Call Me:

As a social scientist, I am the first to acknowledge that every objective is subject to a given constraint. The truth about finitude leads me to believe this theory about limits, about general equilibriums confined within an Edgeworth box and countries’ production mix choices bound by their production possibility frontiers. To maximize your objective function, you have to realistically function given your constraints, and the first step in this exercise is to identify the constraint itself. After all, you don‘t want to be doing too much or too little.
As a self-acclaimed feminist, particularly since my marriage, my objective is to ensure that a woman’s voice is never silenced, or belittled, or unfairly complained about. Unfortunately, the masculine grips of our culture ensure that a mother’s loyalty is bound to her son before it is bound to her daughter-in-law as a fellow woman. To me, this is an example of the dependency that men have created and exploited for many years to perpetuate women’s subjugation to them. A woman considers her son as that source of income and joy which will offer her protection in her later years, (without remembering how a patriarchal ploy had itself separated her from her own family and brought her to this son). Women are even quicker in internalizing their situation and trading their life for myths that lend them the comfort of self-importance within their gendered existence. “Mothers can do what fathers cannot,” or “women are endowed with divine patience” are as yet better examples of the garbage that I get to hear. When a woman starts to believe this entirely man-constructed fiction, she sincerely considers the man as superior, without ever questioning why God left her lot to such a menial situation.
As a Ph.D. candidate mother, I want to change all this. I want to sit amongst people and let them know that they are talking nonsense, even if I do come from the inferior position of being just another daughter-in-law. I do not want to suppress my identity, my ability to run regressions on Stata, solve differential equations and generate income for my family, by being acknowledged only for the food cooked and dishes washed. I want to start with the people who populate my daily existence and impress upon them that I was not born with a maggot-brain and that I can challenge their masculinity every single day.
As someone in a secure and happy marriage, I have to face constraints. In the recent past, every time I have called out the bluff on a male family member, whether it be their ignorance about SodaStream’s origins, or their inability to engage in any conversation other than mockery of relatives (and yet, women get blamed for gossip!), I have received mild rebuke from my mother-in-law. She attacks my right to make a point, because how can I, as a woman, make a point? How can I display my intelligence when that is the characteristic which makes me difficult to sell as a useful daughter-in-law? After all, intelligent women fight, make life hell for their husbands and do not follow them around like domesticated cows. The fact that they themselves have been tamed in this manner is something they are utterly blind to.
So what can be done now? Is it rebellion where I engage in linguistic gymnastics with every member of the family and make them realize yet again how their lack of profundity is a malfeasance for the universe? Not for me. Doing that might might hole me up in emotional trauma; with a lack of stability in my own life, will simply give up on my goal of making any change whatsoever. Instead, I choose to realize that perhaps my own family (or my husband’s, in this case) is not within the reach of my debate. They are incapacitated by their hubris to engage with me in any decent conversation, and therefore, I should let them be. Today, I removed all of them from my Facebook account as my intelligent posts were making them woozy.
To some, this may be a silencing of yet another woman’s voice. To me, this is just clearing away some of the obstacles in my path to make sure that I can carry on and continue this struggle to demonstrate that a woman can do just as much as a man can. My family (how gendered am I to call my husband’s family mine?) are the constraint I acknowledge so that I can maximize my objective function nevertheless. And this is the only message I want to pass on to all women out there - we may not be able to affect everyone instantaneously. Sometimes, we will live the lives that we critique so harshly. And yet, if we hold fast to our ideals, we will set the stage for tomorrow’s women, making their fight a little easier. For that alone, I persevere.

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