Who am I?

I am a 20 something lesbian, who a little over a year ago, could not be paid to say I was a feminist. I wanted to be "progressive and liberal", which as a Southern Californian raised, Northern Californian transplant felt natural. I wanted equality and happiness and all those fun things that come along with liberalism. 

I wasn't as feminist because why would I? Women were liberated in the 70's, and that was long before my time, and now the focus was the LGBTQIA Queer fight. That was to be my activism. I needed to end discrimination against gay men donating blood, and get marriage equality, and equal housing protections for trans women. I needed to be an ally to all my queer friends because, at the time, I was 'straight' and had 'cis' privilege. It was up to me to educate myself, and not questions the practices of a community I was only an ally to. 

I was dating men, (I thought I just couldn't find the right one) and active with the local queer community. I met a FtM and we were good friends. For a year we danced around the idea of dating, before eventually hooking up right before she moved back to Southern California. We decided to have a long distance relationship (open of course, because monogamy was too constructing for our liberalism), and that continued for about 10 months until she moved back and into the house with me. Our relation was fairly superficial and based in who we thought the other person had been online. Despite this we quickly got engaged, and played the part of the FtM and 'his' supportive girlfriend. We were both on the board of our local pride organization, and as active as we could be with 'the community'. 
However, we were both having doubts; I was quickly realizing my sexuality was not towards men and the absolute idea of preformed masculinity triggered me back to my childhood abuse, while my partner was realizing the devastating effects her 'medicine' was having on her health and questioning her identity and why she transitioned in the first place. This was in part due to an altercation with Cathy Brennan on Tumblr. My partner thought she was being snarky, which is not something I recommend doing to Cathy, and Cathy told her that it was nice that she was taking T but all that means she is a female acting stereo-typically male. The realization that she was and would never not be female, despite these layers she added to herself.
We had a sit down and chatted, realized our relationship needed to be restructured and we needed to do some self work. She began looking into radical feminist theory to explain why she transitioned and eventually did this video which Gallus Mag kindly wrote about. 

I was hesitant at first but I found Beauty and Misogyny and started reading it. Suddenly things started to make sense, and I quickly radicalized. Things just clicked. The theory felt solid. 

I found a group of young women on tumblr and started networking, I wasn't alone in radicalizing and it felt great. Until now, very little of what I have posted there is original content. I am hoping to now start forming more solid opinions, and am moving to this platform as it seems to be a bit more controlled than the ciaos that is tumblr. I have been villianised on that site for things that I did not even write, and opinions I am still mulling through. I do get messages from mostly young girls, trying to figure out themselves and their place in the world and are being introduced to radical feminist theory.  I am hoping that I can continue to help those women, while writing about topics that I often get asked about.