Becoming a feminist is a little like losing your virginity: what at first manifests as a disappointing set of revelations about the world is often the beginning of meaningful new experiences and deep kinds of fulfilment. In my experience, feminist metamorphosis happens in a number of predictable stages, which one might adumbrate as follows:

1 The scales patriarchy so painstakingly glued to your eyeballs fall away.

2 It burns! It burns! There follows a searingly painful period during which all you can see is gender inequality and sexism, where once there was meritocracy and cheeky banter. You feel powerless. You can’t shut up about it. No one invites you to dinner parties.

3 You find people who do not want you to shut up about it. They are called other feminists. Together, you strategise, organise and improve things. You believe in the possibility of equality again. You’re part of a righteous movement that’s changing the world. The parties are awesome! Yeah!

But let’s be honest with each other: do you ever secretly long for the eye-scales to be momentarily restored? Do you – sometimes – wish you could watch Pretty Woman without trying to ascertain its implied stance on sex workers’ rights? Are there things you used to like that feminism, frankly, has ruined for you? Of course there are. Today, I’m going to take a moment to mourn 10 of mine.

My cat

Frida Katlo arrived in a duffel bag, because her previous owner didn’t have a cat carrier. Her head popped out, and I thought, “Uh-oh. That’s unfortunate.” Frida’s markings make her look as though she’s wearing a fake moustache that is slowly sliding off her face. Imagine if Dalí had painted an inebriated, furry Stalin. That’s my cat. The rest of Frida slithered, like a gelatinous swamp thing, from the depths of the bag. Two pendulous sacks of fat swung from her middle and brushed the floor as she explored her new surroundings. If I had seen Frida Katlo before I agreed to adopt her, I would not have agreed to adopt her. Frida is ugly. Frida is fat. I have an ugly, fat cat.

‘Would I care about Frida’s wonky moustache if she were a boy-cat?’ Illustration: Mikel Jaso

But would I even care about Frida’s wonky moustache if she were a boy-cat? Am I gendering Frida, who, as a cat, probably doesn’t have a gender, and imbuing her with all sorts of patriarchal assumptions about what girl-cats should look like? Am I body-shaming her? Is the ludicrously expensive diet cat food with which I have been lovingly starving her (with little success) for her at all, or is it symptomatic of my own battles with media-generated beauty ideals? I thought getting a pet was supposed to reduce stress. Not for feminists, apparently.





Catholicism

There are all sorts of lovely things about growing up Catholic. So you did something bad, little girl? Don’t worry. Simply go into this darkened box with this creepy old man and tell him your secrets. When you come out, your soul will be sparkly clean. (For those of you who have never made a confession, I can inform you the clean soul feeling is really nice. Ah, a brand new leaf.) When you’re seven, you get dolled up in a mini wedding dress to eat Jesus’s body and everybody gives you money. That’s brilliant, too – I bought a holy bicycle. Or whenever you’re feeling a bit confused and you know there’s a heavenly Father you can talk to in your head, and lots of godly men around to tell you what to do. Oh. Wait…

It’s not only Catholicism that’s ridiculously sexist, of course; it’s most major monotheistic religions. Worshipping a male deity is not terribly compatible with the whole “women and men are equal” thing. As a Christian generally, but especially when your church has an all-male clergy, you’re taught to conceptualise power and goodness as masculine. This is an excellent way of making women accept patriarchy and keeping them in their celestially decreed place. This said, I think it must be easier to stop being a Protestant than to stop being a Catholic. Catholic churches and cathedrals are so darn arty; seven sacraments mean that someone’s constantly having some kind of sacrament-based booze-fest; and there are certainly times when I wish that, instead of the messy business of apologising and making amends, I could just go into a darkened box with a creepy old man and get him to wash my soul.

Anna Karenina

‘I loved that book. Now all I can see is a grimly gendered morality tale.’ Illustration: Mikel Jaso

Oh, Anna, how sexy I found your story when first I read it as a horny west of Ireland teenager with no access to erotic material. How desperately romantic was your burning love for Vronsky, consummated breathily in a vestibule. You spurned the dull affections of your ugly eared husband; you listened to your heart, but – Anna! – your society was not ready for your passionate soul.

Years later, I returned to your story as a feminist. Big mistake. First, the hot sex scenes I remembered didn’t exist: my teenage imagination had simply invented them out of desperation. Seriously, all that buildup, then it’s over in two minutes and you cry afterwards? Anna, girl, you’ve got to find your clitoris. And, second, your problem with your husband is his ears? Not the fact that he married you when you were little more than a child and seems to think of you as an attractive, pleasant, son-bearing thing? And finally, when Big Ears finally offers you a divorce, why don’t you just take it? Because you’ve gone loolah from the sex? It doesn’t make sense. Stupid feminism. I loved that book. Now all I can see is a grimly gendered morality tale: ladies, keep it in your pants or you’ll get squished by a train.

Bras

Bras – pretty, patterned, lacy things. Making your boobs look inhumanly spherical and providing entertainment when lovers try to remove them. But one morning as I was getting dressed, I thought, “Why have I been strapping this contraption of cloth and wire to my upper torso for over a decade?” The shoulder straps would indicate that it’s a load-bearing device, designed to aid with the transport of heavy objects. I am modestly titty. There is no load to bear. I realised that I wore a bra only to hide my nipples. And what’s wrong with my nipples? Why should I apologise for my female physicality by wearing a surgical support every day of my adult life? So I stopped attaching the elaborate nipple-disguiser to my chest. I’m really a lot more comfortable now. However, despite a clear lack of milkshake, my nipples continuously bring all the boys to the yard. And, unlike Kelis, I do not regard a yard full of pervy boys as a cause for celebration.

Dancing on bars

Or tables, or poles, while free shots materialise from the ether. As a feminist, I think it’s dismaying that young women are sucked into raunch culture and learn to equate their social value with porny writhing for the sexual pleasure of men. On the other hand, dancing on bars is fun. I’m glad that I got plenty of it in before I became politicised and while my liver could handle all the free tequila.

Television. All of it

I can’t watch television. Not since feminism happened. No more flopping on the couch with my loved ones for Mock The Week: I can’t get past the fact that all seven comedians are male. Though, admittedly, the only thing worse is when they get a token girl on and don’t let her speak. It’s no good changing the channel. Every other station is pumping out programming based on maddening gender stereotypes, putting it out into the collective mind of a populace that accepts the prejudice as if it is normal, as if it is perhaps the offshoot of innate genetic differences between men and women. Breathe. Breathe. Remember to breathe.

I stopped watching television in 2012 when I realised that I had written five letters of complaint to television stations and advertisers in the space of a month. My letters said things such as, “I do not need a flock of women in bikinis to sell me contact lenses.” I had reached peak-feminist.

I now live in a little bubble of carefully curated content. In my bubble, films directed by women are as common as films directed by men. Girls are funny. Rape isn’t funny. The bubble is amazing. Yes, I realise that, in this regard, I’ve simply replaced the patriarchy scales with feminism blinkers. But sometimes blinkers are the most humane option.

Monogamy

You’re a feminist. You’re questioning the gender-related norms in the world around you, trying to figure out which ones are oppressive (eg, sexual objectification; domestic violence; workplace discrimination) and which ones are OK (lipstick). And you begin to feel that a social system in which people claim rights of sexual ownership over each other’s bodies, and get very angry when these exclusive rights are violated, is a system so deeply imbued with patriarchal capitalist ideology as to make gender equality impossible.

You take your head out of the theoretical clouds and look at the grounded reality of monogamy. You see lying, cheating, shame, even violence, and you think: is this because of love? Or is it because of the idea that we own the sexual function of the people we love? Love should make us happy (I’m looking at you, Anna Karenina). Yet jealousy, so often an excuse for abuse, is romanticised by the logic of monogamy, while love is vilified. Surely, with compassion, commitment and communication, we can find the courage to love differently. Polyamory is the future!

Compassion, commitment and communication are a lot of bloody work, though. Primary partners, secondary partners: all replete with complex emotions. Sometimes, at 1am on Friday night, when you just want to be out dancing with your friends but are, instead, “processing” with a partner new to poly, you wonder, ‘When did life become one long conversation about everyone’s feelings?’ You remember being 21, and trying to stop your boyfriend from punching a bloke who asked for your number while he was in the jacks. Brutal, yes, but alluringly simple.

Thomas The Tank Engine

When I was little, I listened to Ringo Starr narrate so much Thomas The Tank Engine on my Fisher-Price tape player that I began speaking with a distinctly Liverpudlian accent. Percy was my favourite – sensitive wee fellow. I loved cranky Gordon, too, especially when he called Percy a “Nincompoop”, which was my best word until I wasn’t allowed to use it any more. But there weren’t any girl engines, only Annie and Clarabelle, Thomas’s carriages, who were naggy and annoying.

When I have kids, I’m not going to read them Thomas The Tank Engine story books, even though I remain fond of those anthropomorphic locomotives. I don’t want my hypothetical but adorable offspring to learn that boys are the engines and girls are the carriages. But they can call me a nincompoop all they like.

My bike

Outside my professional life, I have a regrettably gendered skill-set. I can cook, sew and apply eyeliner in a moving vehicle. I’m good at hugging sad people, playing sweet little songs on the guitar, and knowing when to open a bottle of wine. I like all of these stereotypically girlie aspects of myself. What I don’t like, however, is that I’m so bad at the stereotypical boy stuff – mechanics, DIY; you know, the skills my brothers were busy learning from Dad while Mum and I experimented with roux in the kitchen. So, last year, I decided that instead of taking my bike to the shop for its annual check-up, I was going to join a collective and learn how to turn those nuts and bolts for myself.

‘Outside my professional life, I have a regrettably gendered skill-set.’ Illustration: Mikel Jaso

The first time I went, I was there for three hours, ruined a good shirt, fixed my brakes and, afterwards, felt an inordinate amount of pride to be riding around on a vehicle that I made with my own bare hands (kind of).

The second time I went, I was there for three hours, didn’t manage to fix the problem with my front wheel, couldn’t ride my bike home, and was late for dinner as well as a deadline.

The third time I… I didn’t go a third time. My bike has been sitting sadly in the hall for months, because I haven’t been back to the collective, but I’m too stubborn to take it to the shop. It’s feminism’s fault my bike is broken.

Picasso

I studied Picasso in school and once spent a whole day at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. I was a fan. But that was before I became a feminist. When I went to see a Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern with my mum a few years ago, my internal monologue went a bit like this: “Object, object, object, boobs, object, object, woman-object, boobs, object, object, object, boobs.”

Afterwards, I needed to feminist so bad. It’s not a good idea to feminist at my mum, because she doesn’t think sexism is a thing, but I was going to burst if I didn’t. “Mum?” I ventured. “Did you notice that the subject matter was basically objects and women painted as though they were objects?”

“What?” said Mum, an eyebrow raised suspiciously against the threat of more feminist malarkey.

I tried a different tack: “Did you notice that there were a lot of boobs?”

She nodded. “There were a lot of boobs, yes.”

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to tide me over until I got back to the other feminists.

• Emer O’Toole’s Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts And Daring To Act Differently is published in paperback by Orion at £12.99.