"I've got 36 expressions, sweet as pie and as tough as leather."

I do a lot of my best thinking when I'm accomplishing everyday tasks, like brushing my teeth or shampooing my hair. As I brushed my teeth the other night, some thoughts occurred to me. I suddenly was able to pinpoint the exact moment in my life at which I understood that all things are not equal between the sexes. Men and women are not the same, and men and women certainly are not viewed or treated as equals. Girls are likely to get the short end of the stick in many things. In that moment, I remember being confused, and painfully surprised, but most of all, angry. Even though I had no understanding of the concept, I've decided that was the precise point in time at which I became a feminist.

I've told this story before. I'm not really sure why I was thinking about this the other night as I brushed my teeth before bed. I was in third grade. The two third grade classes would be giving a group performance of a poem called "Gracie at the Bat," in which the poem would be recited aloud by about sixty third graders, and a few others would act out the story on stage simultaneously. There were very few parts to be played, and with the single exception of Gracie, all the stage parts were for male characters. Even so, role tryouts were open to all third graders. At no time did anyone tell me that it would be better for the girls to try out for the cheerleading dance number in the middle of the performance (I really wish I was kidding about that, but I'm not) rather than try out for one of the male parts. In fact, for anyone to have done so would have been a pretty ridiculous hypocrisy, as the entire "moral of the story" for the production was that Gracie's ability to play baseball should not be determined based on her sex, but on her skills.

So, many children tried out during recess on the particular day, and I decided to try out for the part of either Lefty or Righty, twins who would be one of only three Muddeville players left to try and win the game. No boys tried out for the parts. No other girls besides myself and one other girl tried out either. Since we could both read the necessary lines well, and since I had experience with performing on stage (Big Bad Wolf, a male part, the year before), Mrs. Wittenburg told us we had the parts. I remember later on during recess, Mandy and I discussed the fact that I should be Righty and she should be Lefty because I was right-handed, and she left-handed. We were very excited to be part of the performance in this special way. I wasn't afraid to play this part; after all, I had handled playing a wolf pretty well.

It wasn't as though there weren't any boys already slated to appear on stage. Several boys from the third grade had tried out to be baseball players on both teams. I don't remember how much time elapsed before my epiphany about gender inequality and the state of the world when it comes to male and female arrived. It might not have even been a full day. It was a very short time, anyhow. I had barely gotten excited about the part when Ms. Okomoto said she wanted to talk to me. The classroom was empty except for me and her. I was seated at my little desk with the name tag that I had colored at the beginning of the year. I remember feeling immediately uneasy, sensing that something bad was about to happen. I don't think I worried that I was in trouble; I was almost never in trouble enough to have the teacher talk to me alone. But I knew that whatever it was, it wasn't good.

So, there I was, sitting at my desk, waiting. She bent down so she was at eye level with me, and she proceeded to tell me in a gentle and cautiously soothing tone, as though she fully expected the things she was going to say would upset me, that even though they had given the parts of Lefty and Righty to me and Mandy, we would not be playing those parts. They felt it would be better if boys played those parts instead. But as a consolation, we would be given minor stage parts as members of the Muddeville team. Because I was in the presence of an authority figure, and what she said seemed to make sense, I just nodded my head, said okay, and didn't get too upset about it. That wasn't the moment of my epiphany.

It was in the moments afterward when I really thought about what had just happened that the realization arrived. I was confused. Why, if they wanted only boys to play those parts, had they given them to me and Mandy at all? Why, if it was so important for boys' parts to be played by boys, had they taken away boys' parts and then given us boys' parts? Why were they giving the parts to boys if no boys were even interested in playing those parts? What was so wrong with girls playing boys' parts? I had done it before, and no one had objected. I remember not wanting to argue with authority or question their judgement, but the longer I thought about it, the more wrong it felt. And later, when we practiced and then performed, every time we recited the final line, "It's not who's male or female, but who can hit the ball!" it sounded so hollow.

And I knew. I knew that that was not true. It is who is male or female. It matters if you're a boy or a girl. Being a girl sometimes means that you won't be allowed to do the same things as boys. And that knowledge stung. It also explained the sense of entitlement that some of my male classmates seemed to carry with them like some kind of mantle, or weapon. I'm a boy, so I have the power. The message was newly clear to me, but what was more unsettling to my third grade self was that boys often had the upper hand because it was given to them. I had no idea why, and that made me angry.

So that was when I became a feminist. Sometimes I think that I was actually born into being a feminist because of how I lived and who I lived with and what I grew up with, but I really didn't understand just exactly what position I was in, being female in this world, until that fateful juxtaposition of losing a part in a third grade play because I was not a boy and "Gracie and the Bat" and it's flat, hollow message that it shouldn't matter if a person has a penis or a vagina, all that matters is who has the talent and the skills to get the job done.

Even in third grade, even though I wanted that to be the truth, I knew it wasn't after my epiphany and entrance into awareness. Of course it makes me angry, but it also makes me sad that we teach our children gender equality and not to discriminate based on sex, but hypocrisy still wins out in the end. Maybe there's some little girl right now who is just realizing the limitations already placed on her simply because she was born without a Y chromosome.

And now she's a feminist too.