how to

If anyone comes across a book with a title sounding something like this: How To Be a Feminist In India: a different sort of travel guide, please, please let me know. I can't even find it in the "women's issues" section of Powells. Okay. So I don't actually know if it exists. I may have just made up that title, but there are self-help books written on every subject under the sun, how could someone have overlooked such a perplexing topic? How To books are usually something I stay away from, due to their elementary and boring nature. They always remind me of fifth grade when your teach made you write step-by-step essays to teach you the importance of... I'm not really sure what, actually. "Imagine you're explaining it to an alien," she instructed. And you proceed to write in minute detail how to tie your shoes or make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "Step 1: Walk to the cupboard containing a loaf of bread. It should say 'bread' on the plastic wrapper. Untwist the top of the bag, and remove exactly two pieces. Set them on the counter. Step 2: Scoop out enough peanut butter* to cover one side of one slice of bread approximately 1/4 inch thick..." You get the idea. Yet despite this disdain for micro-managing tutorials, here I am, a feminist in India, and so unsure of what that looks like that I would gladly take the instruction.

"It's fine for you to think like you do," a good friend once said to me, "but do you have to use the term feminist?" I understand his concern. It is easy to attach ourselves to a term or movement and not really understand its claims or connotations. Like many I know, this word for him might be falsely synonymous with the words "man-hater" or "femi-nazi." I do claim it still, and more importantly, it is such a factor in my journey to India, that I cannot leave it out. Surely feminism has branched throughout history and taken different forms and philosophical shapes. And there are those "radical" women who are angry at men, or women who fight social norms at their own expense. They fought/fight for things like the right to vote. The need to be more than just a homemaker. The ability to speak in church of the ways they see God. I have been all these things. And while even sometimes disagreeing, I recognize that social change rarely comes about except through radicals. I've recognized the patriarchy that exists still in America, and in the church. I have grieved the lack of the feminine in God in protestantism. And that the "Founding Fathers" of our theology considered women to be of the earth and not spirit, to be desirable and therefore sinful, to be incapable of the spirituality of 'mankind.' A loving Heavenly Father is a beautiful thing. But if God is solely man, then 'He' does not understand me, and does not love like me. I do not portray God nor does God contain me. And my value as a "woman of God" does not lie in how much I opitimize the list in Proverbs 31.

I say this not to be accusatory to man or God, but simply to recognize that one of humanities longest gaping wounds is in the way it has honoured (or should I say dishonoured) its women. In almost every culture throughout history, you find the oppression of women. Please do not tell me to move on. Or to quit living in the past. Oppressed groups who have been repaid with un-segregated schools or reservation lands are always told this. "What do you want me to do?" We ask. "It is not our generation who has done this, and I'm tired of feeling guilty." Many of my male friends understandably feel this way when I talk excitedly about feminism. To you I say that if we are to be people of redemption, then we must always carry the cross of wounds we have afforded each other, as long as they still hurt. And only the wounded can tell you when the hurt is gone. The one who has caused the pain (even if only by their unchosen gender) does not get to choose when the healing process is finished. When things are whole and well, then it will stop hurting. Until then we must bear and repay a debt we may have had no part in incurring. When a woman-child's virginity cannot be sold for extra rupees I will believe that women are free. When a woman's marriageable qualities are not her household skills or her dowry, then I will believe. Maybe I hope for things I will never see. That's usually what hope is.

Men in India have intrinsic value. A son is the families pride and joy. Women, on the other hand have a value that is directly proportional to her relationship to man. She is a daughter. She is a girlfriend or a wife. She is a whore. She is a mother. These things are more than just a title for a woman, they are the description of all that she is. Some of these roles a woman plays are beautiful to me, and I will be delighted when I can fill them. But what I have to offer the world will not come from how much I please the men in my life.

Men, I do not blame you any more than I blame women. We must learn to see ourselves differently, also. Rather, I blame the brokenness in us all. Perhaps this is one of the cruelest parts of The Fall. The imperfection we are born into. The words in Genesis that say, wife, your desire will be for your husband, and husband, you will rule over your wife. The problem is simply this: the brokenness makes one the oppressed and one the oppressor. This is not a critique of man. Or a criticism of a gender that I truly appreciate. Rather a distinct call for truth. A truth that if we let it, will not cause guilt, but will move us to freedom. That asks each of us to change our mentalities. Maybe even to fight for each other. And alongside each other. To not be angry or to blame, but to be honest so as to fight the societal oppressions that result from gender issues. Such as sex trafficking. And "ladies and physically handicapped" seating sections on the public transport. :)

I'm not here to teach Indian women how to be Western. Or how to not need men. Or how to find a 9 to 5. I am here to love women who have no value but the price of their body. And to teach them that they are worth teaching. And that they have things to teach. Stories to tell. Redemption to live. That they are intrinsically valuable and that the world needs them. Desperately. This is the only way I know how to be a feminist in Kolkata. If only it were as simple as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

*preferably Trader Joe's organic crunchy