In our pregnancy yoga class last night we discussed raising a boy!
How to raise a feminist... boy or girl.
Are there any differences? What are they?
This morning I read these words... ‘Mothers, sisters and aunties, I implore you to take this little sponge, and render him sodden with humanity and an understanding of women.
It will send him into this delusional world with an armour of empathy and self assurance, that a strong woman is something to be celebrated and not feared/crushed/undermined/spoken over/stopped/humiliated/shamed/blamed/discouraged/controlled/told that to be worth anything int his world, she must have big tits, but a small waist and thin arms, oh and a big pert arse but absolutely no thighs and a young face (forever.) All you have to do is tell him the truth.
Tell him what happened to us.
Tell him our whole story. Tell him how only very recently we were able to fight, protest, beg and starve our way to basic human rights. Tell him that a long time ago, as far back as you can imagine, men became afraid of women. Women could make people inside their bodies, they could feed those people using just their bodies. They had an extreme and quite scary tolerance for pain, and were distracting and beguiling for men. On top of all of this, we were equally able to learn, to hunt, to keep ourselves and our kin alive. AND we have tits. TITS. Who doesn’t love tits? Whatever size. They are simply fantastic. Men feared that other than their semen, women had little need for the,. And actually, we were very self sufficient and tough, while at the same time being able to arouse men and sometimes drive them quite mad with love/lust/possessiveness. We held quite a lot of power. And so, using the only thing they had over us, physical power, they fear mongered an entire gender into submission and controlled us for thousands of years.’ From:
Tell Him by Jameela Jamil
Read the whole amazing piece in
Feminists Don’t Wear Pink. (A book of feminist essays from various writers, curated by Scarlett Curtis.
#pregnancy #birth #doula #feminist #raisingaboy
