Daily Dose: 105

Feminism in 3D: Defy, Disobey, Disrupt

Logo: Sheyam Ghieth

I was not a disobedient child. But I cherished independence before I knew what it meant. On the first day of kindergarten, my parents tell me, I (too easily?) let go of their hand and excitedly headed to a desk where I took my place and waved goodbye to them, surrounded by a sea of children in various stages of “don’t leave me!” meltdown. Independence and disobedience are not the same thing. I was a very obedient child. I listened. I learned. I behaved. Do we learn to obey or must we learn to disobey? I know I had to learn disobedience. And yet, every meeting between my parents and teachers resembled the other: Mona is an excellent pupil, but she talks too much. Too much? Learning to disobey invariably involves “too much.” To disobey I had to collide headlong into the systems and structures of patriarchy that ensure girls obey: religion, law, teachers, norms, beauty standards that sit atop the three-legged stool of capitalism and racism and misogyny. In the name of the tentacles of patriarchy, women, girls, and femmes are to be contained and controlled; suffocated by the tentacles of the octopus called patriarchy into obedience. Contained, controlled, suffocated, or else. Or else what?