"The moment I heard Watson say, "If not me, who? If not now, when?" I felt a shift inside of me. It wasn't the chicken burrito that I had scarfed down 15 minutes prior, but the rare and instantly recognizable feeling that I would never be the same. I now know that the feeling reminded me of falling in love.
One of the most thrilling and deeply moving experiences in life is the pants-shitting feeling you get when you realize you've met someone who will force you to grow in ways you'd never previously imagined possible. You feel like your boundaries are being pushed and your worldview is shifting. It's terrifying, but it's also one of the most exhilarating and fulfilling emotional states you can know. This is the internal stirring I had the moment I heard Watson's words...
Given my resistance to speaking out on social issues in the past, my tears were a moment of passionate realization that I could and would no longer remain quiet. It scared me. What kind of resistance would I encounter from fans, haterz, other people in the industry, and even those who supported the same movement but thought that I was going about it wrong or opportunistically? Would I risk ostracizing myself? But the thing was, I didn't fucking care.
It would be easy to say nothing, just like it would be easy to avoid love by curling into an emotional fetal position every time you were confronted by someone with the capacity to push you, change you, and challenge you to explore all those terrifying nooks and crannies of your psyche."
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a45912/matt-mcgorry-feminist-essay/?visibilityoverride
Probably a solid 101 to what it's like to start identifying as feminist.
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