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My Feminism Is Causing Unrest in the Family

Spoiler Alert — I am far from sorry

Arundhati
5 min readOct 12, 2020
Photo by Author via Canva

A typical day in a typical Indian household starts with the mother waking up the earliest and getting straight to the kitchen to prepare breakfast and pack lunch for the whole family, including herself. The father usually wakes up half an hour later to freshen up and get hot tea and breakfast served to him with the morning newspaper. As a kid, I would often wonder if this is the way it’s supposed to be, the wife breaking a sweat in the kitchen while the husband enjoys a slow morning, but some books and a few films convinced me otherwise.

First, yes, I am a feminist, and like many others of “my-kind,” I am often asked when I decided to become a feminist, to which I can never find a straight answer. Maybe, it was when my grandmother told me to “sit like a lady” or when my guy friend asked me if it was “wrong” for him to wear pink or when my uncle judged a woman’s character for drinking beer while drinking one himself. There are hundreds of such little incidents that I always thought were biased but never questioned or gave much thought to. When I recall them now, I realize how deep-rooted gender-based discrimination and double standards are in our society, at our own homes. So, the answer to that question would be, “I don’t know when, but I do know why.”

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Arundhati
Arundhati

Written by Arundhati

I write because i’m aware of the power words have. I use mine to tell stories, rant on issues that bother me and turn my life and self into poetry.

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