For me, it’s not one particular message or adolescent incident that bothers me; it’s the weight of years of multiple messages and multiple incidents. It’s the knowledge that this will never be just one day, just one message, just one hateful person. It’s a chipping away of my sense of safety and my sense of self.

I have a 5-year-old daughter now. I want to prepare her for the inevitable leers and slights without making her fearful. I want to help her become the person she is meant to be, the person she’d form into without the influence of misogyny.

I can tell her what to do if a stranger approaches, teach her about pay inequity or warn her about sexual harassment. But we still have no good way to explain to young women and girls that they need to brace themselves for years of feeling like an object. I don’t know how to talk to my daughter about what all of these small moments of feeling diminished add up to, and what they might do to who she is.

We are in a powerful cultural moment for feminism. It might be the most powerful one the movement has seen. The mischaracterizations of feminists as man haters or humorless shrews are widely seen as just that, powerhouse celebrities are laying claim to the word, and the country may be on the brink of electing its first female president. When I started speaking on college campuses a decade ago, only a few women in the crowd would identify as feminists. Now when I visit, entire rooms of young men and women enthusiastically embrace the term.

It is a much better world for women today, which is precisely why now is the time we can and should talk about feminism’s unfinished work. It’s important that we see #equalpayday trend, or college activists take on campus assault, but these are largely outward-facing issues.

The only advice women seem to get on how to manage their internal lives in a sexist world revolves around changing our behavior: Try not to say “sorry” or “like” as much when we talk.

The feminism that’s popular right now is largely grounded in using optimism and humor to undo the damage that sexism has wrought. Despite the well-worn myth that feminists are obsessed with victimhood, feminism today feels like an unstoppable force of female agency and independence. It is full of positivity and possibility.