Wow, good questions anon!  Here we go.  Under a cut because it’s looooooooooooooooooong!

I do consider myself a feminist, because to me it means that you want equal rights for everyone.  At least that’s how I view it, though I guess there’s “humanist,” now.  Still, at its core, to me, feminism has always been about equality period  :)  

Here’s a fun fact: I actually double majored in English AND Women’s Studies in college.  In fact, I got a lot of crap for it, because I opted out of African American studies.  But like, I feel like, as a black girl, it’s expected that I learn as much as possible about Black History.  But there’s more to me than my race, you know?  I’m female.  I’m part of the LGBT family.  There’s many parts of me, and all of them are important.  I never had the chance to do Women’s Studies before, so I wanted to try it.  I also remember opting out of African American Studies because the amount of books were insane and I was already an English major, lol.  Because of feminism I learned to appreciate all sorts of people.  I learned a lot about race, and gender, and sexuality, and everything.  Women’s Studies was so much more than the “women” part of it.  

I saw a lot of various kinds of feminists, from the ones like me who are like, “Everyone needs to be equal,” to the more extreme ones.  And honestly, I think it’s the extreme ones that scare everyone away, and why people don’t even want to call themselves feminist.  Like yes, I get that there need to be some changes made, but at the same time, not everyone is out to get you?  This sort of hit home for me when I was coming out to my dad.  He actually thought Women’s Studies had something to do with it and was afraid that I suddenly hated men, which is silly because I grew up with a damn good dad so why would I hate men?  But just… the fear in his eyes about that, it got to me.  Because sadly, he’s right, there are people out there who just… who hate ALL men and think the worst.  I saw it in my classes and had times of actually defending them.

For instance.  Like people would have the deadbeat dad example.  And I would be like, “Well no that’s not every man my dad is great.”  Do you know what they assumed next?  That, clearly, something had happened to my mom and my dad was forced to take me in because of it, because what man would take care of his own child, right?  Which that wasn’t the case at all!  They both decided that it was best for me to live with my dad (they got divorced when I was little), in the suburbs, who was getting remarried and there would be someone who would watch me.  That way, my mom wouldn’t be paying a zillion dollars for daycare, wouldn’t be getting up at 4 am to take me to daycare and get to work on time since she worked downtown which was like, over an hour on the train, and just… it made sense.  But everyone assumed something different.  

You also see it on tumblr, too.  All it takes is one asshole to ruin things.  From the posts where some douche is saying that women are asking for it, you see this surge of men like, “Oh god no please shut up because now they’re going to hate us all.”  Or how a man will be like, “I need feminism,” and the response is, “Oh cry me a river white boy you’re at the top of the chain,” and just… you don’t know his story.  You don’t know his story at all.  You’re assuming he’s got it easy but you have no idea what he’s been through.  Yes white males have privileges, but don’t assume that everyone single white guy you see is some jerk whose just living it up because his life is perfect.  Like, for instance, that post that went around where those men came out to talk about being raped?  As much as we talk about women being raped and all the shit that comes with, men are barely talked about, and you get awful statements like, “What man doesn’t want to be raped by a woman?”  That’s ridiculous!  Men are shamed into staying silent because it threatens their masculinity somehow.  ”Men don’t cry,” or like, the mere concept of a man not wanting a woman is so bizarre to some people.  Of course men want the hot girl, right?  Why would he ever say no to that?  

Or hell, let’s talk about how people hate on Macklemore because, “You grew up privileged stop trying to relate,” but HE KNOWS HOW HE GREW UP AND HE ADMITS IT O.K.?!  Like, why is it wrong for someone in the majority to want to support me?  He’s not trying to relate HE IS SAYING THAT HE AGREES WITH US!  If a privileged white guy is like, “Gay people should get married,” yes, please, thank you, support me please!  I want your support.  I want the majority to understand.  I’m not Voting No because the gay people don’t get it, I’m Voting No because straight people are telling me not to get married.  So yeah, when someone who isn’t in the same group as me comes out like, “I support you,” it makes me happy.  They’re the ones I have to convince.

Wow lots of tangents, yikes, but this is all stuff I learned about through Women’s Studies and feminism.  It really opened my eyes to a lot of things I wouldn’t have looked at before.  Frankly, before feminism, I already knew about racism and those kinds of struggles.  That’s what your family gets you ready for, and even your school will teach you about the great black people before you (granted only for a month but still that’s better than the absolute zero I got in regards to women’s rights or LGBT matters, if that’s changed since I was in high school then awesome, but I’m not sure if it did).  ”It’s hard to be black,” I already knew that, and it’s great that they prepared me for that but… what about the other stuff?  College introduced, you know, the struggles and successes of other groups that I fit in.  Feminism covered all groups, not just women.  Sure we’d talk about women, but then we’d talk about women of color, LGBT issues, we talked about everything and it was great.  Hell we even talked about men and the expectations people have of them.  

As for the Disney princess cosplay, I never actually intended for it to be this huge thing, really.  I was just cosplaying characters I liked and it’s sort of exploded because of the article I wrote.  That article was just me speaking from the heart, really.  I got bashed on and I figured I had a choice.  I could sit here quietly and be upset by it, I could get angry and snap back at the person, or I could respond in a way that would, hopefully, inspire others.  Because as much as it sucked to be called those names, what sucked more was the amount of messages I got of, “You’re beautiful, I wish I was as brave as you, this is why I don’t cosplay.”  Like… that’s really sad to me.  Cosplay is supposed to be fun you shouldn’t be afraid to have fun.  I know I’ve said that before but I mean it.  What killed me about that whole bashing thing is that I knew that someone would look at it as another reason to not cosplay.  I use to do that before.  I use to hear the horror stories and be like, “Welp not posting pictures online then.”  I mean it was bad enough that I already assumed that people would make fun of me anyway because of my weight, but then you’d hear horror stories and it would add to it.  

So I decided to do something.  I wrote the article, I posted pictures of fried chicken, I spoke up.  Because I don’t want people to sit around and think that they can’t do this because of how they look.  And honestly, like my mom said, we’re all geeks wearing costumes.  She was so surprised when I told her that people bash other people for this.  She was like, “Are you serious?  But you’re all nerds…”  And she’s right!  You’re going to poke fun at a cosplayer when you’re either a) wearing a costume too, b) taking pictures of people in costume, c) spent your money to get into a convention full of people in costume.  It’s so ridiculous.  Here you are at this weekend event, finally with people who can relate to you screaming over titans or boys who swim, and you’re going to waste time making fun of someone in costume?  What?  

Now I’ll admit that it’s gotten bigger than I expected.  Like… way bigger.  Which is good!  <3  But no, when I started cosplaying and posting pictures and whatnot I never thought it would be some sort of statement, I was just out to have fun.  But it seems to be turning into that, but I believe in the message behind it.  I’m 30, black, plus sized, practically married to a white girl, a feminist, and I’m here to enjoy myself  :)  Everyone else should too.

And that was super long I’m really sorry  >.<