Having spent a very eventful few weeks there recently, I just recently got the time to process, and finally got the time to sit my ass down on in front of computer to write about it. I could go on for days about all the crazy mind-bending shit that went down in Canadia. (Hence this being “Part I”). However, I recently began thinking about the subject of women of color and feminism after reading “The Or vs. the And”, a post to the ridiculously awesome blog Racalicious.
Back to Toronto, Canada. I’m a born-and-bred Pacific Northwest/American chick, so being on the East side of Canada was still a culture shock. For one, it has one of the highest South Asian populations of any city in North America. Second, I’m related to about half of the Indians there (just kidding. sort of). I met more aunts, uncles, cousins once and twice removed, nieces and nephews than I can remember, and walking around was like literally being in a (cleaner, less insane) India. It was like a crash course: American/Canadian Desi 101, maximum exposure to Indian culture.
In retrospect, this was both positive and negative. Positive in that I got to meet a great many of my kin. Negative in that I realized my views regarding women, politics and so on were not the norm among my own people. For example: I had a conversation with a few other Indian ladies one night. We got to talking about the role of women in the Indian family (Not as dry as it may sound…trust me.) As expected, things got pretty heated.
According to a few, desi women were basically required to submit to their husbands leadership. i.e, whatever he says goes and a female can only “negotiate”. Not only that, women shouldn’t really work and if they do, they’re not raising their kids right. In their view, women are neither needed or should really have an active life outside of the home. And apparently they thought that Islam could justify all of the above. Oh, and lest I forget to mention: all of the women in question hold college degrees from India!
I was pretty shocked. Mainly because I didn’t expect educated women to think this way, and that they would be spewing the same old bullshit used by (some) South Asian and Muslim men to justify lording over their wives. It’s a disservice not only to Muslim women trying to work and make their way in a world that doesn’t approve them already, and to those men who’ve freed their minds from patriarchial ideology. And worse yet, it does a disservice to Islam, by misconstruing passages of the Qur’an and theological dictates–to justify oppression that does not exist within the religion. Regardless, it made me pretty sad. But I began to think: why?
Part of the answer, lies in the location itself. Like I mentioned before, Canada is a pretty diverse place. Where my fam lives you see nothing but Muslim, South Asian, and African people. White people are indeed the minority. It’s akin to living in a bubble: being surrounded by your own people is like a barrier: it insulates you from the outside Western world, and it keeps old modes of thought IN. Living in Seattle, my fam didn’t have that luxury. We point-blank HAD to deal with all sorts of non-Muslim, non Indian, non-ourselves people on a daily basis. No one was around to tell us to not step outside the bounds of conservative desi culture. That didn’t mean that we weren’t respectful of culture, but we simply weren’t immersed in it completely.
Anyway, its an interesting world out there, even within United States and Canada, where we find that where one lives, the environment has a huge impact on ideology and worldview. In sum, your ‘hood makes you who you are…for better or worse.
Blame Canada…Part I: Desi Ladies
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Desi culture, feminism, political commentary-domestic on July 23, 2008 by SultanaToronto Canada is one fascinating place.
Having spent a very eventful few weeks there recently, I just recently got the time to process, and finally got the time to sit my ass down on in front of computer to write about it. I could go on for days about all the crazy mind-bending shit that went down in Canadia. (Hence this being “Part I”). However, I recently began thinking about the subject of women of color and feminism after reading “The Or vs. the And”, a post to the ridiculously awesome blog Racalicious.
Back to Toronto, Canada. I’m a born-and-bred Pacific Northwest/American chick, so being on the East side of Canada was still a culture shock. For one, it has one of the highest South Asian populations of any city in North America. Second, I’m related to about half of the Indians there (just kidding. sort of). I met more aunts, uncles, cousins once and twice removed, nieces and nephews than I can remember, and walking around was like literally being in a (cleaner, less insane) India. It was like a crash course: American/Canadian Desi 101, maximum exposure to Indian culture.
In retrospect, this was both positive and negative. Positive in that I got to meet a great many of my kin. Negative in that I realized my views regarding women, politics and so on were not the norm among my own people. For example: I had a conversation with a few other Indian ladies one night. We got to talking about the role of women in the Indian family (Not as dry as it may sound…trust me.) As expected, things got pretty heated.
According to a few, desi women were basically required to submit to their husbands leadership. i.e, whatever he says goes and a female can only “negotiate”. Not only that, women shouldn’t really work and if they do, they’re not raising their kids right. In their view, women are neither needed or should really have an active life outside of the home. And apparently they thought that Islam could justify all of the above. Oh, and lest I forget to mention: all of the women in question hold college degrees from India!
I was pretty shocked. Mainly because I didn’t expect educated women to think this way, and that they would be spewing the same old bullshit used by (some) South Asian and Muslim men to justify lording over their wives. It’s a disservice not only to Muslim women trying to work and make their way in a world that doesn’t approve them already, and to those men who’ve freed their minds from patriarchial ideology. And worse yet, it does a disservice to Islam, by misconstruing passages of the Qur’an and theological dictates–to justify oppression that does not exist within the religion. Regardless, it made me pretty sad. But I began to think: why?
Part of the answer, lies in the location itself. Like I mentioned before, Canada is a pretty diverse place. Where my fam lives you see nothing but Muslim, South Asian, and African people. White people are indeed the minority. It’s akin to living in a bubble: being surrounded by your own people is like a barrier: it insulates you from the outside Western world, and it keeps old modes of thought IN. Living in Seattle, my fam didn’t have that luxury. We point-blank HAD to deal with all sorts of non-Muslim, non Indian, non-ourselves people on a daily basis. No one was around to tell us to not step outside the bounds of conservative desi culture. That didn’t mean that we weren’t respectful of culture, but we simply weren’t immersed in it completely.
Anyway, its an interesting world out there, even within United States and Canada, where we find that where one lives, the environment has a huge impact on ideology and worldview. In sum, your ‘hood makes you who you are…for better or worse.
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