Feminism: a young girl at uni

(Another brief version of my background!)

I was a feminist a long time before uni, without really knowing what the word meant. I wanted equal rights at school, but I didn't feel I really got anywhere until I was at an all-girls grammar doing my A Levels. Prior to that, I'd had to fight for it to even be recognised that we had periods which affected us!

My brother said he was embarrassed that his sister was fighting for women's rights.

I SAID I WAS EMBARRASSED THAT I HAD TO!

Uni

At uni it seeemed automatic that the boys made more noise, played more games, had more say in the rules, and were allowed more toilets.

But they had reckoned without us \"Three Thorns\" who shared a mini-dorm., We'd ensured that it was a 'female first' zone and that boys were NEVER allowed into our bathroom. We sent them down a floor to the boys' room!

The Changes

Trouble was that, in the past, girls had basically let the macho fiends get on with running the place. WE however raised simple items like \"why are the boys changing rooms twice as big as the girls? Shouldn't it be the other way round?\" and \"why is the minibus always driven by a boy?\"

The boys tried \"because more boys play sport, because boys sports have leagues so boys come from elsewhere to compete, because boys are better drivers, because no girl wants to drive it\".

Well, you can imagine which comment Julie and I pounced on!

(\"Are you drunk?\"; \"Have you seen the statistics?\")

STRIKE 1

Then we demolished the \"no girl wants to drive it\" by both volunteering to (and then womanfully coping with a horrible gear lever when we did drive it!).

STRIKE 2

We said \"Why should girls coming from elsewhere to compete with us have to cram into only 6 changing cubicles?\"

STRIKE 3

Which left the toilets.

Apart from bathrooms in dorms, there were 12 cubicles for the girls, 9 for the boys.

and SIXTEEN urinals - which certainly weren't for us!!

Anyway we got that sorted too.

It did mean that for a while we had four urinals in what had become a girls' bathroom.

But we planted flowers in them!