Last week Freia sent us a message.
"Hey fam a few months ago I wrote a piece on india and feminism for a small website called Femsplain and it got picked up by Teen Vogue today :)"
It was exciting to see Freia published. She was the first published author I knew.
Teen Vogue headlined the article as
"How Moving from India to the U.S. Helped Me Embrace Feminism".
Interestingly the original article did not credit the U.S. with the transformation and was called "The Paradox of being an Indian Feminist."
Even more interesting is the fact that none of us knew about this article, which was an excellent, well written article. Freia told us about it only after it was published in Teen Vogue. Even though it was possibly more appropriate in FEMSPLAIN.
Like most things in life, where matters more than what.
Am reproducing the original article taken from:
https://femsplain.com/the-paradox-of-being-an-indian-feminist/
"
I spent the first 18 years of my life in Mumbai and the last two in New York City. A lot has changed for me during my time in New York — for instance, I now call myself a feminist. It’s not that I didn’t before — I just never gave it a thought.
Over the past few years, however, a lot of incidents have come up in India that prompt discussion about women’s issues — grotesque rape cases, moral policing incidents, dress code issues, badly executed “feminist” videos —and led to endless debates about feminism with many friends, smart, opinionated people who I respect a lot. A lot of women I know and love would never call themselves feminists, for reasons I understand and respect. They are feminists, they care about equality of the sexes, but they don’t like what feminism has come to represent.
Take my family. I didn’t realize it until recently, but my parents, aunts and uncles were the first feminists I ever knew. One incident stands out in my memory is when my male cousin was asked to help my uncle in the kitchen along with my sister and I, and he mumbled something about us being girls from the back of his Playstation controller. My aunt was furious and told him off about his blatant sexism, told my sister and me to go sit down and made him help. This incident itself is something minor in the grand scheme of things, but it stayed with me for longer than I know.
Growing up, I thought I’d be many things — a lawyer, a journalist, an economist. I’d taken computer science classes, but didn’t think I’d ever want to be a software engineer. Now that I’m in college and I know I want to work in technology, I’ve been hyperaware of the complete lack of minorities in the industry. In India, I never realized there was a lack of women in STEM. Turns out, this is because my “third world, backwards” motherland is doing better than the Western world when it comes to how many women work in STEM fields. My father works at a technology company with women in all roles, including the management and leadership. Nobody ever told me that there was anything I couldn’t do, let alone because of my gender. I have grown up to understand that this was in part because of my family’s economic status and the immense amount of privilege it came with.
My grandmothers, meanwhile, grew up in a different India from my mother and aunts. For entirely too long, I didn’t appreciate my badass, hardworking mother who studied medicine and has been working at government hospitals ever since.Despite the often less-than-ideal conditions in India, I’m an idealist. I dream of a day when my little cousins can walk down the street wearing whatever they please without the regressive dress codes, moral policing, teasing and more. India is a land that celebrates its goddesses and mourns at the birth of a girl. Between child marriage, dowry and property laws, India has a lot to work on, but I’ve learned to take more time to appreciate our successes. We had a female head of state in 1966. We have some of the world’s top CEOs, engineers, doctors, lawyers and more, who just so happen to be women. We have a lot to work on, but we’ve come a long way.
The older I get, the more I learn to appreciate the progress we’ve made, the women who have helped define what it is to be a bhartiya naari (Indian woman) and the “third world country” that oftentimes treats women better than any of the Western world. India needs more feminism, and feminism needs more Indians.
Sometimes, being Indian and a feminist feels like a paradox. Most days, it’s what keeps me dreaming.
"
And finally since where matters, you can view the Teen Vogue article at:
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/indian-feminism-vs-western-feminism
"Hey fam a few months ago I wrote a piece on india and feminism for a small website called Femsplain and it got picked up by Teen Vogue today :)"
It was exciting to see Freia published. She was the first published author I knew.
Teen Vogue headlined the article as
"How Moving from India to the U.S. Helped Me Embrace Feminism".
Interestingly the original article did not credit the U.S. with the transformation and was called "The Paradox of being an Indian Feminist."
Even more interesting is the fact that none of us knew about this article, which was an excellent, well written article. Freia told us about it only after it was published in Teen Vogue. Even though it was possibly more appropriate in FEMSPLAIN.
Like most things in life, where matters more than what.
Am reproducing the original article taken from:
https://femsplain.com/the-paradox-of-being-an-indian-feminist/
"
The Paradox Of Being An Indian Feminist
I spent the first 18 years of my life in Mumbai and the last two in New York City. A lot has changed for me during my time in New York — for instance, I now call myself a feminist. It’s not that I didn’t before — I just never gave it a thought.
Over the past few years, however, a lot of incidents have come up in India that prompt discussion about women’s issues — grotesque rape cases, moral policing incidents, dress code issues, badly executed “feminist” videos —and led to endless debates about feminism with many friends, smart, opinionated people who I respect a lot. A lot of women I know and love would never call themselves feminists, for reasons I understand and respect. They are feminists, they care about equality of the sexes, but they don’t like what feminism has come to represent.
Take my family. I didn’t realize it until recently, but my parents, aunts and uncles were the first feminists I ever knew. One incident stands out in my memory is when my male cousin was asked to help my uncle in the kitchen along with my sister and I, and he mumbled something about us being girls from the back of his Playstation controller. My aunt was furious and told him off about his blatant sexism, told my sister and me to go sit down and made him help. This incident itself is something minor in the grand scheme of things, but it stayed with me for longer than I know.
Growing up, I thought I’d be many things — a lawyer, a journalist, an economist. I’d taken computer science classes, but didn’t think I’d ever want to be a software engineer. Now that I’m in college and I know I want to work in technology, I’ve been hyperaware of the complete lack of minorities in the industry. In India, I never realized there was a lack of women in STEM. Turns out, this is because my “third world, backwards” motherland is doing better than the Western world when it comes to how many women work in STEM fields. My father works at a technology company with women in all roles, including the management and leadership. Nobody ever told me that there was anything I couldn’t do, let alone because of my gender. I have grown up to understand that this was in part because of my family’s economic status and the immense amount of privilege it came with.
My grandmothers, meanwhile, grew up in a different India from my mother and aunts. For entirely too long, I didn’t appreciate my badass, hardworking mother who studied medicine and has been working at government hospitals ever since.Despite the often less-than-ideal conditions in India, I’m an idealist. I dream of a day when my little cousins can walk down the street wearing whatever they please without the regressive dress codes, moral policing, teasing and more. India is a land that celebrates its goddesses and mourns at the birth of a girl. Between child marriage, dowry and property laws, India has a lot to work on, but I’ve learned to take more time to appreciate our successes. We had a female head of state in 1966. We have some of the world’s top CEOs, engineers, doctors, lawyers and more, who just so happen to be women. We have a lot to work on, but we’ve come a long way.
The older I get, the more I learn to appreciate the progress we’ve made, the women who have helped define what it is to be a bhartiya naari (Indian woman) and the “third world country” that oftentimes treats women better than any of the Western world. India needs more feminism, and feminism needs more Indians.
Sometimes, being Indian and a feminist feels like a paradox. Most days, it’s what keeps me dreaming.
"
And finally since where matters, you can view the Teen Vogue article at:
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/indian-feminism-vs-western-feminism
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