I always thought feminism was just for women. That feminism was a bra burning, man hating, joke.
Then I had Mr. Thompson for AP US History. We were talking about the 1960’s and all the protests that were happening when we got to feminism and I let out an audible groan.
Mr. Thompson got quiet, and approached my desk.
“So you think feminism is a joke? Folks this is the problem we have with the word feminism. Because I bet you all think of feminism as a bunch of hippie women who don’t shave burning their bras? Well guess what that never happened. Feminism isn’t about putting women above anybody else. It’s about putting them on equal ground with men. It’s equality. And you know what? I’m a man and a feminist. You can be both!”
Mr. Thompson taught me two things that day that have affected me to this day. 1. That I was an ignorant *****. And 2. Teaching can change not only a life but the course history as well.  So now I’m a teacher, and a feminist. I see these same boys who were just like me who believe in equality but don’t know what feminism means. So I try my best when I talk about feminism in my history class to teach them better. And you might ask why does the label matter? When you misunderstand or degrade feminism you make it impossible for actual feminists to affect any actual change. I get laughed at when I tell people I’m a feminist. I get it from other men, from faculty, even from women.
These people are not misogynists, but they aren’t doing much to help the cause either.
I try and teach what feminism is about but every year I’m noticing people think this is an outdated concept. If you think that women’s rights will keep progressing as a natural function of time you are wrong. I teach history and time and time again societies that have been progressive, changed and people became oppressed. We still have a long way to go but if we don’t take feminism seriously we can lose what’s been achieved.

Once a girl lived in a tower.
She had the longest golden locks you had ever seen.
Her mother would visit and be hoisted upwards upon those locks to see her daughter.
The girl was named after a plant… Rapunzel.
How could she know this though when she had always lived in her home of the tower.
Her mother had kept her there since she could remember.
Rapunzel would ask when should could see the world.
Her mother would turn down these pleas saying the world was too dangerous for Rapunzel.
As she grew older Rapunzel realized that she resided in not a home but a prison.
Why was mother allowed to see the world and she was not?
Why could she not decide for herself the dangers of the world?
Freedom always framed within her window but too far below to reach.
On her 18th birthday Rapunzel fled the tower using the locks that had grown so very long.
Her mother soon after discovered her daughter to be missing.  Full of spite she pursued her daughter.
Rapunzel’s hair kept her from going too far and soon her mother was upon her.
Rapunzel tried to flee, but her mother seeing her daughter free from the world she had made for her stepped upon the long locks.
She pulled her daughter back to her slowly, back to the safety of her arms, her world. Rapunzel struggled on the ground trying to escape. She took a rock and severed the locks from her head. She fell forward into the edge of the woods and onto thorns.
She was blinded. Her mother rushed to her side not concerned for the eyes that weeped red but for the destroyed beauty that was her daughter’s locks.
Rapunzel may have lost her sight in that moment but her mother had lost hers long before that. Unable to see how she had hurt her daughter. That the greatest pain her daughter had experienced was given by her. Her daughter was blind and could not see the world, but her mother had never seen her for what she was.

Thread. Pierce. Weave.
Her leathered fingers pulling it though from one single taut line, until it forms a flowing tapestry of a quilt.
She forgets. The mail. The laundry. The casserole that burned her house down.
The threads are her memories that have been lost. Each one a moment, a place, a person.
She forgets. Their names.
These threads are the last she will weave.
Family acts as thread. The quilt that catches her as she falls farther from herself into an image as faded as the last photo of her husband.
Thread. Pierce. Weave. Thread Pierce Weave.
She forgets. The quilt.
The daughter finds it, and sees a half spelled out name.
She forgets. Her name.
The daughter brings her mother her memories.
The daughter helps guiding her mother’s hand.
Thread. Pierce. Weave. Thread. Pierce. Weave. Thread. Pierce. Weave.
Threads become patches, patches from the cloth.
Thread. Pierce. Weave. Thread. Pierce. Weave.
Mother and daughter weave together an inheritance.
The quilt is finished, a single name. She utters the name she has been trying to find.
She remembers. Her Grandson.