I grew up with a feminist mom and the understanding that, as someone coming from a position of (relative) privilege, it was my job to speak up when things weren't fair.
The generation I grew up in was the beginning of "stand up for yourself," whether being a singer-songwriter or a feminist. In my college years, the feminist movement was really coming to fore, so we wouldn't have put up with guys treating us less than equal.
There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things.
I don't know that I ever bought into the "American dream." I was a child of privilege. I grew up in the '50s and it was a quiet time in America, at least on the surface and I grew up in a kind of feathery bed of privilege.
My mom was a big feminist, and when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to have typical girl toys: she did not let me have dolls. Barbies were banned in our household. She read feminist books to me; my mom was a major feminist.
My mom had beautiful clothes. My mom is elegant; my mom is glamorous. But my mom is also really real, and I grew up with a mother who had babies crawling on her head and spitting up on her when she was wearing gorgeous, expensive things, and it was never an issue.
Where I grew up in Dallas, things might be a little more traditional. People have the same things in mind. They're supposed to grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, and have children, grandchildren. That's the world I grew up in.
I grew up in a bit of a feminist fantasy with a single mom. I was totally shielded, in a way, from an idea that I couldn't do something.
I grew up with a single mom who was a waitress. We were on food stamps. My mom then got Pell Grants, put herself through college to get a degree to get a better job. Because we were broke, I then had to go to a state school. I went to Temple University, and had to get loans. So I grew up in a world where I saw the government helping individuals pull themselves up, and saw it work very successfully.
I grew up in a feminist household in Hackney, East London, my mum was responsible in many ways for the feminist stain on the socialist party, and my dad had really strong feminist leanings.
I have never been political, which for a straight white man that's kind of a byproduct of privilege growing up that I was kind of like, "Who cares who the president is, everything is coming up privilege." But now things are so scary and crazy and I have to say I'm not a fan of Trump at all. I don't agree with him in any way.
I'm a feminist; I grew up with feminism, but I also think there's a way in which we need to shake things up so that we can push it further and in other directions.
I grew up in a small town in the Mojave Desert where conservative Republicans were as common as cacti. Inexplicably, I grew up liberal and a feminist.
I'm more straightforward, and I speak up more than I did before. When I was younger, I wouldn't speak up as much, but now that I'm a mom, things have changed.
I grew up in a world where authority was female. I never thought to call myself a feminist because of branding. I had this skewed idea of feminist: I thought it meant being a woman who hates men. When I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists, I was like, "Oh, this is what my mom taught me. This is simple. I don't understand why everybody is not this."
I grew up with a single mum, an immigrant mum who couldn't speak the language, no money, three kids on her back, coming from Rwanda, and she's done a sterling job with all three of us.
It is an absolute privilege to be able to speak another language and have it be something you grew up with. I think it's a very important thing and I think that everywhere else in the world people speak more than one language.