swimming upstream

Going against the cultural paradigm of 'might makes right' maybe seems like a Sisyphean task, maybe even strikes some as ridiculous. My other brother, the one in the middle, once said this to me: I always thought you just didn't get it. Meaning that he believed I was too clueless to get how the world worked.

My response: No. Of course I get it: The world is made by men, for men, to meet mens' needs. My needs and feelings don't even come into it. I totally get that, and there's no way in hell I'm abiding by a set of rules that were designed to be expressly to my disadvantage.

I wasn't quite that eloquent at the time, of course, although I'm pretty sure the first sentence is almost verbatim. I felt very powerfully at the time that what I was saying was absolutely true, even though I had yet to encounter any real feminist writing at that point. The rest of it is a paraphrase, imposing my currently clearer views and understanding of how I feel about it.