#15: Feminism 101
For young boys and men like me.
I’ve recently started considering myself as a feminist but often, it is hard to have a discussion or argument with people unless you have some well formed opinions derived from real world examples. While I may believe that the world is systemically unequal for 50% of the population, when it comes to relaying that point to virtually anyone - family, friends or those who’re just blatantly sexist (especially those, actually) - one’s understanding of the issues needs to be sound, lest you find yourself bogged down by the stupidest reasons and stories people use to justify sexism.
A friend recently suggested a book by the famous feminist author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
After a particularly frustrating bout with misogyny at work, she asked me to read this book in a bid to understand where she was coming from.
It is a thin book comprising 15 short suggestions Chimamanda gives to her friend on how to raise a feminist girl.
This simple read was illuminating to say the least and I hope to consolidate some of my learnings here. Most of what you read below is directly picked up from the book.
On the Feminism Tools
Sexism is a multidimensional problem and hence feminism is often contextual without a single response that fits all situations.
However, there are two ‘feminist rules’ that Chimamanda employs as her starting blocks -
The Feminist Premise: “I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only’. Not ‘as long as’. I matter equally. Full stop.”
The second tool is the question - “Can you reverse the gender and get the same results?”. To explain this tool more fully, the author uses the example of infidelity. A woman’s choice to forgive her husband’s infidelity can still be a feminist choice if, were the roles reverse, the husband too would forgive her wife’s infidelity. In that case the option to forgive her husband is a feminist choice because her response is not shaped by gender inequality. However, in a lot of cultures, Indian included, the common narrative is ‘Men will be men’ which just means having a much lower standard for men.
I loved the second rule. Breaking down the oft repeated ‘Men will be men’ into the implicit lower standard, is the crux of reading feminist literature for me at the moment - to equip myself with the language to talk about these issues.
On Motherhood
Mothers should be a ‘full’ person and be identified solely by their motherhood.
A widely held notion about motherhood (one that is also prevalent in my family) is that a woman needs to be the primary caregiver upon childbirth and that professional work should always be second priority.
My mother opened up to me about this. Her past job as a school teacher gave her a sense of independence, it made her secure but most importantly it gave her room to question my dad, to ask him that if she could do a 9 to 5 and perform all the household chores, why could he not? Without her working though, the room for discussion dies for if my dad works all day, it is only natural that the household responsibility falls on the other non-working person of the house. Sadly, that is just the default today. Many women are not even given the opportunity to work, or are given conditionals where household work is there primary job and an external profession can be her discretion beyond that primary job.
A quote I really like from the book -
“To do what you love and love what you do is a great gift to give to a child. You don’t even have to love the job, you can just love what the job does to you - the confidence and self-fulfillment that comes from doing and earning.”
On The Equal Roles Of Parents In Childcare
Mothers should not be a ‘single mother’ unless they truly are a single mother.
“A father should do everything that biology allows, that is everything but breastfeeding. Sometimes mothers, so conditioned to be all and do all, are complicit in diminishing the roles of fathers. It’s good for your daughter to be cared by her father. So look away, arrest your perfectionism, still your socially conditioned sense of duty. Share child care equally. ‘Equally’ of course depends on you both, and you will have to work it out, paying equal attention to each person’s needs. There need not be daily score-keeping but you’ll know when the load is being shared equally. By the lack of resentment.”
We need to reject the language of help when the father is caring for the child. A dad does not ‘help’ by caring for his child. He is doing what he should. When we suggest the contrary, we imply that child care is a mother’s territory, into which fathers valiantly venture. It is not. A lot of people would have benefitted majorly if only their fathers had been actively present during their childhood, something that would happen if society didn’t consider raising a child solely a female endeavor. Never say that “the father is babysitting” - people who babysit are people for whom the baby is not primary responsibility.
Fathers don’t deserve any special praise, nor do mothers - parents, together, make the choice to get a baby into the world and the responsibility of the child belongs equally to them both.
On Gender Roles
‘Because you’re a girl’ is never a reason for anything. Ever.
The idea of gender roles in absolutely nonsense. Do not ever tell someone they can or cannot do something because they’re of a particular gender.
I remember being told as a child to “bend down properly while sweeping, like a girl”. Which meant that sweeping was about being female. I wish I had been told simply, “bend down and sweep properly because you’ll clean the floor better”. And I wish my brothers had been told to do the same thing.
Similarly, women are expected to cook for the husbands. The knowledge of cooking does not come pre-installed in the vagina. Cooking is learned. Cooking - and domestic work in general - is a skill both men and women should ideally have. It is also a skill that can elude both men and women.
Society introduces gender roles early on.
I went to buy a gift for your daughter. I looked at the toy section, which was arranged by gender. Toys for boys are mostly active and involve some sort of doing - trains, cars - and toys for girls are mostly passive and overwhelmingly dolls.
A young Nigerian woman once told me that for years she behaved ‘like a boy’ - she liked football and was bored by dresses - until her mother forced her to stop her ‘boyish’ interests. Now she is grateful to her mother for helping her start behaving like a girl. This story made me sad. I wondered what parts of her she had to stifle and silence, and I wondered what her spirit had lost, because what she called ‘behaving like a boy’ was simply behaving like herself.
Another acquaintance once told me that she took her one-year old son to a baby playgroup, where babies had been brought by their mothers. She noticed that the mothers of baby girls were very restraining, constantly telling the girls ‘don’t touch’ or ‘stop and be nice’, and she noticed that the baby boys were encouraged to explore more and were not restrained as much as were almost never told to ‘be nice’. Her theory was that parents unconsciously start very early to teach girls how to be, that baby girls are given less room and more rules and baby boys more room and fewer rules.
On Feminism Lite
Beware the dangers of Feminism Lite.
It is the idea of conditional female equality. It is a hollow, appeasing and bankrupt idea. Being a feminist is like being pregnant. You either are, or you’re not. You either believe in the full equality of women or you don’t.
Feminism Lite believes in the idea that men are naturally superior but should be expected to ‘treat women well’. No, No, No. There must be more that male benevolence as the basis for a woman’s well being.
Feminism Lite uses the language of allowing. Theresa May is the British prime minister and here is how a progressive British newspaper described her husband: ‘Philip May is known in politics as a man who has taken a back seat and allowed his wife, Theresa to shine.’
Allowed.
Now let us reverse it. Theresa May has allowed her husband to shine. Does it make sense? If Philip May were prime minister, perhaps we might hear that his wife had ‘supported’ him from the background, or that she was ‘behind’ him, or that she ‘stood side by side’, but we would never hear that she ‘allowed’ him to shine.
Allow is a troubling word. Allowing is about power.
A husband is not a headmaster. A wife is not a schoolgirl. Permission and being allowed, when used one-sidedly - and they are nearly only used that way - should never be the language of an equal marriage.
Remember once when our friend Ikenga said, “Even though the general idea is that my father is in charge at home, it’s my mother who is really in charge behind the scenes.” He thought he was refuting sexism, but he was making my case. Why ‘behind the scenes’? If a woman has power then why do we need to disguise that she has power?
Because here is the sad truth, our world is full of men and women who do not like powerful women. We have been so conditioned to think of power as males that a powerful woman is an aberration. And she is so policed. We ask of power women - is she humble. Does she smile? Is she grateful enough? Does she have a domestic side? Questions we do not ask of powerful men, which shows that our discomfort is not with power itself but with women. We judge powerful women more hastily than we judge powerful men. And Feminism Lite enables this.
On Language
If you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women.
For X, insert words like anger, ambition, loudness, stubbornness, coldness, ruthlessness.
We should teach our children to question language. Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs and our assumptions. A friend of mine says she will never call her daughter princess. People mean well when they say this, but the word ‘princess’ is loaded with assumptions, of a girl’s delicacy, of the prince who will come to save her etc. This friend prefers angel and star. So decide for yourself the things you will not say to your, because what you do matters. It teaches her what she should value.
Women don’t need to be championed or revered: they just need to be treated as equal human beings. There is a patronizing undertone to the idea of women needing to be ‘championed and revered’ because they’re women. It makes me think of chivalry, and the premise of chivalry is female weakness.
On The Perception Of Marriage
Never speak of marriage as an achievement. A marriage can be happy or unhappy but it is not an achievement.
We condition girls to aspire to marriage and we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow up to me men who are not preoccupied with marriage. The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the institution matters more to one that the other. Is it any wonder that, in so many marriages, women sacrifice more, at a loss to themselves, because they have to constantly maintain an uneven exchange?
On titles - I prefer Ms because it is similar to Mr. A man is Mr whether married or not, a woman is Ms whether married or not.
On Likeability
We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same.
Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people. ‘People’ would not ‘like’ something implies an unspoken pressure to fit to some mold that would please some amorphous entity called ‘people’. We want those closest to us to encourage us to be our most authentic selves.
The pressure of likeability is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many girls spend too much time trying to be ‘nice’ to people who do them hard. Many girls think of the ‘feelings’ of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.
So instead teach your daughter to be honest. And kind. And brave. She does not need to be liked by everyone. Tell her if someone does not like her, there will be someone else who will. Tell her that she is not merely an object to be liked or disliked but also a subject who can like or dislike.
On Self-Image
Be deliberate how you engage with her and her appearance.
Encourage her participation in sports. Teach her to be physically active. Take walks with her. Swim. Run. Play tennis. Football. Table Tennis. All kinds of sports. Any kind of sports. I think this is important not only because of obvious health benefits but because it can help with all the body-image insecurities that the world thrusts on girls.
If she likes make-up let her wear it. If she likes fashion, let her dress up. But if she doesn’t, like either, let her be. Don’t think that raising her feminist means forcing her to reject femininity. Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. To take away that choice is misogynistic.
Never link your daughter’s appearance with morality. Never tell her that a short skirt is immoral. Make dressing a question of taste and attractiveness instead of a question of morality, of right or wrong, good or bad. If you clash over what she wants to wear, don’t say things like ‘you look like a prostitute’. Instead say: ‘That dress doesn’t flatter you.’ Or doesn’t fit as well. Or doesn’t look as attractive. Or is simply ugly. But never ‘immoral’. Because clothes have absolutely nothing to do with morality.
On feminist men and the power of good examples - I cannot overstate the power of alternatives. She can counter ideas about static ‘gender roles’ if she has been empowered by her familiarity with alternatives. If she knows an uncles who cooks well - and does so with indifference - then she can smile and brush off the foolishness of somebody who claims that ‘women must do the cooking.’
On Biology and Social Norms
Teach her to question our society’s selective use of biology as ‘reasons’ for social norms.
We use evolutionary biology to explain male promiscuity, but not to explain female promiscuity, even though it really makes evolutionary sense for women to have many sexual partners - the larger the genetic pool, the greater will be the chances of bearing offspring who will thrive.
So teach your daughter that biology is an interesting and fascinating subject, but she should never accept it as justification for any social norm. Because social norms are created by human beings and there is no social norm that cannot be changed.
On Sexuality
Sexuality should not be equated to shame.
Even cultures that expect women to be sexy - like many in the West - still do not expect them to be sexual. The shame we attach to female sexuality is about control.
Many cultures and religions control women’s bodies in one way or another. If the justification for controlling women’s bodies were about women themselves, then it would be understandable. If, for example, the reason was ‘women should not wear short skirts because they can get cancer if they do’. Instead the reason is not about women, it is about men. Women must be ‘covered up’ to protect men. I find this deeply dehumanizing because it reduces women to mere props used to manage the appetites of men.
More Gender Roles
Isn’t it odd that in most societies of the world today, women generally cannot propose marriage?
Marriage is such a major step in your life and yet you cannot take charge of it; it depends on a man asking you. If we apply the first Feminism tool here, then it makes no sense that a women who matters equally has to wait for somebody else to initiate what will be a major life change for her.
Just because the ‘final’ decision rests in the woman’s hands does not give her the power. The real power lays with those who ask, for before you can give an answer, you must be asked.
Teach her that it is NOT a man’s role to provide. In a healthy relationship, it is the role of whoever can provide to provide. To accept gender roles that might apparently work in the favor of women is a dangerous idea because it means that you have to potentially accept other harmful ideas as well.
On Female Misogyny
There are many women in this world who don’t like other women.
Female misogyny exists and to evade acknowledging it is to create unnecessary opportunities for anti-feminists to try to discredit feminism. I mean the sort of anti-feminists who will gleefully raise examples of women saying ‘I am not a feminist’ as though a person born with a vagina making this statement automatically discredits feminism. By that logic, a feminist guy should be evidence enough to credit the feminism.
That a woman claims not to be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it makes us see the extent of the problem, the successful reach of patriarchy. It shows us, too, that not all women are feminists and not all men are misogynists.
On Difference
Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her to not attach value to difference.
The the reason for this is not to be fair or nice but to be human and practical. Because difference is the reality of our world. And by teaching her about difference, you are equipping her to survive in a diverse world.
She must know and understand that people walk different paths in the world and that as long as those paths do no harm to others, they are valid paths that she must respect.
Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone and not for other people. That is the only necessary form of humility: the realization that difference is normal.
This is not to say she should be non-judgmental, for that word can easily devolve into not having an opinion about anything’ or ‘I keep my opinions to myself’. I hope your girl is full of opinions and that her opinions will come from an informed, humane and broad-minded place.