Hey, y’all! As many of you know, I am writing a book based on the first two seasons of Feminist Hotdog. I thought I’d get brave and start sharing some of my writing on the blog. I’d love your feedback!

Excerpt from Chapter 3: What Does it Mean to Lead a Feminist Life?

I recently had dinner with a good friend and her new boyfriend (who I like very much—whew! So awkward when they’re duds). He and I were getting to know each other, and we started talking about the podcast. By way of introduction, I gave him my usual elevator spiel (finding joy through feminism, yadda yadda), but I could tell he wasn’t 100 percent mapping on.

“So, what is it about?” he asked. “Explain it to a guy like me. I get feminism [here he pumped his fist in the air], but what do you talk about?”

I described some of the guests I had interviewed and told him how we talked about their work and the things they valued and appreciated and about living a feminist life.

And then he asked, “What does it mean to live a feminist life?”

The sincerity with which he posed that question really took me aback. Sitting in that restaurant, I had a small out-of-body experience while his words ricocheted around my brain like a pinball. I was thirty episodes into a podcast about feminism and had looked at this question indirectly from a million different angles but never actually asked it—or tried to answer it.

The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became—by the question itself and by the million possible answers. There are so many ways to live a feminist life. And feminism is so personal and contextual. Women and gender-nonconforming people have been engaging in all kinds of subversive, norm-busting badassery forever, but they didn’t always call themselves feminists. That concept wouldn’t even have made sense to them depending on when and where they lived. Were they leading feminist lives?

For those of us reading, listening, and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on in the third decade of the 21st Century (you read that correctly) feminism carries all kinds of meaning—and baggage. Remember my (somewhat dubious) camp analogy from earlier in the book? I explained it that way to try and cut through the noise that often distorts dialogue about feminism and get clear on why I think the concept is valuable and necessary. But I also want to be clear that the “camp” I belong to doesn’t have firm property borders and a bunch of rules and a pink uniform and a special song you have to sing every morning.

We’re not always going to agree on who is a feminist or what feminists think or say or how they should act because there is no one feminist perspective on any issue. This bothers some people BUT IT’S REALLY OK. It would be weird if there was only one way to do feminism. In fact, it would completely undermine the whole concept.

But it’s not the total Wild West. Feminism, as I see it, does makes some basic assumptions:

1) People of all genders are equally valuable, should have equal access to rights and opportunities, and be free to live their lives unbothered. (It sounds so simple. *Sigh*)

2) Right now, real life isn’t working this way. See (non-exhaustive list in no particular order): domestic violence statistics; street harassment; relentless attempts to block access to birth control; women being arrested for having miscarriages; low numbers of women and GNC people holding leadership positions in just about every industry; the pink tax; rape kit backlogs; Gamergate; Harvey Weinstein; the U.S. Women’s Soccer team’s paychecks (and the gender wage gap in general); oh, and electing as president a man who brags about sexually assaulting women.

3) It’s worse if you’re not a cisgender white woman. See (same disclaimer as above): murder rates of black trans women; unsolved murders and disappearances of Indigenous women; lack of media coverage for black women killed by police; black maternal mortality rates; sexual assaults perpetrated against migrant women; welfare queen myths; even less representation in leadership roles; oh, and those wage gaps get way worse. These issues compound further if you have a disability, are an immigrant, are poor, are fat, or—in some parts of the country—are not a Christian.

4) Real life is not working as it should because we live within systems and institutions (schools, courts, banks, sports teams, entertainment, industrial complexes, governments at all levels) that were designed by—and to maintain the power of—white, cisgender, able-bodied, heterosexual males. (Not me theorizing. Entire well-established academic disciplines devoted to this. If institutional misogyny and white supremacy are news to you or you don’t believe they exist, I’m probably not going to convince you here. There are a bunch of resources at the end of the book: Take yourself to school. Or, like, read the U.S. Constitution? It’s all in there.)

5) We have all been raised up in these intertwined systems. So not only do we have to topple the dudes who are explicitly trying to keep us down, we have to confront the misogyny and white supremacy that lives within us all. See: The number of white women who contributed to the outcome of the 2016 election; fatphobia so ingrained that we spend billions a year trying to get to or stay in single-digit sizes; colorism; the double (triple? quadruple?) standard about who is supposed to have and enjoy sex; and the millions of other ways we subtly and not-so-subtly cram ourselves and our girl-identified children into roles and behaviors that keep us small, quiet, safe, and obedient, particularly if they are black or brown (and often out of necessity or self-preservation).

6) The vast majority of people (even many people who would deny it) would be a lot happier if real life worked as outlined in Number 1; we should work together to make that happen. (More on this one later in the book.)

Beyond these assumptions, there are a few intellectual, philosophical, and interrogative guideposts about how to do Number 6. These are what differentiate intersectional feminism—feminism focused on emancipation for all—from mainstream feminism, which assumes that changes in policy and culture that benefit white women are sufficient for everybody (ignoring assumption Number 3). Such guideposts might read: Trans Women Are Women, A Threat to Justice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, or Who’s Profiting from This?

The guideposts are there to remind us not to wander off toward into the quicksand pit of ideas that make us comfortable because they don’t require resistance on our part (e.g., “Not all white women!”) and reinforce beliefs we know are questionable but would really rather not look at too closely (e.g., “I am pro-choice but people on welfare shouldn’t have so many kids”).

I feel confident saying that these ideas are antithetical to a feminist life.