A Leo’s Silent Feminism

Several years ago, back when I was a hot headed 20-year-old, I remember one particular fight I had with one of my closest friends.

It was towards the end of the semester and the end of our three year term in college. One of our electives that the both of us opted for (as we both always opted for the same electives!) was English Language Teaching.

ELT was a class where students from three different combinations came together. When our professor decided to not show up one day (and since the assistant professor can be called nothing short of a huge douche), my friend decided to spend his time observing the backside of all the women in front of him who he didn’t get to see as often (lucky them!).

This didn’t please me, but I decided to turn a deaf ear to it as he turned to another friend beside him (a woman madly in love with him) and went forward to discuss his deductions. He then proceeded to state how certain women’s behinds simply made him want to hurl and how they should all have been like K’s, perfect, just made to adorn a thong.

OKAY THAT WAS IT. I was officially done ignoring this conversation.

“Dude that’s not cool,” I said to him.

“Nobody asked for your opinion,” he replied “I was talking to someone else and you chose to listen.”

He was right, he was in fact NOT talking to me. But he was talking within my earshot, he was my really good friend, and he was objectifying a woman in plain sight. I couldn’t just sit there and let it go on.

“She didn’t seem to have a problem,” he said, turning to the demure young lady beside him.

I rolled my eyes. Of course. I’m sure she was loving every bit of the conversation where the man who she was in love with narrated in great detail about the backsides of other women and which among them he would love to ‘bang’.

Our argument grew louder and soon became audible to the rest of the class, thankfully the assistant professor let us off right about then. We continued fighting all the way out of the building. We kept roaring our arguments at each other outside the block. I must have slapped him. I got several disdainful looks from our classmates. In another ten minutes, he turned and walked one way and I walked the other.

I refused to go back to being friends with him for a year after that day. I wondered why no one really supported me in speaking up against him, not even my women friends.

“He is just that way, there is no use,” they all said to me.

I was left out a lot of times the group hung out in the following year but since it was a decision I had made, I stood by it. But time passed over the anger and revealed in me a layer of loneliness. A year changed a lot and I realized that maybe I had approached that day all wrong.

The thing is, we both loved to argue. We both loved to be right and to win. And although what I felt may have risen from a place of genuinely defending the woman he objectified, it was clearly my need to put him down that made me react the way that I did.

I didn’t honestly think that by yelling at him, publicly pointing out his flaws or worse yet slapping him, I would actually be able to get him to understand me, did I? No. I wasn’t thinking. It was a moment of fury fuelled and followed by years and years of listening to two extreme sides of the coin that made me clearly lose it.

From the lewd comments made about a woman’s body by people who for some strange reason don’t grasp the concept that our bodies are not even to be thought about without our consent to the counter dialogue of feminists yelling their lungs out at things as ridiculous as patriarchal air conditioning (I kid you not!), there is a lot of extremism from both ends.

For the most part, I don’t usually blame the feminists (not because I am a woman!). The oppression beaten down on us women is so vexingly ingrained in every imaginable fabric of our lives that a need is felt to be speaking out against anything and everything that even slightly oppresses, objectifies or reduces a woman to less than she deserves. Lest the monologue continue to bury us as it has over the centuries, gravel, tar, brick and mortar.

We started over, not without several bumps in the road, and made peace with each other once again a little over a year since that fateful day. Sometime a few months ago I found out that he did manage to hookup with the aforementioned K who had been trying to lure him since years now.

Turns out, what did I know?

So I calmed down in life. Like, in general. I stopped drawing daggers at the slightest signs of misogyny or ignorance that I saw. What was the use? I kept thinking, these guys are never gonna change.

I continued to call myself a feminist but over the years it started being followed with a subtext of “but I’m not a psycho who fights about everything.” I felt the need to clarify this because I was infact someone (the psycho status is still up for debate!) who would relentlessly find something to fight about pretty much all the time.

If there is one thing I can vouch for in my life, it is that people love it when they find you voiceless, powerless, when even your nastiest doesn’t seem to threaten them. But you know what they say about the lion, no matter how long he sleeps for, he is still the king of the jungle and when he awakens his roar alone will send the other animals fleeing from around him. (WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT, EVEN MY METAPHORS ARE MALE!)

So maybe I am a Leo.

I’ve always had a likeable side to me that feels great, easy to get along with, pleasant, kind. But I have an equally terrifying part of me, a part that even scares me sometimes because how does one learn to embrace their inner lion(ness)? How do you accept something so loud, so opinionated, so stubborn, so impulsive, so brash and so absolutely untameable? How pray tell, do you love her?

She keeps coming back, every now and again, now more so to remind me what I can be like if I just wanted to, to remind me to not let my niceness be taken for granted, to remind me that I could still roar with the perfect rumble if I chose to, anytime I chose to.

Yesterday I was speaking to another male friend of mine and I found myself at a crossroads. A feminist call situation arose and I was befuddled as to what needed to be done. I could tell my friend that what he did was wrong with which I was certain he would disagree, or I could just let it be and move on as it didn’t really affect my life in any manner.

I chose the former.

Over time I understood that the only real way we can make any difference in this world is by being a living example of what we believe. That didn’t entail publicly winning an argument with someone because whoever really changed from an argument? Those things are the breeding grounds for life sized ego mania. It was all about how you could live the right way and show the world how a woman’s life should be lead.

I thought a lot before I spoke to my friend, but I decided that if it was something that upset me to such a great degree, then he needed to be aware of it because chances are that he himself didn’t know the possible implications of things he said or did. I curbed the urge to yell bloody Mary this time and simply told him in a few words how I wasn’t a fan of a certain something he did.

He wasn’t too happy about my opinion. After fifteen minutes of rationally trying to explain the situation to him, I decided to drop it. I made my point and if he couldn’t understand it said with kindness and acceptance, chances were slim that ousting him and trumping an argument would win any sympathy for the case in his mind.

Maybe the next time he is about to do something similar, something I said may strike him, he may think twice. To me, that would be winning the fight that matters, not the argument.

. . . .

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