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| "The feminine energy itself is undirected but immense, like the wind and deep currents of the ocean, ever changing, beautiful, destructive, and the source of life." - David Deida |
I have been reading about feminism since I was in junior high school when I heard Emma Watson’s speech in the United Nation for HeForShe 2014 Campaign. Because I believe both men and women have their role for gender equality. Even though I don’t have the expertise to talk a lot about gender equality or feminism, but these topics have been intriguing for me. My younger self felt uncomfortable when women are seen as too bossy when she wants to lead, too aggressive when she wants to achieve, too muscle-y when she wants to do more in sport, on the other hand men are labelled too sensitive to expressed their feelings, too weak when men do domestic activity which society sees more of a “mother thing-y”. And on her speech, Emma, mentioned that more men should be invited to talk more about this gender equality as many as women do. And eight years from her speech, still, not more men engaged in this kind of topic. After marriage, my interest about ‘role of women’ expanded. I also would like to share a book I’ve read last year from Isabel Allende, a beautiful book titled The Soul of a Woman. That in a world where women might still be the second sex, that fact should not make women doubt their own value. One sentences that I cherish until today is that women have to love themselves a lot and love others without calculating how much we are love in return. That is how I embrace my femininity.
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Embracing femininity. Celebrating myself as a daughter, as a wife, as a mother. As a daughter, I have the privilege where my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. So does my daughter, my husband and I love her so much, no difference if we had a son. My school also never limit me because I am a girl. My supervisors didn’t assume that I would go less far because I gave birth and have a child. My in laws are supportive for my education and career, as I can still be a woman who wants to pursue her dreams. I realize how as an individual I have changed. I am not a singular individual, but a plural individual. But we are all both singular and plural individual don’t you think? Both man and woman after marriage become a family that we couldn’t separate. Even since we were born son and daughter we are in a family that makes us a plural individual. Also, we are both member of a bigger society, so everything about oneself inter-relates. Then, when one agreed to be unity in a marriage, they could not separate themselves from others, their partners, their-to-be-children. After being a wife I understand the meaning of unconditional love, forgiveness and strength. In love there is forgiveness, in love there comes power. Love isn’t simply about two people meeting and their inward-looking relationship: it is a construction, a life that is being made, no longer from the perspective of one, but perspective of two. And here I am embracing femininity, as I believe femininity is about building, about supporting and about nurturing.
❤️
xx
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