“Hi, Anna, how has your relationship with feminism (if you identify with it) evolved over your formative years to today? Especially in regards to relationships? Also do you ever post about relationships in terms of women navigating their relationships with other women or being bi – OR would you ever partner with someone who identifies as such to provide insight and wisdom in those areas? Thank you! Great videos! Just watched the one on advice for dating in your 20s (from the account [removed for privacy] ) and I wish I had been given that info, growing up! Cheers”
My Dearest Bad Biddie,
My sophomore year of college, I thought feminism meant I needed to go hook up with as many guys as possible with as little feeling as possible. I thought that by using the men around me, in the way that I felt used by them, that I was somehow leveling the playing field. I thought it was equality, I thought it was fair, and I thought it would make me feel better. One morning, as I walked home after making an Irish exit from a guy’s apartment while he was still asleep, I realized I felt many things and nothing all at once, but that none of the things I felt made me feel better.
The “nothing” I felt was a kind of numbness I would, in my very uneducated opinion, guess to be a sort of survival tactic that your body uses to protect itself from an otherwise damaging situation. The truth was, sneaking out while he was still sleeping was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted a guy who I could spend the morning with, get breakfast with, and feel like maybe he would listen to me without the promise of my body afterwards. I’ll never know if he would have done all of those things with me, because I didn’t give him a chance. I left, because it was easier to stomach than the possibility of being kicked out when he woke up.
Nowadays, feminism, to me, means doing and saying whatever it is you actually want to do and say as a woman, and part of that is learning what it is you actually want to do and what it is you actually believe in. It means that if your ultimate goal in life is to be a stay-at-home-mom, you walk away from the guy who is perfect for you in every way except for the fact that you know he wants to be with a more career-oriented woman. Feminism means having the courage to know what you want, ask for it, and then walk away from someone who can’t give it to you.
As for bi relationships – I don’t comment on those because I’ve never been bi and I’ve never been with a female. Similar to how I don’t speak from a male perspective, I don’t speak on relationships from anything other than a cis hetero woman’s perspective, because I’d really just be talking out of my ass. I’m sure there are plenty of other resources at your fingertips who could offer you a much more educated opinion on what it’s like being in a relationship with another woman. But, I will say this: regardless of who you love, knowing what you want and how to walk away from someone who can’t give you what you want is really, at the end of the day, all that matters. And until you find that person, keep going.
Love,
Your internet hype woman
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