Being Bad

I was reading “Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay the other day. In her book, she mentions how she came up with the term “Bad Feminist” and what it means. And what she said made a lot of sense to me. She says, “I embrace the term bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am just trying.. “ And that resonated with me a lot.

When I was a kid, I was raised to be a good girl. This was way before the word feminism was a part of my lexicon. Study well. Respect your elders. Don’t raise your voice. Cross your legs when you sit. Be kind. Smile. And when I was young, it didn’t occur to me to question any of it. But even then some things were obvious. I often heard statements like, “That’s not for girls.” or “Boys can do that, not girls.” and in some part of my budding psyche, I had the nagging feeling that something was not right.

I was raised a good girl because my mom was raised to be one. The term or concept of feminism wasn’t on her horizon either. Back then and honestly even now, the word feminist has only negative connotations attached to it. Like Gay says, ” I was called a feminist and what I heard was, “You are an angry, sex-hating, man-hating victim lady person.”” But I knew there was something unfair about the rules that governed a girl’s life.

The disruption in my good girl upbringing was thanks to my father. He still has a ways to go before being called a feminist because his feminism, while I was growing up, seemed selective. He was always very encouraging of my sister and me. He always encouraged us to dream big dreams, never told us we were limited by our gender, taught us to never believe anyone who told us otherwise, gave us the freedom to speak our minds and form our own opinions. But these freedoms still came with restrictions. He still controlled a large part of our lives and as we grew older the restrictions grew as well. You could say he was trying to protect us from an increasingly unsafe society when he controlled the way we dressed, or our use of makeup or our responses to harassment, but it was again not very “feminist” of him. On some level, I understand his concerns now that I am a parent myself, but back then it was stifling.

But his influence was huge in molding my character. I first came across the word feminist when I was around nine years old. I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. All I knew (from my flawed understanding of the concept) was that feminists were bold. didn’t wear much makeup, believed they were as good as men and hated all men. See how flawed my understanding was? But I was all of 9 and since I had always been brought up to believe I was as good as the next guy, and since I was not very fond of the opposite sex at that point of time, I was all set to jump on board the feminist train.

It was also around this time I started noticing something else. Whenever I spoke my mind or stood up for myself, or expressed an opinion on something or tried to do something that was considered the forte of the male species, I was criticized or ridiculed. I was told I was being tough, that I wasn’t being “nice” and that I wasn’t behaving like a girl. Like Rebecca West said, ” I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” It was hard trying to make myself understood and trying to make others understand what I was saying. As I grew up, my frustrations only mounted. I never managed to make many friends because of my beliefs and attitudes. And back then, I was too angry and too upset as well to have a reasonable dialogue with people. I also didn’t want to get into trouble because I was still being told at home that I had to be a good student and respect my teachers etc.

When I started college, I tried hard to tone down my feminist leanings. My parents still controlled a large aspect of my life including what I wore and how I behaved in public. So I tried to dumb myself down and not express my opinions. I tried to become nice and likable and sweet. I said things like “I believe in gender equality but I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist.” Cue- eye roll. A lot of it also had to do with the fact that the word feminist was and still is used as an insult in the part of the globe I come from. Even now, women are being vilified and harassed for speaking their minds or demanding their rights. But that was also the time I started reading up more about feminism and its principles. As my understanding of the concept grew, so did my conviction that I was a feminist and that there was nothing wrong in referring to myself as one. I finally came to the realization that it wasn’t an insult, and if it was, that was a fault in the understanding of the person using it and not me.

From then on, to this day, I have proudly referred to myself as a feminist. And any time someone expresses opinions that reek of ignorance of the concept, I’ve always tried to educate them. I’ve learned to be my own person and stand up for myself and speak my mind. I’ve learned not to be nice, or compromise for the sake of social acceptance. I educated my husband who in spite of being raised by a very strong woman, was ignorant of the tenets of feminism. And now, I’m in the process of educating my son who I am determined to raise a feminist. I’m not saying I’m perfect. I still encounter situations where I see and hear people making wrong assumptions about the concept and I don’t respond. I still hear women disavow feminism and although I get angry, I keep silent. It is tiring- this battle to be understood and make others understand. Some days I keep it and other days I’m too weary to do battle.

Feminism also has its flaws. There are multiple schools of thought and multiple definitions. There is black feminism, intersectional feminism, ecofeminism, womanism- the list is endless. My thought is simple and coincides with what Gay herself believes. “I believe in equal opportunities for women and men. I believe in women having reproductive freedom and affordable and unfettered access to the health care they need. I believe women should get paid as much as men for doing the same work.” So when someone tries to tell me they don’t believe in feminism, I ask them this- “Do you think men and women deserve equal opportunities in every sphere of life?” And if the answer is yes, I tell them they’re a feminist.

And on the occasion of this Women’s Day, let us all, men and women, make an effort to better understand and embrace feminism. Remember what Kathy Bail said, “Feminists are just women who don’t want to be treated like shit.” And no one wants to be treated like shit, do they?

Raising a boy

Parenting is hard. It is demanding, exhausting and mostly thankless. And as primary caregivers, it is often harder on mothers than fathers. You are responsible for your child’s well being- physical, emotional, mental and in most cases spiritual as well. You are constantly worrying about what your child eats, what he drinks, what he reads, what media he is exposed to, what sport he plays- the list is endless. But then, parenting has always been difficult. “It takes a village”, they say and they’re right. Only in today’s global society, you are the village.

When I was pregnant, I had this quiet conviction that I was going to have a boy. Once D was born, I was at a complete loss on how to raise him. I only had experience around little girls and I was completely flabbergasted on how to go about bringing up a boy. The initial months were easy- you just had to feed him and make sure he wasn’t too warm or too cold. As he grew, so did my disquiet. As a woman, I felt, I was more comfortable connecting with a girl than a boy. After all, all I had to do was teach her from my own personal experiences and those of my friends. I just had to teach her to keep struggling and fighting against the injustices meted out to her, in the same way I had been doing since I was old enough to understand being a girl put me at a disadvantage. I just had to teach her to not conform to society’s expectations from a girl, to fight against patriarchy, to tell her that being a girl did not make her any less of a human being. With a boy, I wasn’t sure where to start.

That was the time the MeToo movement started taking center stage and as I went about reading and doing research and wondering how to start parenting my boy, it hit me. Boys have never had to face any of the disadvantages that girls did. They were never told they weren’t good enough. Ergo, the challenges they faced were different. And they were complementary to the ones girls faced. I realized then that raising a boy wasn’t all that different from raising a girl. It is just that the issues they had to face were different.

The first order of business was trying to raise my son to be as gender neutral as possible. Which meant not conforming to the “blue-pink” madness when he was little to choosing his toys, the books he read and the messages he was exposed to. I’ve always let D pick out his own toys. I’ve never made a conscious effort to direct him to more “masculine” toys like trucks and cars. Granted he loves them but he also loves to cook and play house and I’ve never stopped him from doing those. I’ve never asked my son to “toughen up” and not cry. I’ve taught him in turn that everyone cries and it is yet another way to express emotion. The one time he told me that only girls wear pink, I told him no- colors are a personal choice and it’s not just for girls. He’s dressed up in skirts and tiaras and in superhero costumes. He’s sensitive and frequently needs to be held and cuddled and kissed and I’ve told him that’s a healthy way of expressing affection. He helps out with household chores- cooking, cleaning, folding the laundry, taking out the trash- all traditionally considered to be the forte of girls. I also make sure he sees his dad doing the same things so he understands that household chores aren’t divided based on gender. I’m doing this to make him self-sufficient and also to instill in him this belief that gender doesn’t define what one does or becomes. Hopefully, when he’s older and is bombarded with the kind of sexist messaging and imagery that is so prevalent in today’s world, he will remember these lessons he learned as a child and be strong enough to stand up against them.

This is a world of angry men and angry women. Women’s anger is righteous and stems from centuries of being oppressed, controlled and relegated to the sidelines in all walks of life. Men’s anger stems from a lack of control. It tries to silence the voices of others including women. For ages, men have been taught that they are in control of everything- from their destinies to politics, economics, society, and women. Why else would we still have men making decisions on women’s bodies? Every single mistake they ever made was justified with the nonsensical argument of “Boys will be boys”. They’ve had the world handed to them on a platter and have constantly been told that they could be anyone and have anything they wanted. The whole world was full of successful “men” for them to look up to.

But today, women’s voices are louder than before and it has led to a fundamental shift in the definition of what being a man entails. Today, being a man has come to mean being an ally to women. At least, that’s the way I prefer to think of it. And this means, instead of sticking to the age-old ways of raising boys, we need to raise them more like we raised our girls- to be sensitive, to be compassionate, to be helpful, and most of all to fight against the established world and social order that treats girls differently from boys.

Mind you, I want my son to be tough. I want him to be tough in the sense that he’ll stand up for what is right. I want him to be tough when he stands up against racism, bullying, patriarchy. I want him to be tough in the face of pressure from peers and from a society that will try to fit him into the stereotype of being a man. I want him to be tough when it comes to standing up for his beliefs and convictions. I want him to be tough enough to go against centuries of beliefs that make him the favored sex. I want him to be tough enough to fight eons of deeply entrenched patriarchal systems. I want him to be tough enough to shrug off the venom that will unfailingly be directed at him by a lot of his own gender when he chooses to be an ally for women. But beyond all this, I want my son also to have that innate toughness to choose the kind of person he wants to become- the courage to be his own person not shackled by anyone’s expectations including mine. That’s the toughness that I will welcome and strive to foster in my son.

I am constantly trying to raise my son to not be defined by his gender. And I know there are millions of mother’s like me around the globe trying to raise their son’s to be allies to their daughter and to girls around the globe. Hopefully, these little boys won’t be corrupted by the toxic world environment we see and read about every day and when their time comes, will be, along with the girls,  harbingers of the kind of change the world so desperately needs.

PS: After reading this some of you might feel that a lot of what I’ve written has been generalized. Like the fact that all men have it easy or that all women are angry about their lot in life. Well, there are men who have had tough lives and women who are perfectly happy in patriarchal societies but for the most part, what I’ve mentioned here it true. My writing might also seem very straightforward but as we all know, there are no blacks and whites to anything in life. I’ve just tried to articulate to the best of my ability what I feel and what I’m trying to do. 

Misogyny from the cradle?

Its the year 2016 and yet misogyny seems to be rampant around the globe. From campuses shrugging off sexual assault like its no big deal, to actors and politicians who have no qualms about stating their misogynistic views, and the number of people supporting them, we live in a scary world. And as mother to a two year old son, I try every day in whatever small way I can to make sure he doesn’t grow up feeling entitled because of his gender. And I hold on to some hope that, if not in my lifetime, then maybe in his we’ll see a world free of misogyny in all its forms.

But that hope took a severe beating the other day when I was shopping online for some clothes for myself. The store is a big name retailer that makes clothes mainly targeted at women in their teens and twenties; I saw that they had clothes for kids as well. Now, since I love shopping for D as well, I decided to check out their kids section. Unfortunately they had clothes only for five years and up but as I was randomly scrolling down, my eyes fell on a t- shirt with a message that read, “Sorry ladies, I only date models”. 

I was shocked at first. And then I was mad. Really, really mad. This is a t -shirt meant for boys from ages 5 to 14. As a mother, I wouldn’t even dream of putting my kid in something like this. And neither would a lot of mothers I know. But I cannot imagine how the people who made this, thought that a t- shirt like this was OK for kids as young as 5. I don’t think D would even know who or what a model is at that age. And personally, I don’t like t-shirts with messages on them. I find the messages on kids t- shirts reinforce gender roles at a very young age. I always find messages like “boys will be boys” and “little princess”; and I hate them. Kids are born with no idea about gender roles you know? And these messages just start sending messages to kids that they shouldn’t be seeing or hearing. We are trying to confine them to the gender roles set down by society and severely limiting their creativity, originality and personality.

What scares me more is, what if there are people who think its ok for their kids to wear something like this t- shirt? What if sometime down the line, D meets someone who is wearing this and comes home to ask me who a model is? How do I explain it to him? And when I explain who a model is, what is the message he takes away from it? Will he feel that in spite of the way he looks (not that looks are important) or the kind of person he is, he’s entitled to a female who looks like a model? How much harder will it be for me and the husband to teach him otherwise? As he gets older his peer groups and kids his age will influence him more than us. Imagine him being around children who are sporting these kind of clothes. 

To those of you thinking I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, and its just a message on a t-shirt and its all in good humour; it is not. We live in a world that is increasingly glorifying the male and putting down the female. Sexual assaults and commonplace and are often punished with mere months in prison. Acid attacks are met with nonchalance. Women are stalked and hacked to death in broad daylight. Male celebrities are making rape comments and sexist statements and getting away with it. Women celebrities are being attacked and questioned for simply stating their political views. In a world where women are consistently being portrayed as commodities and second class citizens, I simply DO NOT want my child to be exposed to more of such nonsense at an age when he’s not even old enough make decisions regarding his own food or sleep. 

When parents like me and S are trying our damnedest to ensure that our son doesn’t grow up with preconceived notions about gender roles. When we are trying to teach him that his love for trucks and his love of cooking are equally ok with us. When we are trying to show him that its not just Amma who’s comfortable in the kitchen but Acha as well. When women I know are teaching their daughters that they can be warriors and pirates and Kings, we do not need this nonsense; this utterly disgusting portrayal of male entitlement and reduction of women to chattel. Shame on people like these. And oh, I’m no longer shopping from them anymore.