No, it’s not fuck – it’s feminist.

Denne kronikken vart publisert i EUDY OFC! Magazine i 2016. // This op-ed was first published in EUDY OFC! Magazine in 2016.

I‘ve been aware of inequality all my life. I have felt it personally as a Deaf woman, and on behalf of others. I wanted to fight it but I often lacked the concepts and how-to’s.

During spring 2013, I attended NUS (Nordic Youth Seminar) in Malmö. This is a seminar for Deaf youth in the Nordic countries, arranged in turn by DNUR. In a lecture on gender and inequality, I had an eye-opener. In Nordic Sign Language, I was taught that the experiences we as women face are caused by a structural system of rules(both norms and written laws) and expectations.

These rules and expectations affect me solely on the ground that I was assigned the gender female at birth, and a great deal of them dictate how I am supposed to dress, look and behave – especially around men. Whether it is “don’t intimidate men”, “don’t have hairy armpits” and so on, these are norms that are restraining how I live my life compared to how my male friends live theirs.

For example; most women have heard that we should not wear revealing clothes, nor drink too much or stay out too late. As a result, we often spend a lot of time and effort planning how to avoid being raped. Rather than telling men not to rape, society teaches us that it is a woman’s responsibility to not get raped.

These are unwritten rules, so-called norms. But during NUS I also learned that the inequality I have always sensed, is actually strongly backed by research:

Women earn less than men. The gender gap is not a myth, and if you happen to be a woman of color, disabled, queer or trans, you are very likely to earn far less than an ablebodied white woman – if you’re lucky enough to even get a job.

Half of the world’s population will at some time in their life experience menstruation, yet it’s something utterly shameful, and women all over the world are missing education because they are not allowed at school during their periods. Even here in modern, like-to-call-ourselves-equal-Norway, I struggle to find sanitary products like tampons and pads outside grocery stores.

As if this was not serious enough, how about gendered violence? According to World Health Organization (WHO), the number one health risk women face is violence from men. Men’s violence kills more women worldwide than war and cancer – combined.

Before NUS I would have said “I’m fighting for equality, but I’m an egalitarian/humanitarian/insert similar”. But at NUS I lost the fear of the F-word. I learned that being a feminist is not a bad thing.

In our society, feminism is apparently such a bad word, as it implies that women struggle more with achieving equality than men do. Well, here’s a newsflash for you; we do! Although feminism is defined as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes”, it does not only deny the fact that men hold a privileged position in our society – feminism also seeks to change this.

But feminism is not a women’s-only movement. Feminism is for all genders (yes, there are more than two). Although men do hold a privileged position in our society, feminism acknowledges that men too face discrimination, and that this also is rooted in the patriarchy.

It’s feminism that gives us the tools to understand why the number one cause of death for Nordic men between the age 15-49 years is suicide. Men too struggle with mental illnesses like eating disorders and depression, but are taught to “suck it up” and are deprived of treatment as these are  conditions accociated with women. It is feminism that brings up this toxic masculinity and how it affects men today.

Claiming the word feminism is not working for men, because it derives from “feminine” is a perfect exaple of this toxic masculinity. (And, as all skilled readers of Harry Potter know: fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.)

Fast forward to March 2015: all of a sudden I’m co-founding Norway’s first feminist political party. Why? After two years of reading, discussing and exploring feminism on my own, turning to politics seemed just right for me.

It was much helped by the fact that a few months after NUS, Norway elected a, rightwing government that, by the first chance attempted to rid Norwegian women of our right to abortion and birth control. It was a clear attack on our right to control our own bodies. No need to further explain why a new feminist wave came crashing through the political sphere.

At the time, I was shy and didn’t put my name on the ballot. But I was active, participated in rallies and parties and brought an interpreter whenever and wherever. I wrote articles and became part of the political work group. By the time of the municipal elections, I was a boardmember of my party.

I was the only Deaf person in this party. Yet I never felt unwelcome, questioned or my deafness ever being an issue. Alongside equal pay, anti-racism and LGBTQ+ rights, my party made Universal Design and access to Sign Language a core belief. My experiences of audism were never questioned, and I found a political home.

But it might have ended differently. I don’t think this would have happened if I hadn’t travelled to Malmö back in 2013. If I hadn’t had access to a platform where I could get information in Sign Language, discuss it with my peers and form my own opinion. If not for Nordic Youth Seminar I might never have chosen to describe myself as a feminist, and thereby not find my path.

Although it might seem so, this is not a story about why you should be a feminist.

This is a story about how I could have been stuck at fearing the F-word.