If you had met me five years ago, I would not want to call myself a feminist. Why? Because I felt it was too extremist. What if I was advocating for way too many things that I was not sure I stand for?
I grew up in a very sexist community.
The only topic discussed by women in my extended family was marriage. To settle down and to find “the one” was a girl’s ultimate goal. Getting a decent degree — something not “too smart” — and then sacrificing your entire life for your husband and kids were the only two things that revolved around a woman’s life — or at least that’s what I grew up learning.
I went to a high school with boys who were sexist enough to very loudly comment on other girl’s bodies. I heard comments like “oh my god look at her ass” and “look at [name]’s boobs they are so big.”
In one chemistry class, the teacher had brought a (female) intern to class. I very clearly remember two boys I was sitting next to thirst over the new intern when she wasn’t even showing skin. I couldn’t help but call them out on it. Wanna know what one of the guys said? “We can’t help it it’s our hormones…but don’t worry we don’t do this to our classmates.”
If you had taken me back in time, I would have reported them or made a scene in class, but I didn’t. Why? Because throughout my entire life, I’ve been told that “boys will always be boys.”
In eighth grade, math and physics became my two favorite subjects. I started looking up university majors and engineering stood out to me. In tenth grade, I had told my math teacher that I am considering a degree in civil engineering. He paused the class to just “educate” on how that would never work out for a girl. I at that time said nothing but nod my head yes. Later that year, I took part in a coding summer camp where I was one of the very few girls. All the boys there had prior knowledge about coding but I didn’t. I felt so insecure about it at the time. How come all the boys already know how to code but I don’t? My math teacher’s words kept playing in my head and I almost felt like that was a field I didn’t belong to.
I liked a guy in high school who judged me for “being too academic.” He and I quote said to my face “you’ll never be interesting if you keep obsessing over math like that.” I remember being so heartbroken over the fact that someone rejected me because of my interests. I felt that being smart or academic made me unattractive. I felt that it was something that I shouldn’t talk much of when in fact he was threatened by how good I was at.
In eleventh grade, I decided I wanted to apply to the states for my undergrad. My parents didn’t approve, but I wanted to prove them wrong. For four months, I worked my ass off to ace all of the exams I had to take to get into good universities. I ended up being awarded 5 academic scholarships for engineering programs — which was of no significance to anyone in my community. During that same time, my brother was sent to the states to study. I wasn’t allowed to simply because “I was a girl.”
Despite all of this, I still went to engineering school. During my two years at engineering school, I had male classmates who were so bitter that I was performing better them. A guy asked me about my GPA and his response to my answer was “oh you must be working so hard.”
In my statistics course, I was helping out a friend with a problem and this guy told my friend “ignore her she’s no help.” He claimed that I wasn’t “smart enough” to be able to figure out a problem when I ended up scoring the highest grade on all sections of that course.
I had a math instructor who thought it would be very funny to draw a graph with “intelligence” and “beauty” on the axes and starts laughing about how this graph doesn’t exist for women.
See, this is exactly why I very proudly call myself a feminist.
Today, I am on the top of my engineering class, and a director for the largest initiative in the middle east that teaches younger girls how to code.
Don’t let the world tell you what you can or can’t do. Kickass while doing it.
