Goodbye column: What writing about feminism taught me about feminism

My cursor hovered over the send button after I typed my pitch for a column about feminism. I’d read over the email half a dozen times, but I just couldn’t get myself to click.

“Was I qualified?” I asked myself, wondering if my lack of gender studies or women’s history classes should keep me from writing about feminism every week. I’d had good intentions — I owned Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” and Roxane Gay’s “Bad Feminist,” but I hadn’t yet gotten around to reading them. Maybe I should write about something else, I thought, still hovering.

Then there was the question, would people like it? After spending my senior Fall writing about hookup culture and, more importantly, Midtown culture, this jump to what I considered a serious — and at times sad — subject was not a small one. I didn’t want to be a downer. Maybe I should just wait until after college to start being so “political,” I wondered.

But for some reason, on that day in early January, I clicked “send” anyway. Since that day, I’ve learned more about feminism by writing about feminism than I ever thought I could.

Jessica Valenti wrote “Despite the well-worn myth that feminists are obsessed with victimhood, feminism today feels like an unstoppable force of female agency and independence,” in her memoir “Sex Object.” It was one of the first books by a feminist writer I picked up after learning my column was a go. In this line, it felt like she was talking to me.

As I worried my columns would sound more like complaints, Valenti assured me naming the problem — sexism — doesn’t make us victims. In fact, it gives us the strength to fight that problem. If ignorance is bliss, activism is power, and I felt prepared to choose the second option.

With a deadline each week, I learned how important it is to look beyond the big stories. With a few big women’s issues (finally) in the zeitgeist, it’s easy to think we can pump the breaks in our fight for equality. Harvey Weinstein and the likes were taken down by strong reporters and stronger women who broke their silences. The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund raised more than $20 million for women in several industries to fight and win workplace sexual harassment cases.

Incredible things have happened in the past year, but there is so much work left to be done. We can celebrate the women at the forefronts of these movements, while we continue to bring awareness to the issues that haven’t gotten the Hollywood treatment. To name a few, rape culture, employment discrimination and wage gaps, all of which are more prominent for women of color than white women, still deserve our attention, our efforts and our voices.

In writing this column, I learned feminism is about so much more than wanting equal opportunities for yourself. I learned feminism is nothing without intersectionality — that is, understanding how race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender identity and disabilities affect the way women and nonbinary people experience discrimination. If only some of us are inching toward equality, none of us are really progressing.

As I wrote this column, my 21st and final column for The Alligator, I remembered the first question I asked myself after typing my pitch: “Am I qualified?” One semester later, I know the answer: “No.”

I know there are countless women who know more about feminism than I ever will, and I know they may have written better pieces than I have. But if I waited until I felt “qualified” to write about feminism, I would probably never write about it at all.

We can’t let our fears of not being good enough keep us from trying. We can’t wait until we feel ready to change the world to take the first step in changing it.

If you’re postponing activism until you feel qualified, now is the time to click send. You won’t look back; you’ll learn as you go and you’ll quickly find you’ll never stop learning.

Carly Breit is a UF journalism senior. Her column focuses on feminism.