Seeing Like a Feminist

I've aligned with feminism for a bit now but my favorite abuse in hindi continues to be behenchod. I use it variously, as a way to express shock or surprise, sometimes anger, and ofc as an abuse loaded stone to hurl at someone. I understand this as one of the ways in which I am trying to break free from the expectations that the privileged upper class society, in which I stay, has from "decent" women. The other ways include drinking, smoking, "partying", and also sleeping around. And as I write these words, I cannot deny the fear that raises itself, the fear that I feel in my chest physically, of what would happen if someone from my family were to read these lines and recognise them as coming from me.

I am at a higher level of privilege show more than most women in this country as pointed out by the author herself in the introduction. Dealing with this privilege is a personal struggle. Is it enough to recognise it and engage with other realities that women inhabit, or am I expected to be apologetic? And although I have felt it only moral to apologise for the sins of my ancestors at various points, I also realise that an apology is not what I demand from the people in power that I encounter as a woman myself. Here just now I found myself lost in the recollections of the one incident where I felt unwelcome in a space for the first time ever, and I recognise my inability to ever physically understand how this must feel for someone who's everyday reality consists of this sour, unsettling experience.

This book allowed me to engage with these different realities and, if only, to know that they exist. To be able to see the multitudes within multitudes of lenses that the society produces for people while constructing their myriad realities. I will have to revisit the arguments presented here and I am definitely looking forward to it. show less

Brilliant. No clear-cut answers to anything but paints the landscape of all the understandings (some in conflict) a feminist lens produces for various contemporary issues.

This is another one of those books that one cannot help but think that if everyone read it growing up, the world would be a better place. The pessimist take, of course, is that this book might not come about in a world where everyone (or enough people) would be willing, or able to, take on the reading of feminist discourse. However, with people like Nivedita Menon and other feminist scholars and activists, and books like these written so, so well - there is always hope for actual change.