Why I’m Kind of a Feminist

I don’t know much about feminism, but I think I’m kind of a feminist even though I love rap music and That’s What She Said jokes. I’m kind of conflicted by this, but I’m going to try to work it out.

Treating others differently based on what may or may not be in between their legs is just not cool. This is especially true when you’re given the short end of the stick.

I feel like there’s another penis reference there.

I learned very young that boys were just better. They were more independent, they were tougher, and they were better at sports. And of course they were more relished by Indian relatives. I can still remember the looks of pity my mother received from friends and family when they realized she wasn’t blessed with a son.

“Why don’t you just try again?” they would ask her while I sat playing with Barbie dolls a few meters away.

Well, first of all: Gross. And secondly: Uh, screw you.

I, of course, didn’t say this aloud because I also learned early that running my mouth would land me a rolling-pin beating, and that’s never fun. But it still stung and it still filled me with resentment. I mean that kind of partiality is pretty hard to miss; it reeks of defamation.

My feelings of incompetence grew stronger as I made my way through adolescence. I ditched my dolls and with great difficulty avoided pink, ponies, and other markers of ‘girliness’ in an attempt to disassociate myself from what was clearly the lesser class. But that didn’t change the way I was looked at and it definitely didn’t change the way I was treated. I was still a girl, after all. If I knew all of the work I put in wasn’t going to make a difference, I would have just given into temptation and put on some damn nail polish.

I was frustrated and hella mad at the world yet for some unexplainable and miraculous reason I came to realize I wasn’t the problem, and despite my feelings of inadequacy, I wasn’t the one to blame.

High on a surge of newly found confidence, I began to see beyond the matter-of-fact truths that were presented to me. I realized that my sex was the function of a force greater than my DNA. I recognized that the reason that girls are ‘passive’ is not because we are inherently weak, but because it’s not ‘ladylike’ to throw a temper tantrum or to yell, fight, and punch someone in the throat when you’re upset. What I now know is that is that girls aren’t bad at sports because of chromosomal heterogeneity, but because they are given less opportunities and encouragement to play.

ASIDE: If you’re going to argue that men are still faster than women in 100 m race or can lift more weight, allow me to counter that by highlighting that if the motto of the Olympics was Balance, Flexibility, and Stamina rather than Faster, Higher, Stronger; women would be at the advantage. Women have a lower centre of gravity, are more lithe, and actually suffer from less post-exercise muscle damage because of estrogen. Plus we have all that body fat that helps us last in super duper long activities like swimming the English Channel. So, we are just at a disadvantage in a social institution that was established to accommodate males rather than females. Even so, we’ve still made huge progress since actually being allowed to participate. Virtual high five.

And this was just the beginning of it. The more I accepted myself as an actual human being, the more skeptical I was of arguments that I wasn’t. Here are some other reasons why I’m kind of a feminist:

My Hymen

Historically speaking, girls need to be watched and protected because they carry a magical box in their pants, and if it falls into the wrong hands, the world will end. What I am talking about, Ladies and Gentlemen, is virginity. I remember watching 20/20 at an inappropriately young age and hearing a woman somewhere in the Middle East crying about her daughter’s rape by a solider. The girl was too young to know what happened and all the mother could say was that she needed the doctor to reattach her hymen so that she would be considered a virgin and therefore once again be marriageable material. Even more traumatizing to my young ears was the reporter’s aside discussing how some cultures abide by the practice of showing family members a bloody sheet to confirm the bride is a virgin post-consummation (some cultures even go as far as mutilating female genitalia to remove any pleasure associated with sexual intercourse in order to preserve virginity).

Years later, I learned that the hymen actually tends to degrade before a woman’s first experience of sexual intercourse by activities such sports, cleansing, and even walking. So what, I’m not supposed to walk because I might break my goods? Get out of here.

Bodywork

As much as I [now] enjoy putting on heels, pushing up my boobs, and caking my face, I don’t like to do it more than an average of 3x a year. However, as a woman I am expected to care a whole lot about my appearance. If I walked into an interview without mascara, lip-gloss, blush, and maybe even a skirt; there’s a good chance the interviewer would think Jeez, she couldn’t even bother putting on her face? I’m going to go out on a limb and say this probably wouldn’t happen to a man. And as it stands, I don’t like feeling obligated to do anything, and I don’t like feeling expected to do anything.

The Male Gaze and Assumed Rights Over My Body

During a trip to India, my body got a lot of attention. Bear in mind I wore sweat pants and baggy shirts in response to the fear mongering of my family and friends and the recent high profile rape cases that took place in the nation (yes, I realize that I lived out a ‘blame the victim mentality’ there, but I wasn’t about to take any chances in order to make a point. Shit is scary, yo). The attention I—or rather my body—got was geared around the fact that I am at a marriageable age and have an appropriate body for marriage. That is, it is tall and slim. And the comments were almost exclusively from older, male family members who were essentially giving me and my body their approval to exist and reproduce. Thank you for your permission, you sick, gawking, perverts.

Moolah

I like money just as much as the next dude, and I want to get paid as much as him for the same work, without having to put on high heels everyday. End of story.