Seeing Like a Feminist

by Nivedita Menon

To see like a feminist is not to stabilize, it is to destabilize.

‘If marriage is the end of life, how can it also be the goal of life?’

‘Motherhood is a biological fact, fatherhood is a sociological fiction.’

The subversive potential of love. Love that refuses to be tamed within the rules of caste and community and heterosexuality.

This sexual division of labour extends even to the ‘public’ arena of paid work and, again, this has nothing to do with ‘sex’ (biology) and everything to do with ‘gender’ (culture).

Feminists point out that this ‘feminization’ of teaching and nursing is because such work is seen as an extension of the nurturing work that women do within the home.

A single mother should not have to take the difficult decision of putting her career on the back-burner to bring up children, while younger men race ahead of her because their childcare responsibilities are fully borne by their wives.

This entire system functions on the assumption that women do housework for love.

whose ‘progressive’ credentials are often displayed exclusively in permitting the Dalit sweeper to enter the kitchen to wash their dirty dishes!

If they were truly progressive, they wouldn't even know that the maid is dalit in the first place.