Just another Jess

This is something that I have been wanting to write about for a long time, but haven’t understood it well enough to try until recently. I’ll start with some background. Several years ago when I was studying at BYU, I considered myself to be a pretty free-thinking, open-minded individual (especially in ultra-conservative Provo). In my mind, being “free-thinking” and “open-minded” meant that I had adopted this you-do-you attitude that has been growing in popularity among young adults for many years. My open-minded opinion at the time was something like this: God has told us to “love one another” (John 13:34, 15:12), and to “judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1; 3 Nephi 14:1). So in order to follow that counsel and love everyone, I have to accept that everyone has their agency to make whatever decisions they want, and it’s none of my business what decisions they choose make. I can make the decisions that I want to make, but I have no place telling someone else that the d

Here’s the thing about feminism…I don’t love it. And it’s not that I don’t understand it – I get that it’s not just “man-hating,” and that it’s centered around empowering women to be strong and successful and respectful of other women (and men) and whatever. I get all of that. And that’s great. I’m just not sure that we need a  movement , a “club,” to make that happen. Because what happens when you start segregating people into inclusion/exclusion situations like “feminist” and “not a feminist,” is you end up creating a rift where you’re trying to create a bridge. Listen…I’m a woman. I’ve been a woman all my life. But I’ve never felt that being a woman has made any opportunities less available to me than to anyone else. Have I been mistreated on occasion by men? Yeah. Have I been mistreated on occasion by women? Yeah. Have men been mistreated on occasion by other men? Absolutely. Have men occasionally been mistreated by women? Yeah. So…okay, sure. Let’s encourage women