Happy International Women's Day 2014

In celebration of International Women's Day today and for the rest of March I have decided to do a blog post that explores the relationship between the books that I read and my feminist beliefs. The first thing to do then is to explain what it is I mean when I say feminism. 

This is a lot more difficult than I first realised as I came to write this up because previously my definition has consisted of the simple notion of someone who believes that all genders are equal. It was only when I began to elaborate that I realised that this was not in fact that simple after all.  

I believe that feminism must be intersectional. That is to say that it must recognise, appreciate and even support other types of oppression. This led on from a conversation that I had with a friend last year where I discovered that she is in favour of women’s rights and LGBT rights, but refused to acknowledge middle-class privilege and the oppression of the working class. This was very unsettling for me because up until this point I had assumed that feminists were socialists. However, after a superficial look at the different forms of feminism I came to see that actually there were many different types of feminist who disagree with me on many different issues and actually ‘feminism’ seems to be an umbrella term for anything to do with the appreciation and respect of women. This is absolutely right! 

Despite this, however, I feel that it does not go far enough. Putting aside my belief that gender itself is a construct and completely and utterly arbitrary, my views on equality are also something that need to be further explored in order to truly understand how it is that I define ‘feminism’. The relevance of the following questions has never been so important: equal to what, equal how and equal to whom? This is where the intersectional aspect of feminism comes back into play because working-class women, black women and non-Western women (to name a few) do not have the same experiences of womanhood. Therefore, what I mean by ‘equal’ cannot simply mean the same rights and privileges as men because what kind of ‘man’ are we talking about? White men? British men? Gay men? All of these? None of these? Feminism for many may mean the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men, but for me it means the eradication of privilege.


What impact does this then have on my relationship with books?

• I take an interest in books about women and female protagonists. 

• I actively choose to read women authors, particularly LGBT women, women of colour and the Global South.

• I struggle to connect with male-centric narratives.

• I look for and enjoy books explicitly about feminism. 

• I can struggle with power relationships in romantic comedy and romance novels and especially contemporary New Adult novels. 

• How feminist-friendly a book is can fundamentally impact how much I enjoy it. 

• The feminist credentials of an author can bump a book up on my wish list. 

Many people might say that this means that I am in fact discriminating against male authors and male protagonists, but I reject this because I believe that the literary world (and the world) are already in favour of men and uses them as the default. As a result of this it is easy for people to in their reading habits to bypass books about and by women. Looking back on the majority of my compulsory reading throughout my education, even at university it is clear patriarchy still prevails. It is not my intention to never again read a book written by a man (men can be feminists too!), but to find a sense of equality in what it is that I do read.