Why I'm Glad My Mother-In-Law Is a Feminist

My mother-in-law and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of topics, but today I am so thankful she's a proud feminist and let her son know that. It makes me feel a lot better about how my husband and I will raise our son.

He will grow up knowing that a woman's body is her own and not a tool for men to use to prove their own worth.

When a young man thinks that killing women is the proper response to dating rejection, and he leaves a video that feels like a collection of bad pop culture cliches, you can't help but notice that while some of this may be mental health related, at least some of this is cultural. You can't help but notice how a confused young man who looks to the wrong places for dating advice can so easily come away with the idea that female affection is his right as a man. That if women reject him, it's because they're bitches, not because he's socially awkward or just hasn't met the right girl yet.

My husband's story started out a lot like Elliot Rodger's, with the lack of experience with girls and thinking that being a virgin in your early 20's is the most embarrassing thing in the world.

One big difference between him and Roger: he never blamed women for his problems or plotted revenge against an entire gender, like he was owed something from us.

The lesson that my husband and I hope to teach all of our children: When it comes to love and affection, you get to choose who you give that gift to or not, whether or not they think they deserve it. When it comes to other people loving you, that is a gift that they choose to give you or not, whether or not you think you're worthy of it.

Like most women I know, I've dated men who practice the more socially acceptable forms of misogyny - variations on the idea that if a man shows interest, but doesn't force you, you somehow owe him affection or countless other actions that devalue women. Thanks to my husband's feminist mother, he won my eternal respect by treating me with some from the beginning of our relationship, and, even before we had kids, was adamant about teaching his son to treat women the way his mom taught him to treat them.

I've struggled with the term feminist for a long time. Honestly, I'm still dealing with it. But increasingly, events like the one that happened in Isla Vista, make me see the importance of having strong female role models in a kid's life, ones who aren't afraid to call themselves feminists. I've seen first hand the positive impact it can have.