When I was studying English at U of T, I was furious that writers like T.S. Eliot and Yeats were considered intelligent when they were obviously so sexist. Why do we study such people and give them time and space? Why are they respected?
I would leave class fuming, hyper-aware of myself as a woman, seeing signs of social injustice and inequality everywhere, offended by these old, dead poets. The patriarchy was at work right in front of my eyes. My own home had my mother doing all the cooking and cleaning, even though both parents worked full time.
I left a South Asian Lit class in tears, angry and embarrassed, because Salman Rushdie is a misogynist. I stopped attending the class. It was too much.
I don't remember what made me realize the chains were all in my mind. I was suffocating when I didn’t need to. I had felt fine before coming across all these issues. So I broke my mental chains, and decided to live it up. I consciously chose not to analyze the decisions of my life through this “women are powerless and disadvantaged; men run everything” lens.
I don’t go around thinking of myself as a woman all the time (though I often think of myself as a mother - a very seperate thing). Being female is not at the forefront of my mind. But obviously being a woman affects my life in several ways.
One of the ways is how I socialize. I am new here, in Anjeerwadi, and in this Indian / Bohra culture that we live in. Since I am a woman, I mainly socialize with other women. I hardly talk to the men, and when I do it is always a much less personal conversation than when I speak to the women. The women ask me about Fizzah right away, and listen when I talk about whatever new things she’s up to. The men don’t ask.
This is not the case necessarily for family friends. But even then, the men talk to me about India and its state compared to Canada, or about work opportunities or something like that. The women ask about cooking, and about Fizzah and the family, they talk about work sometimes, but not in the same way as men.
I don’t like making these generalizations. Women this and men this. I don’t like saying that because there are always exceptions and it’s wrong to assume things. But here in Anjeerwadi and surrounding Mumbai, in this culture, the men talk to the men and the women talk to the women.
Here in everyday life, misogynists are not respected. In some households, I think, they are tolerated. But the number of talented, ambitious and remarkable women definitely balance out the status quo.
I would leave class fuming, hyper-aware of myself as a woman, seeing signs of social injustice and inequality everywhere, offended by these old, dead poets. The patriarchy was at work right in front of my eyes. My own home had my mother doing all the cooking and cleaning, even though both parents worked full time.
I left a South Asian Lit class in tears, angry and embarrassed, because Salman Rushdie is a misogynist. I stopped attending the class. It was too much.
I don't remember what made me realize the chains were all in my mind. I was suffocating when I didn’t need to. I had felt fine before coming across all these issues. So I broke my mental chains, and decided to live it up. I consciously chose not to analyze the decisions of my life through this “women are powerless and disadvantaged; men run everything” lens.
I don’t go around thinking of myself as a woman all the time (though I often think of myself as a mother - a very seperate thing). Being female is not at the forefront of my mind. But obviously being a woman affects my life in several ways.
One of the ways is how I socialize. I am new here, in Anjeerwadi, and in this Indian / Bohra culture that we live in. Since I am a woman, I mainly socialize with other women. I hardly talk to the men, and when I do it is always a much less personal conversation than when I speak to the women. The women ask me about Fizzah right away, and listen when I talk about whatever new things she’s up to. The men don’t ask.
This is not the case necessarily for family friends. But even then, the men talk to me about India and its state compared to Canada, or about work opportunities or something like that. The women ask about cooking, and about Fizzah and the family, they talk about work sometimes, but not in the same way as men.
I don’t like making these generalizations. Women this and men this. I don’t like saying that because there are always exceptions and it’s wrong to assume things. But here in Anjeerwadi and surrounding Mumbai, in this culture, the men talk to the men and the women talk to the women.
Here in everyday life, misogynists are not respected. In some households, I think, they are tolerated. But the number of talented, ambitious and remarkable women definitely balance out the status quo.
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