Gender is really varied and complicated and sort of infinitely individualistic.

I write to figure out what I am thinking: What does my life mean?

Feminism's agenda is basic: it asks that women not be forced to "choose" between public justice and private happiness. It asks that women be free to define themselves-instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men.

the point of feminism ... is to win women a wider range of experience. Feminism remains a pretty simple concept, despite repeated - and enormously effective - efforts to dress it up in greasepaint and turn its proponents into gargoyles.

The piles of makeup and the insistence on frills and ribbons and bows was not at all attuned to my feminist views.

My goal is to be accused of being strident.

It's fine to dress in polka dots and pink crinoline if you want. What I recoil from is the idea that that alone is the only way to be female.