Vou postar o texto original aqui,e futuramente uma tradução (não perfeita, mas tentarei uma similar). Adorei as palavras desta americana:
Let´s talk about... Feminism.
The F word. For most people I talk to, it conjures up the image of brazen, bra-burning banshees or manic, man-hating moaners. But what does feminism today actually mean? What does a feminist really look like? And most importantly, what concoction do we come up with when we take a cauldron full of young South Asian-American women who are dealing with balancing two different cultures, and stir in a healthy dose of that lethal ingredient, Feminism? Let’s start by discussing the word itself: Feminist. What does it mean to say “I’m a feminist”? To me, it simply means that I believe all people on the planet, no matter what their gender, or even race or class, should be treated with equal respect.
Try saying that to my dad. When I told my Gynecologist father that for my MA, I would be working on a focus in Women’s Studies and that I would be directing a production of The Vagina Monologues, he simply turned to me and said: “Do what you must.” Disapproval hung thick in the air between us, and in an attempt to clear it, I asked him what he thought of my work. He told me that he had never imagined his daughter might become a “feminist.”
My father and I have come a long way since that day, and these days I think he may even consider himself to be a feminist… though, don’t ask him to admit to it! But that first conversation with him is one I will never forget, and it got me thinking: Why are people so scared of the word “feminist”? What about this word so offended a highly educated man whose very work was to deal with women and their physical and emotional health issues?
I realized that the answer lay in our definition of the word. The problem is that the meaning of the word “feminist” has been changed, molded and shaped by every generation of women (and men) who have used it. Today’s definition of the word hardly corresponds to the definition used by the Global Sisterhood movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, or the man-hater images my dad still has stuck in his head. We admire and appreciate women like Sherry Ortner and Betty Friedan, pioneers of the “Second Wave Feminism” movement. But we acknowledge today that there were important flaws in their philosophies; that forming a Global Sisterhood, though it was useful in banding women together, also demolished the possibility for there to be different types of feminism that might relate to particular races and cultures.
So today, as we step into what might be termed “Third Wave Feminism,” we have to keep in mind that the word “feminism” no longer has a singular meaning. For me, feminism in its modern avatar has matured to be whatever we need it to be. Today, it is a woman sitting in a New York office, gathering the strength to ask for equal pay. Tomorrow, it is a man in New Delhi having the character to realize his young, new bride should continue going to school and get her degree in computer science. Feminism can take any shape we need it to; the question is how do we use it to be the powerful tool that it can be?
As young South Asian-American women, being a feminist is not always easy. Our fathers think we’re crazy and irreverent of tradition, our mothers often think we are overstepping boundaries and not learning how to be the good women that they were raised to be. We walk so many lines: the line between South Asia and America, the line between us and our male siblings, the line between the larger world and our parents’ culture, the line between our choices and our duties. We need to find a feminism that works for us, we need to incorporate feminist thought into our hybrid culture.
And that is exactly what young South Asian-American women today are doing, and that is exactly what I would like to use EGO magazine to celebrate. This is the perfect space to discover all the different cultures and feminisms we come up with, all the issues that South Asian-American women face on a daily basis. So here here, a toast to us! And a clink for all the lines we walk, all the feminisms we interpret, all the spaces we as diasporic women carve out for ourselves in this world. Let’s always challenge ourselves to keep questioning, keep exploring, and keep digging into the vast world of diasporic women’s needs.
About the author:
Piyali Bhattacharya, born in New York and raised primarily in Westchester county with long periods in Calcutta and New Delhi, completed her Masters degree in Media and Culture Studies at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London). Pursuing this degree has shown her the vital importance of realizing that media is not just in newspapers or on the TV, but that indeed every artistic space is a mediated space and each of these spaces has the potential to have an impact on society. Before her Masters degree she was the Theatre Editor at TimeOut Delhi magazine in New Delhi, India, which is part of the global TimeOut franchise. She got her BA from Bryn Mawr College in English and South Asia Studies in 2007.
She is currently working on a book: an anthology of South Asian women’s voices. The book will potentially be called “MAMA SAYS GOOD GIRLS MARRY DOCTORS; Retaining Control, Negotiating Roles: Diasporic Women and their Parents.” She is also a fiction writer and has had works published in literary journals both at Bryn Mawr College and in New Delhi.
"A fierce feminist" who found "little to no information available about South Asian women's feminism in the States", Piyali Bhattacharya will be contributing regularly to EGO writing primarily about South Asian American Women's Issues.
Published September 18, 2009
...and I hope you appreciate it too (:! Gabe.
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