I Call Myself a Feminist is a powerful collection of twenty-five shorts essays, all written by women under thirty. What do these women have in common? It is not their country, not their background, not their skin colour or their sexuality but their strong, passionate voices that call out for change.
This book joins the ranks of recent publications striving to take back the world feminist. Over time the word has been mislabelled as something negative and hateful (many seem to still presume every feminist is a ‘man-hater’). This book rallies against those misconceptions, inspiring men and women alike to embrace the word feminist for what it truly stands for, which is equality.
With powerful, evocative and angry voices these young women give personal accounts of what it is to be a feminist in their unique situations. From being related to one of the most famous feminists in the world to being brought up in a society when women are treated as second-class citizens, these essays are snapshots into a group of inspiring minds. This diversity is what makes I Call Myself a Feminist so refreshing to read. With opinions from so many walks of life you are forced to view feminism from a variety of angles you may not have considered before.
I feel I can safely say that the majority, if not all women have felt the blow of sexism at some point in their life, whether in it’s violent, aggressive form, through undermining comments such as ‘good for a girl’ or through the gender pay gap (in my opinion, through tampon tax too). It is these experiences that unite us and these experiences that leave women across the world striving for more.
I Call Myself a Feminist is as important as it is entertaining. Behind the laughs, the self-discovery and even the anger is the simple question, how better could we make the world if men and women were treated equally? Read this book, act on how it makes you feel and get us that one step closer to finding out.
Buy your copy of I Call Myself a Feminist edited by Victoria Pepe, Rachel Holmes, Amy Annette, Alice Stride and Martha Mosse from Amazon here