Feminist.

As a 33-year-old woman living in Kentucky, that has always seemed like a very dirty word to me. Any time it is brought up in a conversation, it is always in a negative context. It was a word that made me shudder and think “gross.”

To me it came across as an overly aggressive, angry, uptight, man-hating woman.

Now, don’t stop reading. Hear me out.

I have never looked up the definition of feminism. I haven’t studied it. I haven’t had a conversation based solely on feminism. It just wasn’t a topic that I thought about a lot.

To be honest, I didn’t want to learn about feminism because to me it was unappealing and foul.