When Prabha, a colleague from TARSHI, nudged me to write for this issue of In Plainspeak, my first reaction was reticence. As a cis-het married woman with a child, however hard I might try to be a good ally, it sounded far too presumptuous to write on “queering as a way of life”. Prabha and I were sitting in a cafe at the time, and when I voiced my simultaneous doubts and desire, she suggested I think about queering parenting. In Plainspeak is a forum on which I have written some of my own favourite pieces. It has been a space that has allowed me to think about many things, but most especially parenting, and to take risks with my writing and ideas. I was hooked.
Parenting is an odd space. It comes chock full of all kinds of normative strictures and regulations. Being a parent, especially being a mother, is an even stranger space. On the one hand, you are looked upon with approval for fulfilling your “gendered biological destiny”. On the other hand, you are also watched with hawk-like eyes lest you fail in this most valuable of endeavours. This scrutiny comes from many sources, the first of which is normative society – are you a good enough mother? Food, play, sleep, school, health, weight, all are carefully monitored and are a direct reflection on your mothering. If you are a feminist mother, then there are also the watchful eyes of your tribe – are you a feminist enough mother? And of course as they grow up, the challenging eyes of your children – are you walking the talk?
It is at the intersection of such surveillance that one tries to play with ways of doing parenting. As someone who works on gender and sexuality, being a sex-positive parent came relatively easily to me. I also tried to be open-ended about gender identities. However, as my students have pointed out in one episode of a podcast my Gender Media Culture course students made on Feminist Dilemmas, their feminist teachers who talk about the instability of gender often casually gender their own children when they talk about them. I am definitely guilty as charged. Still, despite this, perhaps I have not done too badly (as a parent that is) because my now teen calls me out frequently on such casual gendering. From my students and my daughter I learn; our roles are reversed. I am a work in progress.
More than fifteen years ago, between the years of 2007 and 2009 I co-wrote a book, titled Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets that focused on women’s access to public space. In this book, my co-authors, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade, and I argued for women’s right to loiter and take risks as a way of claiming both space and citizenship. We explicitly argued that sexual harassment was completely unrelated to women’s clothing and that women were harassed regardless of what we wore. When the book was published in 2011, my daughter was a mere ten months old. Sameera’s daughters were three and eight.
People told us that our daughters were going to throw the book at us. With daughters still rather young, riding the high of our new book, Sameera and I smiled smugly. In the years that followed, I reflected on parenting and the public. I expressed my hopes and desire that my daughter have a relationship with the city. I expressed the understanding that often doing things that are risky feels adventurous and fun. I wrote about legitimising women’s desire to hang out and have fun in an often hostile city.
A few years ago, when my daughter was 12 and wanted to go to the local grocery shop while she was wearing a crop top, I gingerly ventured, “Maybe you should change your top?” “Why?” asked my daughter with all the indignation of an almost-teen whose clothing integrity had been attacked. “Well…” I went on, knowing I was on the back foot, “you look much older than 12 in that and people might stare”. “So?” asked my daughter with the skill of one who would not use two words where one would do. “So… I don’t want someone to harass you”, I averred, still reconciliatory. “But didn’t you write that clothing has nothing to do with sexual harassment?” my aspiring lawyer batted back at me. “Yes, but if you look younger people are less likely to notice you”, I said, not very convincingly. “So, if I were older it would be ok if I were sexually harassed?” my pre-teen delivered with the air of one who knows she’s winning. “Please, please…” me now completely on the back foot, “change for me, na – I will feel better if you change”. “You are a hypocrite!” tossed back the teen, “Did you really write Why Loiter?”
I had officially lost the argument. I duly acknowledged my hypocrisy even as the pre-teen grudgingly wore another top.
In 2008, even as we were writing Why Loiter? I wrote another paper, published in 2010 under the title, If Women Could Risk Pleasure: Reinterpreting Violence in Public Space, where I argued that for many women, restrictions on their mobility were experienced as a form of violence. I argued that structural everyday violence is not seen as such, and is often regarded as benevolent protection and love. When I first presented this argument at an international conference, the discussant was an erudite academic who seemed to be in his late 40s or early 50s. We had a layered conversation on the panel. Later, over dinner, he told me how uncomfortable my paper made him, as he had teenage daughters and sometimes in an effort to keep them safe he suggested they restrict their mobility. I was then a childfree 30-something woman and didn’t think about it beyond being impressed by his honesty. Many years later, my now teenager asks, “Are you a faux feminist?” when I suggest possible ways of doing things that I think will keep her safe.
I am a work in progress. I am learning to walk my talk. As my daughter gets older, she has read books I have not. She knows obscure facts I do not. She watches films and shows that I have not seen. I learn from her. I am also learning that things that seem straightforward in theory are not so easy in practice. I am realising that my parents were actually rather adventurous in their parenting.
Is it enough to queer the space of conversation? To acknowledge that you are struggling to walk the talk? That the wonderful arguments you still stand by are harder to practise than to substantiate in a presentation or a written paper? I acknowledge that I am better able to queer the space of parenting in my writing than in practice. Yet, despite my limitations, my child appears to get it, even when I do not. She pushes back and the space of our interaction is egalitarian, maybe even queer enough, that I can acknowledge that she is right. When I write, I get it. As a parent, I am a work in progress.
Cover Image: Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash
