I'm not giving up the title of "feminist"

Mostly because I'm stubborn

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

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Hi! I’m Amber, a mom of three girls, a writer, and a teacher. I write here at One Tired Mother and at other places on the Internet, too. If you’d like to learn more about me — I know I always like to know a bit about someone whose words I’m reading — you can check out this brief post. Finally, I thank you for your time and attention; I don’t take it for granted.

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It was International Women’s Day last week, and March is Women’s History Month. Though I care very little for days and months like this (they usually feel politically motivated and not that meaningful), I still like to use them as a guide for creation sometimes. An extra opportunity to express, to dissent, to speak words about a topic.

Today I want to share that despite my disillusion with (mainstream American) feminism, I’m not ready to give up the word “feminist.”

I’ve been tempted to, sure. It’s a natural tendency, I think, when you find something gross and harmful to swing to the other extreme and say actually THIS is what’s good. Nuance is harder.¹ I do respect those who are thoughtfully abandoning the label because they feel it bears too much negative connotation and prevents progress in that way. But for me, it doesn’t feel right.

I think mostly this comes from my stubborn nature. I’ve always felt that feminism is a movement for women—that the word embodies a spirit that honors the lived experiences of women and fights for those experiences to be seen, heard, and valued. I also increasingly think women are amazing: special in some sort of way that society hasn’t quite figured out a way to truly respect.

“Feminism” comes from the Latin “femina” meaning “woman.” The fact that the mainstream version encourages women to be like men in order to be strong and empowered is unfortunate, but I’d much rather speak against that than cede the word to that narrative. They’re not gonna win, dammit!

In all seriousness, here are just a few experiences I’ve had recently that have affirmed my intuition to stick with feminism as a word and a concept.

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I recently read Abigail Favale’s memoir Into the Deep. Aside from it being a beautiful and moving book, I was struck by how her experiences mirror mine (or mine mirror hers) so closely—especially with regard to feminism. She says that the same desire that led her to feminism ultimately led her away from it, and that is my experience as well. She writes:

“What led me to feminism in the first place was an intense need to have my dignity as a woman affirmed. I had an intuition that being a woman was meaningful, that it carried some kind of significance. I seized onto feminism as an affirmation of that intuition, and for a time it gave me the language I needed to begin to express and understand what I felt to be true."

Part of my getting on the feminist bandwagon in college was definitely social—all the cool, smart women embraced a feminist mindset and feminist beliefs, it seemed to me. (This wasn’t something I could name at the time of course, but I can see it looking back.) Part of it though was deeper—a desire to know myself authentically, and a sense that “myself” obviously included my womanhood.

Later, however, disillusionment set in. Abigail writes:

“Quickly though, as I foraged more deeply into the categories and concepts of feminism, I also fell prey to its internal contradictions. The central of these is that modern American feminism, at its core, valorizes the masculine, affirming the key virtues of autonomy, success, and power.”

This is a realization that, several years ago now, hit me all of a sudden. Sure, I imagine it was also a result of my embodied experience as a mother and my reading of people like Kate Northrup². But truly, I remember this thought just dropping in one day (I don’t remember the moment, but I was likely at home with one or two toddlers): Feminism encourages women to be more like men! (What a strange irony for a movement that claims to champion women!)

Abigail doesn’t mince words:

“I turned to feminism to discover the significance of my womanness, and I was initiated into an ideology where womanness itself is ultimately renounced.”

I don’t know about you, but I feel that.

Photo by Riss Design on Unsplash

I just got back from a weekend of training to become an instructor for an amazing workshop called The Cycle Show. Before the end of 2024 my new part-time job will be circling with pre-pubescent girls and helping them understand that their bodies are so incredible and rich that they are able to prepare a “luxury hotel” (this is the name for the uterus in the story of the workshop) for a potential very important guest about 400 times in their lives.

(Re-framing the period like WOAH. No shame, only wonder and awe. So amazing.)

The central narratives of this workshop are actually empowering: Your body is amazing. Your body is good. Your fertility is a superpower, not a burden.

Isn’t this something that’s so needed? And not just around our periods and our fertility, but around our hormone function as women. As many of us have had to learn the hard way, we are not built for a 24/7/365 culture.³ A friend said this after I told her about what I got up to this past weekend: “I think there’s a collective hunger among women for this type of healing and reclamation. So many of us are trying to recover from trauma, shame, silencing, and numbing around our womanhood, our menarche, our fertility, our flows, our cycles, our shifts, our highs and lows. And wanting to give the next generation so much better.”

AMEN.

(And I’ll definitely be sharing more about The Cycle Show! I have an upcoming conversation with

Sara Dietz

all about it.)

Photo by Ignacio Campo on Unsplash

By continuing to read and write about this topic, I’m learning more deeply and expansively about feminism—what it looks like in other parts of the world, what it looked like in the first wave (and earlier), and the conversations thoughtful, modern women are having about it. This education is affirming my desire to hang onto the word.

I’ve been devouring the work of British thinker

Louise Perry

, who in my opinion is leading the cultural conversation on this topic via her podcast Maiden Mother Matriarch. My friend

Emily Hancock

—a fellow writer who I met (online) last year and whose friendship is giving me so much life—is reading Louise’s book over on her Substack book club. As I sat in Panera sipping coffee a few days ago, sneaking in some alone time before heading to day 2 of my Cycle Show training, I read the (deep, beautiful) first post,⁴ where she references Mary Wollstonecraft, often thought of as the mother of feminism and who I’ve been reading all about via

Erika Bachiochi

’s amazing book The Rights of Women.

It’s crazy how things like this align for me these days.

As I remain open and curious and as I follow my intuition to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, it’s coming together for me, in all these disparate-yet-not ways. I’m finding women who share my thoughts and whose work affirms my sense of things. It’s deeply meaningful to me and makes me so hopeful.

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

Finally, the other day I talked with a local mom. She’s pregnant with her third baby and her others are small, too. She told me that her husband has a work trip scheduled for two weeks after her guess (due) date, and that she’s anxious and stressed about it.

THIS IS WHERE MY BRAND OF FEMINISM STEPS IN.

I told her that she’s deserving of support during that time. I told her I’d happily set up a meal train for her and take her older kids for a few hours as she’d like. I explained what a postpartum doula is and how she could go about hiring one. When her voice and her body language became small and she said she doesn’t “want to inconvenience anybody,” I told her—again—that she’s worthy of support and help and rest.

Despite my annoyance and anger at mainstream American feminism, I’m not done with the label of “feminist.” I think we still need feminism. We still need a movement that lifts women up and honors their unique life experiences. But I do know this with absolute certainty:

The feminism that drove my identity, beliefs, and actions for years—the one that didn’t teach me anything about the power of my body or the gifts of the feminine—no longer serves me.

I’m not interested in being “anti”-feminism. (Goodness knows there are some ideas in that direction that are as cringe as cringe gets.) I’m interested in reclaiming/reshaping the feminist narratives, in order to serve the people it’s always been for: women.

I have three daughters. You’ll find me working under an umbrella of feminism that supports their health, happiness, and well-being. As I watch them grow (my oldest will turn 8 this summer!), I feel more fired up than ever to support women

to know and respect their incredible bodies

to birth their babies in power and dignity

to feed those babies as nature designed

to rest and integrate in the postpartum time

to know that care work is valuable work

to embrace fertility awareness for agency over their reproductive capacity

and yes—of course—to do whatever they feel called to do out in the world as well.

This, to me, is real feminism. Here for that.

What are your experiences with feminism? Are you feeling or desiring a shift? Comment and tell us, or if you’d rather reply to me privately, hit “reply” to this email. (Or send a DM on the app—DMs are live if you haven’t heard!)

1. I recently wrote about this as applied to parenting. You can read that here. Note that I did not write that headline :)

2. Specifically, her amazing book Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Ambitious Women.

3. Men’s hormone cycle is 24 hours, while women’s is around 28 days. Did you know that? ‘Cause I didn’t until about five years ago. We are not the same, ya’ll!

4. You can read it here. Prepare for possible tears.