On being a (bad?) feminist

Hey there ho there!

Hope y’all are doing well in your respective corners of the world. I sure am, gee I’ve had a great week! Last week I started (well continued but “officially” started) my two women’s and youth groups, gave some presentations at a friend’s Escojo Mi Vida workshop in which I got to blow up condoms like balloons and teach kids how to use ‘em, talk about homophopia and open the door to a tough conversation youth here seldom have, and educate some youngins on STI’s and such. Then, it was my birthday and I celebrated on the beach with fellow volunteers who came from all over for the festivities and a much needed break from our sites! And on Sunday, it rained all day and I used the time like my friends in the northeast have been using their abundance of snow days (sorry dudes, hope you’re staying warm and have enough hot choco for the wild weather y’all have been having)...to catch up on work and watch Harry Potter with a BFFL who was visiting from her rural campo (love ya Gray!).

And today, one of my English classes is throwing me a surprise birthday party (I overhead them planning it but how stinkin’ nice is that?) and then more tasks to finish tomorrow before I head to Santiago to plan an environmentally focused youth conference! Oh, and many a friends have been sending me beautiful and encouraging emails/poems/quotes/thoughts and I really really appreciate them. Your words are now taped all over my room and serve as inspiration throughout my days. So thank you!

So, yes, I’m doing very well with my work. Chugging along, trying to find creative ways to teach women how to wash their hands and put bleach in their water so as not to get diarrhea. Then I must use concepts from the movie Inception to subtly plant the idea deep in youth’s heads that they should have high self-esteem and make good decisions (good news is that next week I get to draw all the reproductive man and lady bits and explain those to a bunch of 15-year-olds, yippee!) And as great as everything is going, got stuck in an intellectual rut that I’m having a hard time working through. As I said to my BFF, Emily, back stateside the other day: I think I’m a bad feminist. 

Here’s why: The other day I was sitting around with some other volunteers and I said something along the lines of “Yes, because I’m a feminist and I believe women are are not treated appropriately here and it’s just sick watching men here tell women they can’t do anything and seeing how awful the domestic violence is!” Another volunteer looked at me shocked and said, “Wait, you’re not a feminist.” I said...”WHAT?” And she looked at me and said, “And neither am I.”

I was shocked that a major part of my identity that is immediately apparent to people who know me in the US has been hidden/not adequately expressed in this culture, even in front of fellow US volunteers. After a few minutes of discussing with her what I consider a feminist to be and telling her that perhaps she would not consider herself a feminist because it has been turned into a dirty word that scares people, she agreed that indeed she is a feminist. After my outraged rant (that admittedly was probably not the most effective way of presenting a feminist platform), she timidly said, “Yes, I do believe that women and men should have equal opportunity so I guess if you wanna call me a feminist I’d be okay with that.”

And that got me thinking, am I being a bad feminist when I don’t say anything in response to the fact that Dominican youth (my age) say, “Las mujeres no sirven” or “Women can’t do anything”? Am I being a bad feminist because I don’t have good enough internet to read all the articles/watch all the videos/follow all the debates I would like to in order to satisfy my craving for feminist things? Am I being a bad feminist if I put makeup on and shave my legs more than I did in America (my real mother begged me to keep shaving my legs and washing my undies even if I was joining the Peace Corps but I didn’t actually think to be taken seriously I’d actually have to)? Am I being a bad feminist if I don’t encourage every single girl here to set goals for her future and pursue an education?

On the flip side of all this beating myself up, it’s hard work to continuously be shut down by Dominicans on the merit of me being female-identifying and self-respectin’. So, is it good enough that I’m trying really hard to be conscious of the way I speak to young girls, and the ways in which I try to encourage them to be leaders in their community and work hard to pursue a career and not just a family by the age of 20? Is it enough that I say, “Hey, women are responsible for the health of our communities because they are the heads of our families and therefore we need to focus on educating them” even when my doña says, “Well, according to God, women are not the heads of households, God has said, because men are stronger and more confident than women, says God and He also says that men should work and women should raise families”?

When people tell me it’s strange that a beautiful girl like me isn’t married with kids yet, I take a deep breath, pull out a plastic chair, and begin to explain that in my culture (or at least the culture I grew up within in the US) people wait until they have their professional degrees and then look to start families. And then I add the anecdote people find unbelievable...that my very own mother gave birth at age 40. “That can’t be true!” they reply, “So, is your brother retrasado (disabled)? It’s exhausting, but it’s something that people cannot even begin to imagine another way of life, much like I couldn’t before I arrived. At least now, I have the patience and vocabulary to tackle this topic head on.

And when I have friends visiting and my local barrio boys ask me to “consigámela” or “obtain her for me” I tell them, “Look, she’s more than an American, more than a visa, more than someone for you to hook up with. She’s an intelligent, wonderful, creative human being and let’s please treat her and all other women with respect.” When people I know hiss at me on the sidewalk, I’ve started to yell back, “You know my name, use it.” It’s subtle and little, but it’s the best I’ve got.

In this culture, I feel so judged if I walk outside in a tshirt and jeans not giving a peso about my look or appearance. My grandma here tells me on a daily basis to redo my hair, put on makeup, throw away my ugly clothes, and wear high heels (and even gave me sexy red lingerie for my birthday, WHAT?). And when I go out looking pretty, my host sister makes a play on my name and says, “Wow, the Bella Bea (Beautiful Bronwen) has arrived, goodbye to the Fea Bea (Ugly Bronwen).” I remind myself, it’s cultural. I don’t have to wear t-shirts four sizes too small and red undies under white lycra to be beautiful. But, it is the most frustrating thing that if I do give into DR standards of beauty, ironically, I am taken more seriously when I teach in my local high school and youth and women’s group. It’s a catch 22 and I’m trying to find the balance.

But ya know what? I’m learning and I’m trying to be my own kind of feminist in another culture and it’s damn hard. In the US, we have the luxury to be able to fight the great fight for pay equity and opportunities to “lean in.” But here, where the culture is, oh I don’t know, more than thirty years delayed, sometimes just reminding men to be human is as far as I can get. So I’m gonna stop beating myself up and just keep making a concerted effort to be me, a creative, intelligent feminist who has to learn to use new tools to fix the same problem.

And at least all of my pre-Peace Corps identitfy hasn’t been lost. At the end of the conversation I had with my fellow volunteers that inspired this blog post, I said, “Oh my god, what else have I been hiding/covering up/not telling you? Do you even know that I’m a Democrat?” The chorus from all was “Oh my god, yes, Bronwen, we know you’re a Democrat, don’t worry, that’s more than obvious.”

Off to fight the good fight. May the force of feminism be with you.

Xo,

Bella Bea no matter what I’m wearing

Just a few of Manzanillo's future feminist leaders!

My favorite niñas enjoy the breeze!

Best feminist crew around!