’t care what you’ve done with your pubic hair. I don’t anything with mine, so why should I expect you to? If you want to then go ahead, but I’m not going to insist you do anything. That’s not out of some sense of chivalry; I just don’t care. I’ve never slept with anyone who’s been clean-shaven, and I don’t want to. It just looks pre-pubescent and creepy.”

As I mentally tallied up the precious pounds and hours I’d spent in waxing salons, I started to wonder if we’d been duped all along into thinking our vaginas are only attractive when they look like this. Why do we feel the pressure to be hairless if the people who actually see our ladyparts don’t give a shit?! [insert conspiracy theory about waxing salons and marketing campaigns]

Of course, the most important thing here is that it is a woman’s right to choose how she styles herself. Waxing is absolutely a personal choice. What I find irritating is that we’ve been sold the idea (thank you Carrie sodding Bradshaw et al) that our vaginas should be waxed. And now we’re getting our knickers in a twist over pictures of pubic hair in magazines. And yet clearly, not every man has been pre-programmed to expect vaginas to be hair-free, shiny and made of diamonds.

If the bush is back, I’m all for it. I really hope the fashion and porn industries can embrace a little lady fluff. Style your lady gardens however you want to – but remember – nine times out of ten it’s only you that cares.

The woman for women who take no shit.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you will already be familiar with Caitlin Moran (pronounced Cat-lin, in case you’re wondering). Star columnist of The Times, strident feminist, and undisputed queen of the Twitterverse, Moran has cemented herself in the nation’s psyche as the alternative poster girl for the modern woman. Indeed her recent book, How to Be a Woman, is still lurking at the top of the bestseller lists, having conquered the charts immediately at the book’s release in June. Part biography, part feminist manifesto, How to Be a Woman offers its readers a long and unflinching look into the something we rarely get a chance to talk about: the truth about being a woman.

I am so tired of movies promising to show us ‘the truth about women and friendship’ (ahem, Bridesmaids) or worse, the ridiculously overdone exploration of ‘what women want’ (answer: every woman is different and most of us don’t have a bloody clue).  90% of the women we see on our televisions are airbrushed versions of the same thing: skinny, attractive, often neurotic women. Even the movies which claim to explore the real nitty gritty of womanhood are nonsense, with Hollywood failing to find the balance between the saccharine (anything with Katherine Heigl in it) to the downright disturbing (Basic Instinct, anyone?). So it makes a nice change when someone comes along and actually tells it like it is.

What a relief to see a woman discussing *gasp* masturbation with the same frankness as discussing dishwasher tablets. How refreshing to hear someone talk about periods without the sole intention of selling tampons or complaining about cramps. Moran even goes as far as proclaiming that the bush is back, adding her belief that a woman’s pubic hair should resemble: “A lovely furry moof that looks – when she sits, naked – as if she has a marmoset sitting in her lap.” (If that doesn’t have you laughing like a loon, nothing will.) But it’s not just her frankness that makes Moran a modern woman’s hero, it’s that she really believes everything she’s saying.

Feminism has gone in and out of fashion for years, which is obviously ridiculous and clearly shows that there has been a fundamental lack of understanding somewhere along the line.  As Moran implores her readers, “What part of liberation for women is not for you?” With so few women identifying themselves as feminists, and so many children idolising the likes of Katie Price, it seems the future generations of women are doing themselves out of the equal rights that were fought for them. Women suffer so much pressure to look and be a certain way, that we forget our freedom. We forget that it is our choice whether or not to have children, that it is up to us to choose our ethics, that we have the free will to say, no, actually I won’t be going for a Brazilian thank you very much. And though most of us know these things deep down, thank God we have someone as loud as Caitlin Moran there to remind us. It is so easy to assume that the pressure cooker of our lives is the way it has to be, but it’s not. You can choose whatever you want, whether it’s the size of your pants or whether or not to have an abortion.

Growing up poor as the eldest of eight children, Moran, grew up with unflinching exposure to the grittier sides of life. Does that make her more qualified to tell us how to live our lives? No, but it does give her a damn sight more perspective that most of us. From a tiny flat in Wolverhampton to a cosy North London house with her young family, Moran has seen an awful lot of the spectrum in her time.

So three cheers for Caitlin Moran! Long may her honesty, frankness and strident feminism continue to permeate our lives. And thank goodness we finally have a woman who is prepared to stand up and tell whole truth, big pants, spotty bums and all.