So, now it is time for the next confession, in case anyone missed it the first time —I am a feminist. And apparently, in today’s political climate, I am a raging, radical feminist. I have opinions about women and politics and men and who controls what and very strong opinions about hypocrisy. Opinions I am finally starting to share with my daughters.

Before we go any further, let me clarify my position. I have several friends who let conservative talk show hosts define feminism for them. I largely ignored the talk and kept the peace. But then they started spouting those definitions around my children and I couldn’t keep the peace. I told them I was a feminist and what it meant to me. Some forgave me my crazy ways, others were open-minded and interested, and a few walked away. Mostly they were confused by what feminism actually meant, at least to me. It is really a very simple thing—I believe that feminism is the radical notion that women are people too, with the same basic rights that men take for granted.

What that looks like is fairly simple as well. Able to drive themselves without a male relative (unlike in Saudi Arabia), own property (unlike in parts of Africa), obtain an education without fear of death (unlike in Afghanistan), determine what medical procedures and medicines they require without political and governmental interference in science (like in Europe), able to vote as a citizen (unlike my great-grandmother), able to vote independently of a male relative’s decision (unlike my grandmother, who always voted the way my grandfather said and who stopped voting when he died), living largely free of the fear of crippling body-maiming customs to accentuate their culturally derived definition of feminine beauty (unlike foot-binding in China a hundred years ago and clitoridectomy, or female genital mutilation, in current-day Kenya), living largely free of the fear of systematic rape for being of the wrong tribe or ethnic groups (unlike in many African nations today) … the list goes on.

It really boils down to this simple maxim for me: Just because I am a woman does not give society, the state, or any man or woman the right to tell me what I can or cannot do simply because I am a woman. Maybe my strong opinions about personal rights and space are a result of being a native North Carolinian, the state that refused to ratify the Constitution without a Bill of Rights. Maybe they are the result of being raised largely by women, with a very supportive grandfather to balance all of that estrogen (funny how sexist opinions will change when presented with your only granddaughter … interesting way to grow up being told you can do anything while hearing about why other women can’t do some things). Whatever the cause, it is the philosophy I embraced and never looked back. I qualified the labeling, insisting I was an equalist in the early '90s when Newt Gingrich was around the first time and feminist was a bad word. Then I realized someone was telling me what to do and I got over it, embraced the term, made it my own, and started kicking butt and taking names.

But that was for me personally. My feminist friends from college would be amazed how very little I have “indoctrinated” my daughters. When we moved from the South to California, I found I didn’t need to be a militant feminist because people left me alone. Not a lot of “little lady, you can’t do that … let me help you” here in California. It went to my head, the relative freedom of being a middle class woman in California, with all of the privileges available, and so I checked out of feminism. I had my freedoms and I had enough work to do raising three daughters without worrying about rights I didn’t need right now, hypocrite that I am. But now that my girls are almost adults, I am re-engaging.

With this year’s debates, I feel an eerie sense of déja vu every time I see Newt Gingrich’s face. I watch the cultural battle played out between Komen and Planned Parenthood. I see the national debate about President Obama’s policy of birth control pills not being waived for religious hospitals and schools the same way it was for direct faith-based centers. I see women’s bodies again draped over cars and other products to sell on national television. I see lots of missing and murdered women killed by husbands, ex-husbands and boyfriends; children killed or kidnapped to punish mothers who left abusive situations, and not a lot being done to stop it. This is the world I thought I had left behind, that cultural battlefield of the '90s where the focus of the nation seemed to be on women’s bodies. The world my daughters are getting ready to inherit, with Newt once again front and center. 

A place where hypocrisy reigns, with a national debate focused on who pays for birth control pills, used for hormonal issues as well as birth control, while Viagra is funded in prescription plans with nary a thought, even though it is much more expensive and, forgive me for being blunt, used basically for one thing, to make babies, right? Where Planned Parenthood loses funding that is directed at a life-saving medical procedure because of other services in their business model. Having once been a very poor, not quite starving, college student and college graduate in the second worst recession in U.S. history, I used Planned Parenthood quite happily and cheaply for my female specific medical exams when I was poor and without medical insurance. And again with the hypocrisy—where a failed candidate for elected office whose platform included denying Planned Parenthood funding, obtains a position within Komen and makes that happen, then denies the decision was made due to such personal considerations, strikes me as hypocritical, whether it is warranted or not.

And so, now I share bits and pieces with my daughters about my feminist opinions, those they are able to synthesize. I share a favorite book with my 16-year-old, Half the Sky, a favorite not because I enjoyed it but rather that it jarred me from my complacency. I share my half-baked '90s backlash fantasy when I encountered Newt for the first time, mandatory vasectomies for all men, to be reversed when they were determined mature enough to father children, eliminating not only the controversy about female medicines and procedures but also the welfare single mothers and other controversial issues. I share my friend’s experiences with sisters and friends who died from illegal medical procedures. I share stories of how women live very restricted lives in other parts of the world and how these young women, my children, should not take their privileges and freedoms for granted. I share my concerns of how the cultural debate raging in the nation scares me, especially when I hear candidates advocating women defer to the husband’s will, return to the home, talk that I hear as someone telling me what to do, threatening to take control over my destiny, my actions, my options away from me. And I share the incredible responsibility that comes with these freedoms and privileges we enjoy. The right for women to serve in the military is a privilege hard fought in this country and should be accorded the hard work it warrants. The right to vote is a relatively new privilege for women in this country and should be honored by being an informed, thoughtful voter and wearing that “I voted” sticker every election. Finally, I share with my daughters how privileged I feel to live in this country, where I complain about these things and not the things so many women in other countries face. So, how about you?