I grew up around strong independent women. Women who always had each other’s back, aunties who, unlike the Indian stereotype, supported each other’s careers, helped raise the kids as a big (big!) village, and fought hand in hand. My friends got me into college, over break ups and made me a halfway decently functioning human being. So, I believed in an unquestioning sisterhood and solidarity among all women. I hated the "women are women’s worst enemy" stereotype.
Three years ago, today, I spoke at a conference in Visakhapatnam on gender and culture. I used Telugu movies as a starting point and compared our hit song lyrics and actions to the Indian penal code. I was very happy with my ‘speech.’ All the aunties who were on stage with me and the organizers appreciated it. However, one of the speakers in the panel after me started her speech by talking about mine and she said, in Telugu, “This girl who spoke before me, spoke in English, a privilege that we (Dalits) do not have.” She was absolutely, one hundred percent right. Speaking English is a privilege in our country, how ever much any of us cry about its colonial origins.
I cried at the conference that day. I felt attacked. I asked a friend of mine who saw me crying, why it was that women must criticize each other. I asked why this speaker, a PhD student and student union leader, felt the need to criticize the words of a barely 21-year-old nobody, who did not even say a word about caste. I asked why the solidarity that I dreamed of, was not possible. I asked why we can’t all be ‘one women.’ I understand and know how important intersectionality is, but I am, at the end of the day, a privileged feminist in India - and so, I wanted an imaginary solidarity.
I never actually had the chance to speak to that woman, I did not get her name, and so, could never actually find her. If I ever run into her again, I want to hug her and say, “Thank you.” Because I realize now, years later and in a different country, that there is no ‘one women,’ that there is no ‘one kind of feminism,’ and there is no ‘unquestioning sisterhood and solidarity among women.’ How I cam to this realization? Well, with a lot of pain.
A few years ago, I was working for a woman-led NGO in India. While I really liked their work and the team was fantastic, the main reason I thought this NGO would be good was because it was woman led – if there was a place to work on gender responsive cities, it was in a woman-led organization. Girl, was I wrong! My female “boss”, who I assumed would be an ally did barely anything to support my work, while my female manager tried to do her best.
This boss told me that the work I did barely qualified as research, and if research is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I should reconsider it. She asked me “what was new” in saying that cities were not gender responsive. When I asked her for feedback, all she told me was how data was not my strength and writing was not my strength and I better figure out what my strength was soon. I never heard a word of encouragement from her after my first week in the office. This work-place story is very familiar to a lot of people, unfortunately. But my privileged feminism betrayed me, because I expected better from a woman, just because she was a woman.
A few months ago, this time in America, I looked around my very white department, and assumed that the one other woman, who identified as a person of color, would be an ally, a friend even. When she asked me how I speak such good English or said that it was weird that I take off my shoes while working in the office or wondered how I can always eat such spicy food, I brushed them off as ignorance. Because women of color are allies, right? When she mocked my sense of clothes saying that she preferred to “dress nice” unlike me, I cried in the parking lot. My privileged feminism betrayed me because I assumed solidarity from a woman far more privileged (read: white passing) than me.
My point is, there is no 'one women.' I shared posts about ‘smashing brahminical patriarchy’ in the past, but my brahmin ass never actually understood what that would look like in practice until I had to experience race. The experiences are not similar, not even close, but I expected solidarity and ally-ship and support from women who did not consider me one among them, for various reasons. Not because they were not feminists, but because their privilege blinded them to the realities of another woman around them.
There is no universal feminist, there is and should only be an intersectional feminism. My privilege blinded me from seeing this. But once you see it, there is no unseeing it. And if we chose not to see this, and we will be each other's worst enemy.