#MyFeminism: How I reconciliated my faith with feminism

I've always been wary of the word "feminism". Ok, not always. I would say probably for the last few years, after I started growing in my faith. In my head, when I thought about feminism, I pictured either suffragettes all over the streets requesting female vote, or Femens all over the streets with their breasts out and something like "My body, my choice!" written on them, or Beyoncé surrounded by an army of half-naked girls singing and dancing "Who run the world? GIRLS!" And quite frankly, none of the above seemed very appealing to me.

 However, I know deep inside I've always been a feminist. That feeling re-emerged a few months ago, in the midst of the whole #MeToo movement. I guess I'd just stopped identifying to the feminist movement, because I thought it wasn’t quite well represented nowadays, while being poorly viewed within my Christian faith, among other circles.

 As I got more and more involved in my Church, it somehow bothered me to see a new tendency of women reclaiming rights in the Church as if it was some sort of government or democracy. To make a parenthesis, I have never liked it (and still do not like it) when people who call themselves Catholics, often occupying important roles within the Catholic Church, go out and about the world, publicly criticizing the Church and its leaders, thinking they are doing it a favor.  Would they do the same with their own family or parents? Not sure. End of parenthesis.

So this is pretty much where I stood until as few days ago. But last Friday, I witnessed something that shocked me, in a positive way, I guess. And I think it made me definitely be in peace with calling myself a feminist.

See, once a month I go to Montreal for a vocational activity I participate in called Camino. Basically, it’s a group of young people trying to discern their vocation. And even though my home is located downtown and is therefore pretty close to the activity (which happens at the Sanctuaire du Saint-Sacrement, on Boul. du Mont-Royal.), my spiritual director, a sister of the Notre-Dame Congregation  (CND)) and I, have found convenient for me to spend the night at their house on Friday so we can calmly have our monthly accompaniment, eat, sleep and go to the activity together on Saturday morning. 

Well, last Friday I went to the CND house as usual. To put things into context, most women living in that house are older religious women, most of them over 70 years old. At supper time, we went to eat in the cafeteria, and there, to my great surprise, I saw more than one older sister with a pin that said: "Féministe tant qu'il le faudra" (the only English equivalent I have found for that is #MyFeminism). I looked with amazement, to make sure I'd read right. And yes, I had. I only understood where this was coming from after dinner, when I saw in the hallway a poster with that same motto, which I understood was the French headliner of this year's International Women's Day.

When I saw this, I felt a mixture of joy, pride and relief. These 70-year-old women were the living proof that no, feminism wasn't all about skin showing and violently screaming for your rights! No, being a feminist did not mean that we hate men or the Church. Ultimately, I thought: "Heck, if these religious sisters aren't scared to declare themselves feminists, then why should I?

Being a feminist doesn't have to mean that I think woman and men are made the same, or that a woman should do anything she wishes with her body or what’s in it. Being a feminist, for me, means that women are human beings, that they were created at the image and likeness of God, and therefore deserve as much respect as anyone else. That, I think is a universal view of feminism on which most of us will agree (Ok, maybe not the God part). 

For all the rest, I do believe that every woman has her idea of what feminism is, which is basically what one or society thinks is good for women at a given time. I think that part is highly tainted by current individual or societal values, and I guess that is the part that has made me take a distance from that ideology until now.

But today, on March 8^th, 2018, I reclaim this term, as I think there is a new generation of women like myself who identify themselves as feminists without necessarily agreeing with everything that is often linked to feminism nowadays, much to the opposite (think Abby Johnson, for example). We want what is best for women. And just because what we think is best for women does not fit in today’s generalized positions, it does not make us less feminists than anyone else.