How to Live a Feminist Lifestyle

Living a feminist lifestyle means embracing who you are at heart and helping others embrace their true desires as well. To do this, you need to separate yourself from all oppression and bias and approach others as individuals. Despite stereotypes to the contrary, living a feminist lifestyle can bring deep joy and peace to your life--as well as to the lives of others.

Instructions

1. Act on your personal needs and desires. Though stereotypes present feminists as "masculine" women attempting to be identical to men, that's not at all the case. When you're a feminist, you place individual needs and desires over cultural demands. In effect, you're supporting every person's right--whether male or female--to make choices that are truest to themselves. A stay-at-home mom can be just as much a feminist as anyone. Likewise, a man can be just as much of a feminist as a woman.

2. Refuse to oppress others. Embracing a feminist lifestyle doesn't mean you should limit yourself to refusing to oppress women. Feminism embraces the idea that no individual deserves to be oppressed and that hierarchies supporting oppression must be dismantled. This extends beyond humans and into animal issues and the environment.

3. Point out oppression and bias wherever you see it, labeling it overtly as what it is. Even minor forms of bias and oppression are important to point out because they're part of the entire system. Call people on their own participation in oppression and on their own bias and alert others when you see oppression happen. Many people inadvertently support oppression just because they aren't informed.

4. Consider your language use. Because language is influenced by cultural power structures, most languages reveal a gender bias. If your own language choices reflect that bias, you're working at cross-purposes with your feminist lifestyle. Avoid using masculine gendered terms for gender neutral ideas and think carefully before you swear. Many common swear words attack women in a hidden way. For example, the term "bastard" really attacks a person's mother rather than attacking him.

5. Be politically active in whatever way makes sense to you. Keep your eye on women's issues and other issues related to feminism, such as child protection, human rights and animal rights or welfare. Even if you don't campaign or protest, alert those around you to the importance of the issues.

6. Read classic and contemporary feminist works to keep abreast of developments within feminism and to understand the theory behind the movement. Books like "Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings" and "Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present," both by Miriam Schneir, can give you a good overview of feminism from its beginnings to the mid-1990s. A book like "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture" by Ariel Levy can provide insight into the present.

7. Seek out other women with your interests and ideals. If you're a man, seek out other men who support feminist ideals. Support from others keeps you connected to your own beliefs and gives you ideas about how to better approach a feminist lifestyle.

8. Embrace others who believe that women are equal to men, regardless of their gender and regardless of whether they self-identify as feminists. A feminist lifestyle doesn't mean cutting men out of your life and neither does it mean only interacting with other feminists.

Tips & Warnings

• Present your feminist ideals in a positive manner rather than as an attack. This way, more people listen to what you have to say and are much more likely to be convinced by your words and actions.

• Because of media representations of feminism, many people have false impressions of what it means to be a feminist. Show them through your own lifestyle that feminism is a positive belief system that increases joy and tolerance.

• To avoid oppression of other species, consider becoming vegan as part of your feminist lifestyle. Female animals are oppressed far worse than male animals in factory farming because the females are used for breeding, eggs and milk before they're finally slaughtered.