At Benicia High School, education does not always stop when the lunch bell rings. Over the years, BHS has been host to a number of clubs where students can discuss topics such as the environment, Christianity, LGBTQ rights and providing assistance to the military to fellow club members and educate the student body at large.

New this year is Benicia High’s Gender Equality Club, which meets Wednesdays at lunch in social science teacher Sadie O’Neill’s room to talk about issues facing gender today, whether female or male, trans or cis and so on.

Club President Caitlyn Clark, a junior, said the idea for the club came toward the end of the previous year as female students were expressing concerns over the school’s dress code.

“There was a small movement of people who were trying to change the way that the dress code targets girls in particular in a way that’s really oversexualizing and makes girls feel uncomfortable or guilty for wearing clothes that make themselves feel good,” she said.

Clark was approached through Twitter with the idea of starting a feminism club.

“I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I realized it was something that was really necessary to have on campus,” she said.

Clark is no stranger to feminism. From a young age, her mother had raised her and her sister to be independent and instilled core principles. She became interested in the political side of feminism in eighth grade when she began working with a San Francisco-based slam poetry organization called Youth Speaks.

“I met a lot of people who were really passionate about gender issues and intersectional feminism,” she said.

Clark also began reading a lot of pieces on feminist theory on social media, and it continued to shape her outlook.

“Understanding intersectional feminist theory when I was 13 was really important in shaping the way I view the world today,” she said.

The club has discussed several topics related to gender, including the history of feminism, ecofeminism and the morality of marketing items as feminist, even if they were made overseas by women of color through exploitative labor.

“We definitely talk about more nuanced issues so that we as feminists can do better in spaces and better ourselves as people and be more conscious of the decisions that we make on a day-to-day basis,” Clark said.

Another goal of the club is to promote a more inclusive version of feminism, as Clark noted that transgender women are often excluded in certain feminist circles.

“They’re not seen as real women, and that’s something that’s really terrible,” she said. “We definitely are trying to fight that stigma and welcome trans women into our spaces.”

Beyond the discussions, the club has also partaken in several activities related to gender rights. At Wednesday’s meeting, the club discussed making posters of inspirational female figures in honor of Women’s History Month and setting up a women’s booth for the school’s upcoming College and Career Fair on April 26. In the past, the club has made posters to hold up during the Homecoming Parade, went to Vallejo to attend a screening of the Oscar-nominated movie “Hidden Figures” and hosted a screening at the Benicia Teen Center of the Netflix-produced documentary “Audrie & Daisy,” about two high school girls who were victims of sexual assault and cyberbullying.

Clark is especially proud of when the club hosted a week of activities back in January known as Consent Week to clear up some of the misconceptions regarding consent.

“It’s taboo sometimes to talk about consent,” she said. “We have health classes that tell you not to have sex, and if you do, use protection. They don’t really teach you what consensual sex is and what is not, such as when things become toxic.”

“There’s been a lot in the media lately regarding high-profile cases of sexual assault, and it’s something that was really important to address on our campus,” she added.

During the week, Clark led a seminar on the basic rules of consent using materials that were donated through a nonprofit organization called SafeBAE, Benicia Middle School P.E. teacher Yvette Brown came in to teach a class on self-defense and the club designed a mural that was hung in the lobby for several weeks.

“It was really great to see something that was ignored for a long time finally put out into the open and talked about,” she said. “I think it’s really important for everyone to know, especially in high schools.”

Clark encourages all students to come to a meeting, even if they do not consider themselves to be feminists. In fact, male students have often attended meetings and men’s issues are discussed as well.

“I think a lot of people have some really weird misconceptions about feminism, like we hate men,” she said. “We’re really just trying to bring to light issues people of every gender face. I think it’s important that everybody gets involved and works together to make our school more inclusive.”

Clark said it is especially important to have such a club available at the high school level because of how it can empower teen girls.

“High school culture can be really toxic to women in particular, whether it’s the way that we’re treated because of the way that we talk or the way that we dress,” she said. “I think it’s important to provide a space for girls to connect with each other and support each other at a time when, in high school, girls are really pitted against each other. We have all these parts of our culture perpetuated by the media that say girls in high school are supposed to be catty and hate each other. I think it’s important to have a presence on campus that provides an outlet for girls in a lot of ways and provides knowledge for everyone on how to support each other.”