By: Ei Thandar Myint
Ever since I was able to speak and became conscious of my
own actions, I remember telling my mom that I wished I were a boy. This wasn’t astonishing
because you would always find me as the only girl among the boys, playing games
only boys would play. Besides, most of my close friends and playmates were
boys. My parents happily allowed this until I started middle school. Then, my
mom began teaching me certain behaviors a girl must follow, telling me that I
couldn’t just act like a boy anymore, and then the nightmare began. I was
restrained from playing with my close male friends unless there were some girls
in the group. When I asked why, I was lectured on how girls were different from
boys, how “good girls” must not mingle with boys, and how girls must always conform
to feminine customs. I habituated myself to most of these traditions, as I did
not want to become an outsider.
I was raised in many conservative ways as any other girl in
Myanmar. There were many unanswered questions inside my head as I grew up, but
I always stopped myself from asking them because I knew I was going to get the
same old answers. Then, I went to study abroad in the United States, just before
I turned 18, although it was the last thing expected of a teenage Myanmar girl
to travel 8,000 miles alone. A couple years ago, when I was 19, I remember
arguing with a friend of mine during a walk to the library. I couldn’t recall
how we got on the topic, but he was telling me that men were smarter and more
successful than women. I disputed that it was just a stereotype – one that
could affect the images of many accomplished women out there. The debate went
on for a while and he finally argued, “Listen, most leadership and top positions
are in the hands of men, and out of everyone, even the world’s most famous chefs
are men although cooking is a woman’s task.” I could not deny it. I wanted to
disagree, but I did not know how. At that point, I did not have any consistent
facts or data to support my points that females were as brilliant and capable
as men. But, I was provoked.
Last year, I realized for the first time that I was a
feminist after reading Sheryl Sandberg’s book, “Lean In.” The more I explored
the subject, the more I became aware of how much our culture privileged men. Scrutinizing
the ways I, my siblings, friends and neighbors were brought up, I observed how
deeply misogyny was embedded in our culture. Recently, however, seeing a lot of
people in my social attend to the problem of gender inequality makes me a lot more
hopeful and encourages my desire to share my knowledge. We are on our very
first steps towards a feminist revolution, yet we can’t refute that many men
and a few women are unhappy with the change. It is understandable that some men
are unsupportive of the movement towards equality as they do not want to relinquish
their privileges yet. On the contrary, it always surprises me when some women
declare that they are not supporters of feminism as they think men and women
are already equal. This is how invisible male-privilege is, and, I believe we all
bear a responsibility to these women, as well as men, to help them understand
what the feminist movement is really about. They need to be enlightened about how
unjust these gender-biases are in our community.
Marriage and Relationships
As I grow up,
I have learned the most daunting concept of all, which is the requirement to
fit the expectations of society. In my country, Myanmar, the expectations for a
girl or a woman are pretty high – higher than anything we can imagine. Starting
with marriage, in most households, raising a girl is about finding her a good
husband, not about raising her to be independent. From a very young age, girls
are taught to invest so much in being “liked,” and in acting and becoming a
“good girl,” so that boys will marry them. For girls, virginity is expected
before marriage, yet the same does not apply to boys. Having a boyfriend before
marriage violates the good girl image and in the case that girls do, they’re
expected to marry him. If a girl has had more than one boyfriend in her life,
she’s considered a slut, and the society will see her as a disgrace despite the
fact that boys are applauded for doing the same, just because they’re boys.
Worse than all, arranged marriage is still taking place countrywide, - even in
the cities because it is seen as a deep personal failure if a girl is unmarried
at a certain age.
School and Education
Apart from
these biased marriage and relationship norms, girls’ dreams are destroyed from
the first day they go to school. The automatic understanding that a class
monitor or team leader should be a boy in any coed school has led us to think
that it is “natural” for boys to be leaders. The fact that little girls are
called bossy when they take the leadership positions in the same ways boys
would is still permeating our society, which means that no one will speak up
about it because it looks normal. Along with all kinds of unfair treatment
towards girls in schools, there is one issue that I find genuinely unjust, the
establishing of two different scoring systems for different sexes to enter a
specific college/university. For example, to get into medical school in
Myanmar, boys only need to obtain a score of 460 whilst girls need a score of
500. The same policy is administered in the entrance of any institution of
higher education. I presume the idea implies that things are easily achievable
for boys, but girls have to try much harder to accomplish the same goals. There
is no excuse such “boys are born lazier than girls.”
Despite the fact
that education is playing an important part of everyone’s lives in the cities
as of today, it is a totally different situation in the villages or remote
areas. The literacy rate in Myanmar is much lower for girls than for boys. There are countless stories of young girls having
to give up their education for their brothers because the tradition suggests that
it is ok for girls to be illiterate or uneducated as they’re going to get
married (i.e. be dependent on males) when they grow up. We also hear this very
often: “As a girl, you don’t have to be that educated.” Many girls stop
pursuing higher education because colleges or universities are located far from
their birthplaces and it is, again, not proper for a girl to leave her hometown
“just” to continue her education.
Daily Life
Unsurprisingly,
the primitive notions connected to deep-rooted sexism perpetuate in everyday life.
For example, ideas about women belonging only in the kitchen or about women
being expected to know how to cook, are utterly pervasive. As a person whose hobbies
do not include cooking, it is really disturbing when I get comments like, “You
should learn to cook because you’re a girl.” Meanwhile, my brother gets scolded
for going into the kitchen often because there is this idea that cooking is not
a manly task. I am not implying here that women should not learn how to cook; I
just do not believe in a doctrine that demands everyone perform distinct roles according
to their gender.
What is more,
it is truly sad to see women dumping their careers once they get married. There
is a dreadful consequence to this in that it further promotes male power – when
men are the only ones with the financial authority in the household, they
become dominant as in nature. As a result, almost no women report problems in
their marriages or get divorces because they have no idea where to go or what
to do when they lack financial resources. Besides, divorce is still seen as a
“shame” nationwide. Accordingly, most women end up getting stuck in unhappy
marriages for a life-time.
There are a few exasperating superstitions regarding clothes
as well. In Myanmar, we hang clean clothes in the sun to dry them. False
beliefs, such as women’s clothes must always stay hung below men’s because ‘men
are noble,’ are entrenched in the society. Insults such as “You should go wear a
hta-mein (a traditional woman’s clothing worn around the waist and running to
the feet)” are widely used when there is a clash between men during their
conversations, – connoting that women’s clothes are icky and wearing them earns
them a lower status as well.
Religion or Culture?
When we talk
about our culture and its norms, we must not exclude religion, because these
two are somehow always interconnected with one another. A country’s religion is
linked to its culture, and Myanmar is a country with a population that is 89%
Buddhist. But being a female in this country is never easy as long as male
chauvinism is omnipresent. Religion is extensively used as a weapon to
construct an ideology of discrimination against women. Girls and women are
often told to wish to be a male in the next life because being born as a female
is a result of wrongdoing in the preceding life. On every pagoda, there are
signs of “No Women,” as women are restricted from entering certain areas
inside. Likewise, women are not allowed to wear pants and are forced to wear
traditional clothes on pagodas, whereas there is no constraint on men’s
clothing. Last of all, men (and even women) hold the idea of the invisible
power of men: that men have higher status than women. When I asked why, I was
told about fairytales in which women went to hell for disobeying these beliefs,
and when I disagreed, many people panicked and said that disagreeing was not an
option.
I lived with
these pseudo-religious cults for 18 years. Sometimes, they were quite
irritating but, I admit that I did not think they were wrong. They were just
normal parts of my daily life that had become invisible – yet, this
invisibility disables us from making essential changes. Schools just taught us
facts, but never taught about rational or skeptical thinking. And, I am
convinced that most of us never really take time to reflect on the religion we
practice. Do we actually believe that the situation outlined above is in fact
informed by Buddha? If so, Buddhism becomes a religion that endorses gender
discrimination and inequality, but I refuse to believe that Buddha ever
promoted this. Some men argued that Buddha did and the testimonies were in the
books. The thing is, no one really knows. Buddhism started in 5th
century B.C.E. and isn’t there a possibility that men misinterpreted the terms
and their significance along the continuum because that seems like a long way
back in time? Sexism has existed ever since men were around, which was at least
millions of years ago. Religions are created by men, therefore sexism has been
playing a role since at least the time of Buddha.
Rape and
Harassments
Myanmar is ranked #49 in a list of the most dangerous
countries in the world, according to the 2016 GPI. This is not a surprise. Our
country is known, among tourists, for only two things: first, for its beauty
and pagodas; and second, for the lack of basic human rights. Growing into
adolescence, one of the things I hated the most was to walk down the streets
alone because boys would hiss or make catcalls at me every time I passed. Aside
from that, these boys would stare at me from head to toes and start singing
random song lyrics at me. It is a really embarrassing and aggravating thing
that I – along with any other female teenager or adult – have to bear every
day, but there is little we can do about this but to live with it. Parents ban
girls from going out alone at nights because the outside world is too dangerous
for a girl alone. Freedom is an unthinkable sentiment for girls and women. Rape
is still common although it does not happen as often in the cities as it does
in rural areas. Victims of rape are often ethnic minorities, and most of the
rape crimes are committed by military troops with the intention of dividing the
country. Rape is used as a weapon of war against minorities in Myanmar. When
the crime is reported, the fact that government ignores only ignites the
conflict between the government and minorities. What is more sorrowful is that
the majority of rapes are never reported because of the country’s intense
honor-shame culture. Being raped is still considered a very humiliating tragedy
among the majority of people. Not to mention, victim-blaming is ubiquitous.
Instead of blaming the perpetrator, the public does not hesitate to criticize
the victim for her not-fully-covered-body, for mingling too much with the boys,
for her flirty personality, or other ridiculous aspects of the person.
Rejecting
Patriarchal Culture is a MUST!
As many know, Myanmar had endured under military
dictatorship for more than 50 years, and just recently transitioned to a democratic
nation. Although the country has shifted its political stance towards a
democratic path, we can’t deny that the exploitation of the dictatorship is
still in the core of our people. Yet, it is not just the government’s
responsibility but also the citizens’ to gain the true democracy we demand. The
significant point is that we are far from democracy unless we eliminate the
male-dominant system in households and workplaces, which should be the very first
and foremost thing to be implemented. The author of Persepolis, Ms. Marjane Satrapi,
mentioned in an interview: “The enemy of democracy is patriarchal culture. As
with the family, where father of the family decides and has the last word, so a
dictator is the father of the nation.” We know that we do not just want the
veil of democracy but a truthful one where everybody has equal rights and
freedom, and where those who are weak do not have to fear the strong. We have a
long way to go if we are to fight for this. It is going to take generations to
completely abolish the patriarchal system, but there is nothing in this world that
is unachievable when there is human determination and persistence.
Movement towards Gender Equality Should Be Everybody’s Responsibility – Not Just Women’s
As I have been learning more on this topic, I often see
people criticizing feminism asserting that there are far more important
concerns in the world. However, if we look deeper into the issue, we will see
that gender violence is very significant amongst all these critical problems, and
is rising at a pandemic rate. Poverty is a gender issue, as poverty rates are
higher for women than men in all racial and ethnic groups. There is yet no
country in the world where women are paid the same as men in their workplaces. Gender
violence is what normalizes domination. It is what supports dictatorship. It is
what creates wars. According to Gloria Steinem, one of the cofounders of Ms.
Magazine, gender violence is where the concept of any violence is initiated
because violence against females is what we see first within families. So, the
whole idea that it is ok for one group to dominate another becomes normalized. Hence,
I don’t believe we should think of the problem as ‘less crucial’ than other
issues because doing so is just going to keep us far from the society we hope
to secure.
Concurrently, some men and women state that feminism is
anti-men. Feminists do not hate men. The very definition of feminism - the
belief that men and women should have equal rights on the grounds of political,
social and economic fields - does not include a word about the hatred of men. Certainly,
there are always people who want to kill the messenger along the way, and they
come up with these harsh words such as “man-hater” or “feminazi” towards those
who support gender equality, but this is simply because changing the status quo
is never comfortable, and men do not like it when people challenge their power.
One quote I read online and really liked goes: “when people comment against
feminism, there is no doubt they are supporting sexism. There is no sitting on
the fence. You are either a feminist or sexist.”
Gender issues are not just women’s issues. Fighting for
equal gender rights is the same as fighting for human rights. In a recent TED
talk I watched by Jackson Katz, he analyzed how the gender issue became
synonymous with just women’s issues. He explains that we often think of
multiple races such as Latino or Asian other than ‘white’ when someone mentions
the word ‘race’; we think it means gay, lesbian or bisexual when the word
‘sexual orientation’ is described; and the same notion applies when we hear the
word ‘gender.’ We think the word ‘gender’ means women. Katz further explains,
“In each case, the dominant group doesn’t get paid attention to - as if white people don’t have some sort of
racial identity or belong to some racial category or construct, as if
heterosexual people don’t have a sexual orientation, as if men don’t have a
gender.” This is one of the ways dominant systems maintain and reproduce
themselves. It is how the characteristics of power and privilege develop the
ability to go unexamined and unrecognized in discourses about issues that are
primarily about men. In the case of gender violence, the issue becomes just a women’s
issue when it should be primarily a men’s issue. And we know that we need to
change the status quo.
The idea behind feminism is remarkably broad. We simply
understand it as fighting for gender equality, but in a country like Myanmar
where the patriarchal system is entrenched, I can relate much more with another
definition which is, according to Amandla Sternberg, “liberating people from
any type of discrimination caused by patriarchy.” We all suffer these discriminations every day
and it is not just women. We tell little boys, from a young age, that men are
not supposed to cry or show emotions. We tell men that they are failures if
they can’t financially support their families. We see men as ‘weak’ if they are
too kind. None of us had a choice of sex when we were born, and I don’t believe
it is fair that society tells us manhood is a certain way.
Just imagine a world without all these gender stereotypes!
How happy everyone would’ve been. We also know that it is not only imaginary,
it is also real. If we can dream it, we can achieve it. We owe this duty to the
society we were brought up in and the world we live in. We also owe it to our
future generations so that they won’t have to live with the level of hardship
we deal with on a daily basis. However, we are often silent about situations we
could make better, if only we spoke up. Do we really want this sexist system to
be perpetuated? Do we really want to experience the same old gender injustice
every day? Last of all, do we really want our sons and daughters to live
through the exact same experiences of gender-biased prejudices that we are
facing now? Fighting for equality requires relentless vigilance and
perseverance, but before all this, we must raise our voices for a better,
fairer and an equal community.
I would like to end with a quote from Martin Luther King
Jr.:
“In the end, what will hurt the most is not the words of our
enemies but the silence of our friends.”
It is really time to stand up and act. Later will be too
late.
References:
omagawwwd you took the words right out of my mouth!!! Superb!
ReplyDeletethanks! I really appreciate you for taking your time to read.
DeleteGreat job nyi ma.....love it ....I always wanted to be a boy when I was young too....my mom always said may be in your next life��
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ma Sandar! There are endless prohibitions the society set for the girls while there are none for the boys. I don't think it's a coincidence that you and I wished we were boys. I am certain that all Myanmar young girls did at least once in their lives for the fact that we were desperately demanding just as much freedom as the boys. Our culture makes it seem like girls are always less worthy than boys. So, despite of protesting/asking for the equal rights, we simply wished that we were boys as young children.
DeleteGreat job. keep doing what you are doing. Burma needs more people like you. I hope that many people would read your article cause a lot of people in burma especially girls don't realize these issues. They are so used to the way it is and they think its normal. By reading your article, i wish they aware of these gender inequality issue, religious issue etc and try to change it. It may take time but together we will achieve it.
Deleteso proud of you! this is such a masterpiece!
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree with you more. All these facts you mentioned are undeniably true and are still happening in Myanmar even to this modern age. It is very important to have equal rights for female in Myanmar even for daily basis social issues.
ReplyDeleteAfter I read your article or essay or whatever , I just realized that I am feminist too.
"You are either a feminist or sexist, there is no sitting on the fence." True that.
Btw, you can guess my gender from my name ;)
thank you, Ko Nyi Htwe :) Feminism is very much needed in Myanmar right now if we want to shift our country to the next developed level. Spreading the awareness among children, youths and olds should be our very first steps. Involvement of men would be a very effective catalyst in the movement. #HeForShe
ReplyDeleteIndeed.. Such developments and practices should start ASAP. I wonder how we can help it out efficiently..
ReplyDeleteThank you so much sister for writing this piece. This is everything what every person who supports gender equality wants to say.And I would also like to know if there is Burmese translation of it as I want to educate more people in Myanmar.
ReplyDelete