Read Boghun’s piece here.
From puberty until the age of fifty, a girl or woman is twice as likely to suffer from an anxiety disorder as a boy or man. In addition, women are more likely than men to have multiple psychiatric disorders during their life; the most common to occur along with anxiety is depression.
Ally Boghun’s piece for Everyday Feminism, “Feminism and Anxiety: How the Movement Changed My Relationship with my Mental Health,” is helpful in that it anecdotally illustrates how some of the ideas inherent to feminism can help people, and especially women, with anxiety in practical ways. She points out at the end that, even while feminism has helped to relieve her from anxiety, she might always struggle with it. It is this point that I want to highlight: the constant struggle that many feminists with anxiety and/or depression endure. Perhaps I feel especially compelled to address this issue because of my own social and professional location as a politically engaged graduate student and feminist in the humanities.
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In her article, Boghun highlights the importance of the safe space that feminism gives her. As a (female) feminist academic, it often bewilders me that some of my (feminist male) colleagues don’t seem to understand the unrelenting negotiations that their female counterparts must make on a daily basis. This is not to say that men can’t fall prey to body image and self-esteem issues as well, but society expects much more from female-presenting bodies. Ula Klein discussed these negotiations in her blog post about BMI on the IJFAB site a few weeks ago. Importantly, Klein stated that feminists must be “continually aware of the negotiations we make on a daily basis between our awareness of these [body image] expectations and our own conformity or non-conformity to them.”
This constant awareness is important and can be empowering, but it can also become frustrating and depressing. And the negotiations we must make do not just concern body image; as Boghun points out, they also concern what we say and do in various quotidian encounters. In short, and to return to my personal anecdote, it is easier to theorize away the reality of everyday living if your body is less enmeshed in its patriarchal structures. As a feminist who is also a woman, I find that these continuous negotiations can become exhausting and anxiety-producing. I ask folks to ponder this and to bring humility and kindness to feminist safe spaces, whether academic, activist, or otherwise.
