I started a Feminism Club and my school freaked out

During my junior year of high school, two of my favorite female fighters and “partners in cause” teamed up to take on the stigma of feminism within our high school. My friends Belle Briatico and Ali Van Gundy decided to start a feminist club at our school to promote and discuss issues related to feminism in both our school and on the global level.

Ali explained that “the idea for what became the Feminist Society started as a book club based on a list [she] found online called ‘books every feminist should read.'”

The girls were understandably excited to have a chance to read and discuss women’s expressions and reflections of society today. Our English class also had a similar, smaller unit devoted to gender pieces, but many of the male students failed to see the unit as a study of gender in general, but rather insisted on it being a “feminazi” complaining fest among us girls.

Belle reflected: “So many of the boys in our class complained that the pieces were biased and that all of these women were just complaining about things that didn’t really matter. It was crazy to me that these boys couldn’t step outside themselves and take something seriously if it didn’t pertain to them.”

After one too many degrading comments, Ali and Belle decided to form a club devoted to talking about feminism as well as advocating it and helping out women in the community.

But soon after flyers for the first meetings went up, there was loud vocal uproar across campus and Ali and Belle were at the heart of it.

“I heard people who I didn’t even know refer to me as ‘that feminist bitch’ just because we started the club,” Belle said.

Ali added, “I understood that there would be strong criticisms from a few people. However, I don’t think I could have expected that kind of reaction to come from such a multitude of voices.” Boys in our class started tweeting rude and aggressive comments about the organization. Some even went as far as to threaten to make a “Male Supremacy Club” just to show their “equality.”

As a club member, I definitely remember hearing a lot of bigoted comments from people. People loved to sarcastically ask if everything I did or said was part of the feminist movement. I remember I didn’t do my homework once and a male classmate called me out for it by saying “oh, are you asserting your feminist rights?”

The organization even experienced concern and upset from teachers around campus because the messages and views of the society had gone so far away from what they originally hoped it would be.

Ali said, “What upset me most were not the criticisms themselves, but that I believe the negative attention deterred many interested students, both female and especially male, from signing up and attending meetings.”

A lot of us within the club got very frustrated with all the backlash and feared that the idea of “feminism” had become a joke to everyone. Many of us involved with the club were most upset that we never got the chance to explain our side of things. Once again, our female voices were being oppressed, which is exactly what we were fighting for.

“The club ending up being completely different than what we had hoped it would be,” said Belle.

The club soon took its focus off global issues and started taking small steps to improve feminist relations in our school. It ended up being a open-forum, open-discussion platform where anyone who wanted to could come together and talk about feminist stigma within their school.

Belle said, “we had so much meaningful discussion and we got to watch people of different ages, genders, and backgrounds come together and form friendships. We saw students challenging each other’s ideas in a constructive manner and sharing similar experiences.”

Today the girls are still proudly representing what it means to be a feminist. Both support and help women and women’s rights through community service and the occasional strife with the ill-informed online. Their “controversial” club didn’t stop any kind fight, it simply fueled it.

In retrospect, the girls acknowledge the small level of success they achieved, but to them even the few changed attitudes and sparked conversations were worth it.

“There is no doubt in my mind that our short-lived Feminist Society got a lot of people thinking and talking about feminism, and that is enough for me,” said Ali.

The efforts and exercises the girls put forth in their club even got them featured in a photo spread in Seventeen magazine, right next to Beyonce.