Feminism Reflective Essay

At the age of eleven I experienced two fundamental shifts within my knowledge of myself and the world around me; though, of course, at the time I was quite unaware of the long lasting implications of these shifts. The first shift would lead to a drastic reworking of my inner psyche, this inner reworking founded itself when I experienced my first panic attack, an early sign of the anxiety disorder that would fester in my mind until the present. The second shift had a greater immediate impact upon my understanding of the my known world, when I suddenly came into the knowledge of my father's, worsening and still worsening, alcoholism. These two events which I viewed as independent from the other, would come to lay the foundation for my own understandings of feminism. Over the next several years, these two flourishing fragments of myself and my world would no longer be able to exist independent in my own conscious. Instead, I would
Feminism and feminist theory is inherently rooted in validating the experiences and struggles of women; it is meant to critically analyze and deconstruct the ways in which gender intersects with other experiences to create inequalities for women. Through the analysis and deconstruction of these intersections do the experiences of women become validated and are in many cases made “real.” I do consider myself to be a feminist, one that considers the importance of validation to be vital. My experiences of emotional abuse, alcoholism, and anxiety were, and are still, horrible experiences that I will never be able to “get over” or to completely move past, but I am now able to understand that my experience have not tainted me. That I, and all people, deserve to live dignified lives and to have our experiences validated in healthy and safe ways. Feminism, I believe, is the pathway to deconstructing these systems of oppression, these “lens’ of