Collective knowledge and schooling has well informed us that America has seen more than its fair share of trials and tribulations.

There have been chapters in this nation’s history where the land of the free and the home of the brave has been anything but.

Thankfully, times have changed from the harrowing institutions of Jim Crow, fulltime suburban wife “as occupation” and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
To be sure, our past is pockmarked by an endless shuffle of two steps forward and one step back.

Change, for all its wild hope, doesn’t necessarily signify incontrovertible improvements. The beauty of the American spirit, however, lies not always in the decisive execution of betterment, but in the promise of an upward momentum, and by virtue of our shared roots: the hallmark of diversity.

The only definition of “American” I know has everything written in it from cis to trans, from black to white, from Christian to Muslim, from immigrant to native and a whole spectrum in the middle.

So long as we have a word, the U.S. is, and always will be, a place and a chance to live out our unique stories, unabridged and uninfringed.

For all this and more, Trump’s election in November rattled me. To be frank, it absolutely enraged me.

How could we consent to taking such a monumental step backward?

More than that, I mourned; what can I do for something that’s already been done? But little did I know how that question served as a white flag in the air when the battle had only just begun.

Trump’s new position was an invitation in disguise, a call to action to look adversity in the face and fight for what we believe in. I never knew that MLK’s declaration that “our lives begin to end the moment we become silent about the things that matter” would ever apply to me as a teenager in 2017.

I was soon reminded that history is made by ordinary individuals with extraordinary courage who decide enough is enough. There’s no age requirement for raising your voice in the name of justice.

That’s where we come in. That’s exactly why I march(ed) in Sacramento a week and a half ago, and why we all must. And that’s why I am a feminist: my favorite f-word.

To those of you who find yourselves averted – before you scoff or roll your eyes – feminism is a term whose meaning has been wrongly muddied and sensationalized by the media.

Had you asked me about my identity with feminism a year ago, I myself would’ve been hesitant to reply in the affirmative.

Contrary to popular belief, true feminism isn’t militant and it isn’t misandristic. It’s intersectional and it’s humanistic. It doesn’t come at the expense of others.

Still, even knowing this, some are quick to claim that “we don’t need feminism because women and men are already equal.”

To which I retort, it simply isn’t so. Though we have come a long way from where we were before, we are not where we need to be.

In this country alone, women are still being dispossessed of fundamental reproductive rights. To make matters worse, advertisements and social norms persist in disparaging and objectifying women’s bodies.

In the workplace, sexism is commonplace and paychecks aren’t proportionate to their male counterparts. From the time they’re girls, women are told that their confidence is brash and aggressive, even when that’s the sort of can-do attitude that’s applauded in men.

Yet, all of the above is very America-centric because in other parts of the world, women are barred from receiving an education, denied the right to vote and sometimes further brutalized for being sexually assaulted. This is not equality. This is not even civil.

As a movement, feminism also strives to dismantle double standards and detrimental social constructs, many of which pertain to the masculine archetype.

It’s no misconception that men are taught that they shouldn’t express their emotions as freely as it’s assumed women do. Where women are expected to don cosmetics, it’s frowned upon for men do the same. It’s perceived as strange when men are stay-at-home dads or nurses, and it’s widely mistaken that men can’t be victims of domestic abuse.

This list only begins to scratch the surface and it represents some of the facts of the current reality, but it doesn’t have to be its terms going forward.

The state of affairs isn’t just a women’s rights problem, it’s a human rights problem.

To say that we’re a part of the solution is an understatement. Each and every one of us has the potential to affect positive change, to pull our brothers and sisters up with us.

One of the popular rallying cries at the march was the declaration, “WE WILL NOT GO BACK.”

Now’s the time to prove it.