For My Unborn Daughters

"What It Feels Like For a Girl" by Madonna

...do you know what it feels like for a girl / do you know what it feels like in this world / for a girl...

Of late, I have been running into conversations about gender, gender roles, gender discrimination, the changing rules of gender roles in the workforce, etc.

And of late, I have realized that I am a much bigger womanist than I thought.  These conversations are usually other womyn and apparently, I'm kind of a "feminazi".

Yes, I have been scorned and hell hath no fury like a womyn scorned especially me, because at this point, I would just cut yo a$$.

However, that is not why I'm a "feminazi".  My personal embitterment is miniscule, negligible, and unimportant compared to what womyn around the world face everyday under the oppression of hegemonic patriarchy.


I think my womanism was created and nourished by the relationship I have with my father.  My father was very protective, very doting, indulging, funny, encouraging, and had a lot of intellectual conversation with me.  

Never once was I made to feel that I had to participate in particular activities or act in a particular way because I was born a female.  My father always emphasized the importance of good character.  In African culture, that is what matters most in any person's existence.  Traditional African religion does not include things such as heaven and hell, because the punishment for doing bad things is to be forgotten about, ridiculed and disrespected in death.  You cannot be an ancestor, which is African equivalent of heaven.


For that reason, my parents have always encouraged me in anything I want to do that contributes to the world and the people in my community in a positive manner.


I was never too aware of the social significance my gender entailed until I was older and spent less time at home.  At home, I was protected.  I was my Daddy's brilliant, philanthropic, idealistic, wannabe world saving baby girl.  I had good ideas.  I had great arguments.  I had a serious sense of justice.  And I had a big heart.  At home, I was a star.


In the world, I was a girl...and inadequate.


But I don't buy it.  I don't buy that crap at all.  There is nothing I am not capable of because I am a womyn.  If I am not capable of something, it is because I don't want to, because I don't want to put the effort in, because I don't want to do the work.  But my cliche "destiny" is mostly up to me and not up to the reproductive machinery between my legs.


In conversations with different womyn from different socio-economic, educational, professional, religious, and political backgrounds, I have gathered that a lot of womyn do buy it.


And I don't understand.  How can a biological characteristic, determined when sperm meets egg and is influenced by nothing other than 1 chromosome, determine your life?  Get outta here.  Probability predicates success?  Get off my line.


I can't buy it.  If not for myself, then for my daughters.  I will never look into the eyes of my girl child and tell her that she has to cap her dreams, limit her goals, reduce her desires because she is a girl.


I am so glad that my Daddy never once looked into my eyes and told me that my dreams were lofty.  When he looked at me and I told him what I wanted to do with my life, he was not only proud of me but he convinced me that is possible, within my reach, and I was entitled to grab it.

But the world tells us girls the very opposites.  Get married, have babies.  Have more babies.  Be a grandmother.

I want to do those things, definitely.  But that would not totally be fulfilling.  I feel an obligation to the world, to leave better than I encountered it.  I can do that by raising conscientious, kind, generous, humble, and selfless African children.  But I can also do it by encouraging people in my community to do more with their lives, by showing them resources, by informing them how resourceful they themselves are.


And the womyn I talk to think that tradition should remain.  A woman should cook and clean and support and let her man be in charge.

I will cook and clean and support and let him think he's in charge, but not because I am a woman and that is my "place".  I will do these things because my husband will respect me as a human so much so that I will want to do these things.  I know that I am equal to him.  The safety of that equity will allow me to happily take care of my husband, not the obligation of my gender.




I watch the news, read articles, volunteer at schools and clinics, observe people on campus and at work, look to my mother and her sisters, and absorb all the difficulty of being a womyn in this world.  Even in this highly industrialized, capitalist democracy, women live under a roof of restrictions and are assigned characteristics based on their gender alone.


And when I think of womyn in Africa, my sweet Africa, that we identify with a feminine title [the Motherland], I wonder a million things.


From genital mutilation to strict societal rules governing womyn's activities, I just wonder why we are teaching our daughters to hate their femaleness.


I truly believe much of Africa remains backwards because of how we oppress womyn.  If womyn went to school, if womyn participated in politics, we could change the world.  When you educate a womyn, you simultaneously educate a community and generations to come.


Because, I will say, that womyn are socialized to be caretakers, empathetic.  We are socialized to care about more than just ourselves so we spread the wealth of knowledge in order to help others.  Oh Africa.  Let us send our daughters to school.

When I think of every little girl in the world...I think of them as me.  It was elation I felt when I told my father I want to be a lawyer and he would smile and tell me I would make such a good lawyer and he is already proud of me.


I just don't want any little girl or boy to suffer.  Tell the boys they are awesome and give them all they need to stay that way.  And tell the girls they are awesome and to ignore the world's lies that they are not.