There was no bright light, no Damascus road
Feature today in the Women section in Guardian G2, Six leading feminists recall the writing that first opened their eyes to the women's movement.
You know, I don't recall any of the works of feminism that I read 'opened my eyes' to the subject: they confirmed my existing predisposed notions, they perhaps expanded my thoughts, and were gratifying in that it was very encouraging to discover other people thinking along those lines, but I was already a feminist.
Even though I grew up in the 1950s.
Some key elements:
First day at primary school, the only boy on our table in the classroom appropriates the nicer items (storage box, copies of reading book, etc) on grounds that he is a boy.
Feature in the back of some girls' magazine (one that we got passed on by friends, might have been Girls' Crystal or School Friend): 'Are you feminine or a feminist?' (this was one of those ongoing X or Y back page features). And I knew (aged 7? 8? 9?) which one I was.
Other girls' magazines - Girl in particular - which I now suspect did have a stealth feminist agenda during those dark days for the women's movement, with their stories about women with serious jobs (even if these did tend to be e.g. nursing rather than being an actual doctor) and their historical stories about the Pankhursts, Florence Nightingale, and other female pioneers and achievers.
My mother. She had, way back in my childhood, concept that I might have a proper career rather than fill-in till marriage job. And later, during teens, got v irate at people who wondered that they were keeping me on at school, since it was pointless educating girls. (This possibly had to do a bit with her, unlike her brothers, being taken out of school at 16 and given secretarial training.)
So reading the classics of feminism (because I was in my final year at university before the second wave really burst upon us) was about recognition and confirmation, not revelation.