About 3 weeks ago, scathing after dozens upon dozens of privileged men pretending to watch their mouths but still communicating that I was, despite all the progress that had been made, somehow less than – and they can get away with this because it’s not overt, and even then, sometimes it is. From micro-aggressions to subtle digs, the men at the tech conference revealed their ignorance to me, and I now have sorted them in my mind from ‘shitlist’ to ‘fine, I’ll give him another chance’ to ‘be upset because aligning myself against this somehow respected a-hole will damage me long term, but I have to take a stand somewhere.’

Sitting in a bus on the way to a company event, men gather giggling, and pointing at things that sexualize women and joking about prostitution, strippers, and other such shenanigans. I almost just took this sentence out fearing it may somehow tie back to my work, but then I realized I could be speaking for any number of women who have been at these conferences.

The kicker is, I feel as though they are completely unaware that they may feel uncomfortable as human beings about being in this city made by men for men (or worse, they don’t). So they just tell jokes and laugh it off.

Vegas is the perfect place to test boundaries and see how much you can get away with saying.

I had also recently gotten myself as caught up as I could tolerate with regards to “the files.” I’d really rather not know all of it, because then I’d actually have to get angry, and I’m afraid of what that would do to me. The last time something similar happened was the Stanford case — you know the one I’m talking about. That one put me over the edge, I was right at the end of my college days.

I was crying to myself, why? Why can there be no justice for women in this world? Generations upon generations – and this isn’t even the worst of it. It’s actually all still happening right NOW, and in a minute, and every minute for the next hour and all hours in the past and in the future as far as I can see. Somehow I’m the lunatic who is TOO upset over these crimes against humanity? I’m hysterical.

It’s happening unwittingly and wittingly, with hate and aggression, against all of us as a whole, and we should treat it as such. Why don’t we open our eyes and ask ourselves what is this type of world or country or community that we live in?

There was only one thing to do in my mind – I imagine a vast web, an ecosystem of Feminist-centric clubs scattered all across the US, maybe the world. We have annual summits, and we have representation in major institutions in the world, and we stand up for what is right and fair in the world. We share our experiences, we educate, we pave the path forward rather than follow the path we’ve been mindlessly wandering around for centuries.

Those roads were paved by people who saw women as property and men as withholding emotions. That house you’re living in was built before women had the right to vote. Your mom just made the cutoff for having the ability to get her own credit card.

I could go on, but I don’t like to speak of things without all the factual knowledge, and those are the only things I am certain of right now.

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After the conference in Vegas, I had had it up to here with derogatory comments, sexism, and inequality. All the while, I was looking in the mirror of my hotel room, questioning just how much weight I could put on until they started feeling entitled to comment on it – or perhaps have the audacity to ask me if I’m pregnant (side story: my own father said this to someone who had clearly just gained weight. He thought he was being funny and insisted that “she’s cool,” so she would get that he didn’t mean anything by it).

I had seen and heard it all at this point, if I’m being totally honest. One time a male co-worker who never even really tried to engage with me on a real friendship level, told me I should watch how much I was eating, implying that I would get fat and ugly, of course. For his viewing pleasure?

Getting back on track — what I mean to say is, there were many reasons behind me starting this club.

Life is not fair, they say. What a way to dismiss an epidemic of inequality, which varies globally but is always unequal nevertheless. “We all have our burdens to bear,” though, of course.

We are all born unequal from the start. This is the problem with society — and women (by varying degrees) are still in the bottom 50% of the ladder as a life fact.

If everything was ever being decided by men, then everything we interacted with as children, be it barbies or trucks or books or movies, and so on – all of that was marketed, targeted, and coded by men.

Truth is, if women are the bottom 50% by default, then the next 35% are the men that the top 15% want nothing to do with anyway. So then those 35% men are relegated for menial tasks. From there, this could all be marketing the “relevant” upbringing for ignorance and blindly following what the top 15% tells them through their various channels. They are blinded by the top 15%’s approval to the degree that they will act out in the ways that were acted upon them — being unwanted, only useful when you are the best at doing what you were relegated to do. They don’t know how to treat others because they’ve actually never been treated well either. They become the bully to the even lower 50%, and it makes them ‘cool’ to the top 15%.

I digress – as you can see, I’ve been having some negative thoughts I don’t know what to do with. I am married to a man and I cannot release these anywhere because he does in fact take it personally when I attack an entire gender, as if women are not always in a perpetual state of attack.

In the past I have had thoughts like, ‘my very existence threatens me.’ Can you imagine?

Maybe I do not have all the feminist history, but what I do have are very strong feelings that live in every cell in my body. Does this make me qualified to start and lead a Feminist club?

Immediately after, I scheduled our first meeting. It would take place 2 weeks from then at a nearby coffee shop at 5 PM.

Between that day and the first meetup, 72 members had joined the group, and a lovely group of 11 members showed up to the event.

I had given it a lot of thought, how the event would turn out. But truly no amount of thinking could have prepared me for what it did end up being – and let that be a lesson to just let things unfold as they will. Put an idea, a feeling out there, and experience how the world responds to it.

If any bit of that resonates with you, please subscribe, because I will keep writing. Otherwise, we’d love for you to join us on Meetup.