Why I'm a feminist

So I call myself a feminist, and seeing as that word can have some negative connotations, I'd like to explain why I call myself a feminist. 

Before I get to the list of things that are true about the world's sexism that I wish weren't true, let's define the word "feminist". 

A feminist is a person who believes in the social, economic, and political equality of the sexes. That is literally it. It doesn't mean I hate men, it doesn't mean I think women should be above men, I just believe that women should be treated like people and paid the same amount for the same amount of work, which leads nicely to my list of reasons I'm a feminist. 

1) In the US, women are paid on average only 77 cents for every dollar that a man would make doing the same job. Yes, that means that if Jane and Joe were coworkers at the same company with the same job, and Joe got $10000 per year, Jane, working the same hours, would make $7700. And some countries are even worse.

2) There are still places where it's legal to force a little girl to marry a man three or four times her age, and there are still places where girls are denied education.

3) One in every four women is raped in her lifetime. That scares the crap out of me. But what's even scarier, people still ask what she was wearing or say she should take it as a compliment. 

4) I live in one of the most polite small towns ever, where it's not unusual to open the door and find nobody there but a plate of warm cookies. I'm not exagerating at all. I've been the reciever and the giver of many a plate of goodies in my time. And yet, I was fourteen the first time I remember walking down the street and being honked at by a car full of men I didn't know. And it's happened many times since. 

5) If somebody says that you "throw/catch/run etc. like a girl", it's an insult. Why is my lack of a Y chromosome an insult? And why do guys get made fun of so much for doing things that are percieved to be "girly", such as dressing nicely, acting, singing, dancing, cheer leading, etc? 

6) Media portrayal of women. I've ranted enough about it on this blog that you get my point already. 

7) The fact that all of these things even exist, and many of them have stayed close to the same or gotten worse in the past 25 years. 

And that's just a small selection of things. 

-Emma