An ancient blog post from 2017 started with this line:
A week and a half ago, I was told by a friend of mine – under the influence of a whole bottle plus two glasses of wine – that because I’m not afraid of going out and going travelling on my own, I am “the ultimate feminist”.
I wrote a whole blog about it which I made private earlier in the year while I re-thought it all and re-wrote it from 2026’s point of view. On the one hand, writing two whole blogs on the basis of a drunken comment meant to be taken no more seriously than “I luv you, I do” seems madness. On the other hand, is frivolous adventure meant to inject a bit of meaning into life really feminist in any way? And on the third hand – do forgive me the third hand, I didn’t know where this was going when I started – yes, travelling solo is very much a feminist act.
I mean, as feminist acts in my life go, nearly nineteen years as an adult Girlguiding volunteer (plus two or three as a Young Leader and a year or two as what was called back then a Pack Leader, a Guide who helps with a younger section, in this case Brownies) surely counts for more. “We help all girls know they can do anything” etc. At time of writing, we’re doing a space-themed evening at Brownies tonight, inspired partly by our low Have Adventures theme minutes and partly by Artemis II. We’re back at boat club, first one tonight too, so we’re giving them confidence to try new things and learn new skills and have new adventures. My Rangers have recently been concentrating on the Take Action theme and it turns out some of them have some very strong political opinions and know all about getting their voices heard. So that’s my day-to-day act of feminism. Now we just need Girlguiding to find that loophole their task group is hunting for to allow trans members back in and we’ll all be set.
Is it feminist, let alone “the ultimate feminist” to jump on six trains to spend a few days exploring spa towns in West Bohemia? That I can plan and execute this trip without male assistance or permission? I’m well aware of how recent it is that women can do things without male assistance; it wasn’t until 1975 that we could open bank accounts, apply for loans and get credit cards without a husband or father to sign off on any of them. I have friends who were alive in 1975, who lived through that time. We’re still less than a century away from women winning voting equality. Even the 1918 act would have me still disqualified today on the grounds of being neither a “householder” nor the wife of one although I might have squeaked in as a graduate of a British university if I still lived and voted in my university town. These things we take so much for granted.
How long ago would I have been expected to have a chaperone of some kind if I wished to travel? Not necessarily from law but from societal expectations. Could my grandmothers have gone off on their own to another country? Well, until 1953, women were just written into their husband’s passports, the same way children were until I was in my mid-teens, and couldn’t use them without the husband’s presence, and it took until 1983 for them to not require their husband’s approval on their own applications. So no, my grandmothers literally couldn’t have gone abroad on their own until they were into their 20s or nearly 30s.
So I’m the first of my line – the female sides anyway – to be able to apply for my very own passport all by myself. Underappreciated feminist act, holding a passport that didn’t require male approval anywhere in the process. As I said, until I was in my mid-teens, children were just written into a parent’s passport so I didn’t get my own passport until I was fourteen and I know I didn’t apply for that all by myself but when it expired, I was at university and I vividly remember running around Canterbury looking for a working photo machine so I guess I did the second one all by myself. But that’s not a feminist act, that’s the act of no longer being a literal child facing governmental paperwork for the first time.
And so we come to the travel. I struggle a bit to put things going on in my life in the context of general life – the same person who drank the wine and made the declaration that started all this these days goes for the “you’re totally autistic” line when he’s drunk these days and while he’s actually qualified to diagnose (ethics would probably disallow him from officially diagnosing a personal friend, so not official diagnosis for me), when I sit and think about it, I can’t see how my existence or my mind or my anything is dramatically different from everyone else’s. Am I just too close to it to see it? Is everyone else just too autistic too for me to stand out? Or should I just stop listening to anything he says after the first glass of wine?
Similarly, I can’t really see how my adventures are anything out of the ordinary. Oh, when I compare it to the people at my last job who were strictly package holidays with the whole family types, or spending a year’s salary on a caravan and a year’s salary on getting it fit to be used, all so that they could drive it an hour from home, yes, it looked different. Perhaps I spend too much time on travelgram, following too many travel creators, influencers and enthusiasts, who make many of my trips look small, petty and frivolous. The online travel space, by the way, seems dominated by women – or do I just follow them disproportionately? It didn’t feel massively female-dominated when I went to Traverse two years ago, the travel creators’ conference in Tbilisi, not the way Instagram and YouTube both feel massively female-dominated.
It’s the same as the “you’re so brave” comment. I don’t see it. What am I doing that requires any bravery at all? Oh… oh… do you actually mean that you’d be too scared to get on a plane alone when you’re towing around that useless husband of yours who can’t even be trusted to hold his own passport, let alone get to the right airport at the right time? You’re doing exactly what I’m doing, honey, only you don’t realise it because you’re also bringing a six-foot balding toddler-man along with you.
Let’s go back a bit. In the late 90s and early 2000s, when I was a teenager and a young adult, I thought we’d cured all social ills. Sexism, racism, ableism, all finished. I maintain that things were better with all three back then in many ways but especially the sexism. Twelve years old, looking at the Spice Girls shouting “Girl Power!”, all the rights of men signed over so us – what more could we ask? And then I think social media came along and from “get in the kitchen and make me a sammich”, a new kind of sexism seemed to emerge, a more surface-level one which mostly consists of sulky inadequate men muttering and yet boys and men who weren’t sulky and inadequate start listening and repeating it a little louder. Suddenly, “girls can do anything” feels less like the “yes, fire hot, water wet, sky blue” statement it was in my younger years and more like something we need to start clinging to and shouting about again. I know it’s no real belief that girls and women can’t do things, it’s just men who don’t know how to do anything more practical about the fact that they’re useless in so many ways and it’s not all men, not by a long way but it’s only men. We do have women trying to one-up each other, putting others down to pull themselves up but that’s mostly sneers at other women’s lifestyle decisions rather than any of this “women can’t do this or that” talk.
And so we’re back to the original question. Does solo travel make you “the ultimate feminist”? If it does, I’m sharing the title with a lot of other women. Is it the ultimate act of feminism to enjoy my independence? Is it the ultimate act of feminism to decide to do what I want to do regardless of attempts to put me off? Is it the ultimate act of feminism to decide how my own life is going to go? Because at this stage in the 21st century, most women are deciding what their own lives are going to look like and it doesn’t make me any more or less of a feminist if my decisions are different to theirs. Is taking a selfie at a tiny commuter station on the edge of Prague a more feminist decision than choosing to marry the man you’ve loved since you first laid eyes on him? Is hiking out to a volcano a more feminist decision than creating new human life? It’s what suits me more – for me, marrying a suitable man and popping out a baby would be lying back and giving in to the demands of society as if a century of growing independence and gaining rights never happened but that’s the point of growing independence and gaining rights, that you get to choose! Generations of women fought for my right to choose not to go down a path that’s wrong for me and for your right to choose to go down a path that’s right for you and the world would be very crowded if we all chose the same path.
Yes, choosing solo travel does make me an ultimate feminist. But everyone else who’s chosen for herself is also an ultimate feminist and whether we have the freedom to choose for ourselves or not, it doesn’t make anyone more of a feminist or a better feminist or even a better person, unless you’re actively working to prevent people having that choice.
Sounds like time for some more wine.
I Am A Polar Bear 