I'm Just Being Honest, Asshole. I'd Expect You to Know the Difference.

I was really hesitant to write about this, mostly because it makes me feel like I'm being condescending. Which, incidentally, I kind of am, but I'm not really trying to be...it's just kind of how it is. See, after my first Women's Studies course (Spring 2008--Women, Suffrage, and Political Participation with Nina Kasniunas, who is epically awesome), I really started growing into and becoming more comfortable with feminism. In fact, I thought it was the absolute bee's knees, as did my two best friends who also took Women's Studies 100 that same semester. During first semester of Freshman year we were like, "Feminism? Piffle! That's for bra-burning crazies." We went under a kind of feminist transformation during the course of Freshman year, and by the end I had decided to take on a second major in Women's Studies.
Okay, so this is the part where I connect my seemingly irrelevant story to our class, via Joreen's BITCH Manifesto: "...Bitches who have not succumbed totally to self-hatred are most comfortable of all only in the company of fellow bitches. "These are her true peers and the only ones with whom she does not have to play some sort of role. Only with other Bitches can a Bitch be truly free."
The thing is, this is really, really true, and in a lot of ways that feels frightening to me. I love my friends from home dearly, but try as I might to get them interested in feminism (I've even loaned out my beloved copies of Jessica Valenti's ""Full-Frontal Feminism" and Inga Muscio's "Cunt") it doesn't seem to be sticking. I usually get this kind of glazed-over look when I start talking about the pay disparity, and when I try and explain what androcentrism and heteronormativity are to my family members, they kind of dismiss it as me trying to sound more intelligent than they are. Granted, I am intelligent, and I can understand why they think I'm just being an ass, but feminism is something that has completely transformed my life and is constantly challenging my own assumptions and how I view the world. It's just so fucking awesome and I want to share it with everyone that I love and care about because re: FUCKING AWESOME.
So back to why this is relevant to the BITCH Manifesto. Around non-(not to be confused with anti-) feminist family and friends, I often feel uncomfortable bringing up why I don't think it's okay that gays and lesbians are denied the right to marry, why pro-choice is actually pro-life because it's pro-people-who-are-already-alive-who-have-every-right-to-do-with-their-bodies-as-they-see-fit, and just what exactly Women's Studies is. I have not and will never deny that I am a feminist, but I feel like I'm forced to play a role when put into certain social (usually surrounded by Republicans) situations. I have never felt this way around my best friends, nor in any of the Women's Studies classes I've taken. Even if I don't agree with someone's views, I never feel as if I'm playing games around self-identified feminists, because like them, I've Just Said No to patriarchal bullshit. It's only around the feminist types that I feel truly free to be myself, and while that's empowering in many ways, it also makes me feel limited in other social situations with people I care about. And honestly, I'm not quite sure what to make of that.