Do you have a feminism club at your school?

No, not yet. I’ve been meaning to start one, actually, but I haven’t. I do worry about the backlash it would get.

What do you think would happen?

I mean, there are so many misconceptions. Just the word feminism causes people to react, like, “Oh, you hate men!” and that kind of thing. I don’t know why, but there have been so many Facebook fights about this recently between people at my school.

About feminism, or a particular incident?

Just people getting mad at feminists and saying that feminism is “trying to make women superior.” Which is like so far off the mark! I don’t know why that’s such a big misconception.

I don’t either, except I think it must be rooted in people feeling threatened.

Yeah, totally.

It’s like, imagine if you had—I mean, I know it’s hard to imagine this as a teenage girl, but imagine if you had all the power…

[Laughs]

…and you got all this great stuff based on that power. But you also got a lot of shit for it. And then someone was like, “You don’t get to have all the power anymore.” I bet you it would be hard to just accept that gracefully. You’d be like, “You wanna take the one thing I have?”

Totally! Especially when you don’t even realize the power you have.

Right! When all you focus on is like the shitty parts.

I met her a couple of summers ago, and of course I loved her immediately, but she’s really shy and quiet at first.

Yeah, I think when other people meet her, they might be like, “Oh, that’s just, like, shy Eryn, ” but no, she is, like, FLAWLESS Eryn. ♦

https://www.rookiemag.com/2014/06/friend-crush-24/