The First Feminist in My Life

As usual on mothers’ day, my WhatsApp is filled with images that romanticize the systemic oppression of people who become mothers. Photos of mothers who are at work with children, of “caring”, “loving”, and “sacrificing” mothers, of mothers carrying children on their back (including photos from animal kingdom), and so on.

While I find it fair to thank those people for such forced “selfless service”, I find it arrogant and violent to continue stereotyping and socially enforcing such gendered and oppressive practices.

I often think of the privileges I must have had to enable me to see systemic oppression as it is. And one of the greatest privileges I’ve had is to have a feminist mother.

I’ve never heard the word “feminism” from my mother. And that’s probably why it took me forever to realize she is a feminist. Fortunately for me though, the lessons of feminism did come through all my childhood albeit without the label.

To begin with, my mother is a teacher. And she puts work at par with, if not higher than, family. She has a very clear idea of her role as a teacher and very meticulously carries it out. She has withstood social pressure to ignore her profession or to ignore becoming better at it.

The way she deals with my father is more illustrative of her feminism. She never backs down in an argument. And there are plenty of arguments that she has with dad. When I was younger, I didn’t really understand who was right in those arguments. And because I was closer to dad, he would often convince me that he was right. But today I realize that my mom was right and continues to be so in many of the arguments that she has with the dad and with society. She still speaks up, unweathered.

She has always demanded better and just treatment from others. Because she sees the injustices that are being meted out to her. But more importantly, she never waits for anyone to treat her better. She is independent and continues her own life with not much regard to all that. She does not let people develop a savior complex.

There are far too many details in my childhood. But to summarize, there are many privileges of being male in a patriarchal society and my mother “exposed” many of them to me all throughout my childhood. 

That’s why I call my mother the first feminist in my life. And I’ve got to thank her for that every day.