Get Involved IRL!

As young feminists, it’s common to feel like our age limits what we can do as active leaders in this important movement. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Here’s a few things you can do to get more involved IRL in this cause!

• Go to protests and rallies! Protests are a free way to get involved in important movements that are integral parts of feminism such as BlackLivesMatter. Especially if you live near a large city, showing support for these movements is very easy and also extremely educational. No matter how much you do online, nothing compares to having a real face-to-face conversation with someone that has been directly impacted by the issue at hand. In the year of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, going to protests against threatening political leaders is important as well. This sends the message that we will not stand for oppression! It’s equally important to show support for people in your community that you care about though, and hear them speak of our movement. If there’s a political leader you love that is a feminist, I 100% encourage you to seek out ways to see them!

• Find ways to support feminist leaders in your community. Whether you’re making calls for a political leader that promotes the feminist message, going on coffee runs for local politicians, or just learning about an influential female teacher in your life, you are making a huge difference! It’s important to celebrate the women that have fought so incredibly hard to be where they are, and most of the time, fought without recognition.

• Join or start a feminist club at your school! Not only will this transform students at your high or middle school’s lives, but it will give you a platform to be a leader. The feminist club at my high school, ‘Wonder Women’, has united me with people with the same moral beliefs as me that care about getting ideas out into the school. Our club has really influenced the entire high school, and yours can too! I felt so alone at times before joining the club, like not many of my peers felt similarly to me. This was really not the case, and having such strong women in my life has greatly impacted me positively! I am inspired by them everyday, and knowing you have a profound influence on other people is great and so motivating. Not to mention founding a club looks great on college papers!

• Don’t be ashamed that social media is a vital platform for our cause. When I first became involved with feminism, I was only five or six years old and so I wasn’t on any social media. Unfortunately, a lot of the things I was told about the movement were not true, such as which people were ‘leaders’ and should be role models. It was actually social media that helped me unlearn a lot of these false truths. We’re very lucky to be able to spread our message through a couple of taps on our smart phones. Don’t be embarrassed to be an activist online, and make sure you take the advice you give in your tweets or other social media and apply it to the real world! You never know who could be impacted by an interesting feminist fact or article about the patriarchy.