LOOK! SHE'S FINALLY WASHING THE DISHES
In my culture, the concept of respect is pretty simple: if you’re a man, you automatically have it and if you’re a woman, you don’t. Obviously this is a very generalized statement — but in the South Asian Community, quite honestly, this rhetoric exists to some degree.
I’ve seen and experienced this rhetoric firsthand and as I write this, I can tell you that it’s incredibly frustrating to constantly have to “earn” respect with the understanding that you will never truly have it.
The fact that I have to write this hoping that some men in my Community will read it and maybe understand is frustrating and counterproductive. Why do I need to verbalize my experience when I go through it every day? Why do I have to talk about how frustrated and tired I am on the off chance that some men will listen?
Honestly, I’ve come to terms with the fact that the only way to promote change is through educating the masses and using my resources to do so. My platform, this website — has become a resource for not only myself, but a multitude of women to express and share their narratives in order to promote change.
I will always be here to the best of my ability, writing and sharing my own and other women’s experiences in order to promote change. Collectively, we need to be.
What do I mean when I say I have to constantly “earn” respect with the understanding that I will never truly have it? Here’s some context: I am a full-time student, earning my Master’s Degree along with a heavy research focused workload. I dedicate most of my free time to the platform you are reading from right now. Many of the women in my life, like myself, are more successful than our male counterparts. But for some strange reason, I don’t receive the same respect from the adults in my Community as my male counterparts do.
The issue of patriarchy runs deep and it shows up in the simplest forms, but says a lot in terms of our Community and where things need to progress. The issue of patriarchy comes up in passive aggressive remarks, side comments, inappropriate expectations and a prominent voice in your head that is telling you, you are not doing enough.
More context: personally, I am someone who hates washing dishes. I will clear my plate, I will clean my room, and if I am a guest in someone’s home, I will clean up after myself. But if I can avoid it, washing dishes is a chore that I simply don’t like to do. And if I were a man? There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But I’m a woman. And so when I see the women in my life working too hard to clean up after everyone (men included), every now and then I will wash the dishes to help out. And whenever I do, there is undoubtedly, always an adult in the room who will say:
“Alia ko dekho! Bartan dho rahi hai” — “Look! She’s finally washing the dishes”.
So from this scenario, this is the message that I am receiving: you are doing some work, but you should still feel bad because you don’t always do it. If you do housework, you will earn respect. You clearly don’t do any work, demonstrated by my surprise of the fact that you are doing this chore right now.
Image by @sydneys.artwork
When adults say this to me, this is my thought process. Am I wrong? Why am I being shamed for helping out? Should I be apologizing for the fact that I don’t normally wash dishes because I just don’t like to?
Do men ever get shamed for not doing so?
My point is, the simple and most accurate answer is no. Men aren’t expected to do house chores; women are. And as a South Asian woman, in my Community, even though I work far more than my male counterparts in terms of career, I am expected, on top of my workload, to do house chores, to wash dishes, to “earn” the respect that I will never truly have.
Because let’s say I spent all of my time washing dishes, cleaning up the house, doing laundry, cooking — doing household chores. Let’s say I spent all of my time doing so, would the men in my Community respect me then? Or would they see me as a stay-at-home mom who
never truly did anything with her life?
The point I am making here is that we as women, will never win. We have to “earn” the respect men automatically have solely for being men. And until this rhetoric changes, until my Community starts realizing how and why patriarchy runs so deep within us, I will not be, nor will I ever pretend to be,
the person who washes dishes.