i'm 5'3" and intimidating. how sad.

Every day in form there are one or two boys who pick on me incessantly because I am a feminist, as if a couple of sexist jokes will somehow convert me. It's nothing serious and nobody really means anything but it is a very good example of how men are intimidated by feminists.

I don't look like a feminist. I wear makeup and do my hair. I roll my shorts up and my skirts don't go to mid-calf. I'm not always buried in books and I don't give men death glares if they try to talk to me. I'm 5'3", an incurable flirt and a relatively normal person. They just can't take it. I don't fit their brain's prototype of an angsty, aggressive, frumpy feminist.

Which makes me, as a feminist, more intimidating. What do I want? What am I after? How would my desires for the relationship between the genders impact men in this day and age?

Men are afraid of women. It is psychologically imbued into the male brain to be afraid of women. They are scared of how our bodies develop, how we grow and bear children; they do not understand female psychology or female strengths and weaknesses because they are so wildly different to a man's, and this ignorance scares them. Historically, men have not been content with being physically stronger than women and have attempted to claim the political, religious and intellectual spheres of life; but in these, ladies, we are equal, and always will be despite men's best attempts to make it otherwise. Women represent something men have no control over, and as women become more politically and socially powerful we become all the more intimidating. This reflects into many things; social, emotional, mental and psychosexual problems in men; an indifference, fear, or hatred towards women, abuse or violence by men against women or what I am experiencing; a rather weak attempt to put me down, with strong undercurrents of hostility and fear of intimidation running underneath. 

Ignorance feeds fear. Fear feeds violence. The battle for equality, my friends, has only just begun; and our first feud is not with men, or even with sexist men; it is with ignorance.