Ask 25 people about feminism and get 25 different answers.

Although I love the study of gender and sexuality, and believe strongly in (what I now see as one view of) feminism, I am relatively new to the whole idea.  Even as a second semester Sophomore, I am what I would call a "baby feminist." Somehow I managed to grow up without ever having a proper idea of what feminism was about, and therefore I feel that I am still woefully uneducated on the topic.  I find myself agonizing over what to write in this post, because I have very little background in feminism, and although I try my best to educate myself, I would say I am early in my academic journey.  The interesting thing about this class is that clearly there are people who have spent a long time studying this subject and who have very strong opinions about feminism, and there are people like me who feel like they are relatively new to - though not any less interested in - the field, and have fewer opinions on feminsm, if any at all.   And of course there are people who fall in between those two extremes.  

Feminism, or what I understand of feminism, is a word that can mean many different things to many different people.  My education on the topic so far has only explored a few branches of feminism, and from only two days in this class I can clearly see that there are a thousand different ways of explaining the subject.  Every single person has had a different walk in life, so I can only expect every person to have a different idea about what feminism means to them and what is "most important" to the movement.  This is why there was such a wide variety of people brought to our potluck in class.  I look forward to exploring everyone's differing ideals, and hopefully learning from what everyone has to say.  My goal for this class is to learn enough about feminism and feminist studies to be able to form a coherent opinion on the topic, so that I can discuss more freely and understand more clearly what this movement is about, and more specifically what it means to me and to everyone else around me.