How to Raise a Feminist Son

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Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

How to Raise a Feminist Son Motherhood, Masculinity and the Making of My Family Author Sonora Jha a wrote this book as a memoir with Practical To-Do Lists.

She is our Woman Thought Leader this week.

Welcome to the program and thank you so much for being here Sonora.

Thank you for inviting me.

It's lovely to be here, Bonnie.

Thank you again.

So tell me, how did you come up with the idea for this book?

Oh, my goodness.

I mean, you know, I was raising a feminist son.

That was what happened first.

You know, I really wanted to raise a boy that wasn't like my father and my brother didn't have that violence, didn't have all the patriarchal elements that I grew up around in India.

And, you know, and then raising him in the U.S. gave me this additional challenge of raising a brown skinned boy in an atmosphere of racialized tensions and, you know, racism in the U.S. And so, there were these intersections and I was writing a memoir, and, you know, all these things kept happening in society, like the MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter movement.

And I would write these political essays while writing the memoir that started to resonate for people.

And, you know, with this context of having conversations with my son around these issues.

And so people would write to me and say, yes, we need to bring in the boys.

We need to turn our focus on men and boys and how they are responding to these issues.

And I realized that these conversations I was having with my son had a broader significance outside of our family.

And so I started to write, you know, turn that into the memoir.

And and then, yeah, I just moved at a high clip, like it was something, a story that I was dying to tell.

So let's go through your pointers of how to raise a feminist son.

When does it start?

And how does it start?

The book is as much about raising a feminist son as it is about living a feminist life.

So I think it really starts with living a feminist life, sort of like cleaning out a feminist lens every now and then, you know, sharpening it.

And living into all your own feminism, you know?

So as a mother, I was living less of a self-sacrificing mother role and more of a self-actualizing mother.

And so that just became my way of being around my son.

Things like stories, bedtime stories and just, you know, when I have a feminist lens I start to look at bedtime stories and see them as problematic and also feel compassion for the aging, you know, woman who asking the mirror whether she's still beautiful and, you know, all those those kinds of things and saying just discovering new things, you know, as a feminist and starting to talk about those in this lighthearted way with my son, taking him to the movies and talking about the representation of women, teaching him to apologize and, you know, all those little things that start to happen in an everyday, in everyday moments.

So not sort of like today's feminist lesson is ABC, you know, today we'll talk about the first wave.

So it wasn't like passing down lessons, but more like in conversation then in everyday moments of while eating ice cream or while telling him that I'm not going to eat ice cream because I don't want to get fat.

Catching myself doing that.

And, you know, sort of correcting myself.

When you talk about the Grimm's fairy tales and which are actually quite dark, a lot of them and violent about what did that not give you the idea that maybe we need some feminist children's books out there?

Absolutely.

You know, if you look at the history of fairytales, apparently there were women, feminist women that in in France that had started to write these feminist stories.

And they had a feminist stance to them until the Brothers Grimm came about and started making them darker and terrible things happening to women and children and and these terrible notions of the wicked stepmother doing these things to children, etc.. And so I definitely felt the need and started making up stories.

So in the book I write about making up this story about this little girl who was the central character.

And, you know, she was the central character I would tell my son stories about because I felt like boys were overrepresented as the as the ones that had agency and were going out and doing adventurous things.

And I made this girl do adventurous things.

And my my son loves that story and didn't even feel the need to have a male, dominant male character in that.

So, fortunately, now we have great feminist retellings of old fairy tales and we have feminist books.

So Rebecca Solnit has written a terrific book called Cinderella Liberator.

And in that, Cinderella rescues the Prince and rescues herself.

And also, you know, the prince is allowed to do what he wants and it's about rescuing all of society.

So and little things like that.

Oh, we were talking about the name Sonora earlier, and there's one book that I absolutely love, you know, because of course it has my name in it, but it's called It's by Gail Carson Levine, who's written, rewritten a lot of fairy tales as feminist stories.

And it's Sonora and the long sleep, or, Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep And it's a retelling of Sleeping Beauty and about how her curse is that she's ten times smarter than everyone else and that, that she's seeking a prince, or she's seeking a partner who will ask her questions because she has all the answers.

So I like these little twists and these, you know, humorous twists on fairy tales that we, that are available now.

And I actually have a whole list of them that I recommended at the back of my book.

There have been so many pro-woman, strong women lead roles on Netflix, on, Amazon Prime Video, etc... Yeah, it seems like there's just been a burgeoning, you know, a firehose of this stuff coming out in the last five years.

And, you know, the good thing that happens with that, if you bring it in without it seeming like something that you're trying really hard with you know, if there's enough of these, these shows and these these books that, that boys, you know, or kids of any gender, they don't notice that you're trying to do something political or do something that's out of the ordinary.

And so because my son was raised with with strong female characters, or at least we were talking about representation, he recently about, you know, a few months ago said, you know, Oh, Mama, have you watched this show called In Treatment?

It has Uzo Aduba in it, and it's terrific.

You must, you must watch it.

And he wasn't even trying to tell me, watch this, because it's feminist.

You know, she's a black woman playing the therapist.

He's just he just loved the show, you know, and he's drawn to the central female characters.

And so, here are some: So, "Snow White and the 77 Dwarves," Sleeping Handsome, "Sleeping Handsome and the Princess Engineer," "Fanny's Father is a Feminist."

"A is for Activist," "My First Book of Feminism for Boys."

So there's a lot of like really good literature out there.

"Not All Princesses Dress in Pink," This is, you know, about gender and about boys dressing differently.

"The Emperor and the Kite," "Grace for President."

So there's a whole long list of terrific things.

"Julian is a Mermaid," you know, all these lovely books that are out there that I wish I had when I was raising him, you know, he was, uh, he was younger.

We didn't have as many books.

I was forced to make up some stories and really go out and search for more.

Now, how old is he now?

He turns 27 this month.

Okay.

So he's fully grown.

And was he born in India or born here?

Yeah, he was born in India.

And we were, we moved from India when he was two-years-old his, his father and I my, my first husband.

What's the difference between trying to raise a feminist son in India and the United States?

I would think it might be easier here.

There might be support for something like that here, but maybe not.

What's your impression?

It's just different.

I know that the, you know, some of the best feminists I know live in India and the ones that inspired me to be a feminist as a woman growing up.

Some of the great feminist work is being done in India.

But I think, you know, for me especially, it would have been difficult to raise them as a feminist.

My immediate family was not very feminist.

They were very modern in many ways, but not, not very feminist in several ways.

And then I think the expectation on boys, you know, with a very strong rape culture in India too, and a very strong culture of passing down or enabling certain behaviors in boys and instead of dismissing them, that is a very strong culture.

I had to I had to unlearn a lot.

So I feel like it would have been harder work for me, although I could have drawn in several elements and everything, but it would have been harder work.

However, having said that, an intersectional feminism became important in the US.

What do you mean by intersectional feminism?

That's a new term.

Right, right.

So the term came was was popularized by a doctor, Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Who talked about how the intersection of race and gender are important to observe.

Right.

So in organization, for instance, she looked at this organization and this research where they were talking about the employment of black people and they said, yes, of course we have we employed black people and the conditions of employment, etc..

But when they looked at who was being employed or promoted, it was black men, whereas black women were not not having the same benefits.

Right.

So so what happens when you look at the intersections of race and gender and and look at who is being left behind or whose voice is not being heard.

So for me, the intersection of him being male and brown skinned in America, in order for him, you know, so he would have benefited from patriarchy in India.

Right.

And he would have been the same skin color as all the men around him, whereas here he still benefits from patriarchy, but he also has you know, he has faced a lot of racism in his young life.

And we together have to encounter some some of that racism.

And so he's "othered" in different ways.

Right.

So how so, in America, I had that difficulty of like being afraid for my son, whereas I may not have had to in India.

You know, my my family is a Brahmin, upper caste family.

He would have benefited a little bit from that.

So I wanted to take away those privileges.

But here, noticing that he's underprivileged in other ways.

Right.

Or he's marginalized in other ways.

So I think that was a that sort of made me conscious of how race and gender interact.

And I had to employ an intersectional lens, and sort of tell him look, you have to be careful of racism, but you also have to work toward gender equity.

I don't want to ask a spoiler question, but I have to... how did he turn out?

Oh, my goodness.

So here's a moment where I'm very proud of him.

A few days ago he, we were going to have our scheduled Wednesday afternoon talks, and he said, oh, I'm sorry, I can't I'm really busy.

And I said what are you busy with?

What, you know, And he said, I'm sorry, I'm, organizing a protest agains the Supreme Court decision.

So he organized the protest and it was almost like watching him organize a party.

He was nervous no one would show up.

And I said, oh, sweetie, don't don't you worry, don't you underestimate the anger of women.

They're going to show up, you know.

And so many showed up.

And he was very happy.

And he's busy very busy right now organizing that.

So, you know, I see him doing feminist activism, throwing himself into it, sleepless over this impending doom, you know, and urging me to do more.

And he says, you're not doing enough.

And I said, I have been doing things for decades.

I've been fighting this fight forever.

I'm so glad that you are fighting it now.

But but he's definitely a feminist.

His friends, his women friends experience him as a feminist, His friends of different gender and sexuality experience him as a feminist, and they talk about it.

And on an everyday basis, I experience him as a feminist.

He does have to work on the mansplaining though.

There was a time when, especially when Rush Limbaugh was active on AM radio talk shows where feminists became a bad word.

How do Gen X-ers and Z-ers and millennials see the word feminist?

That's a great question.

You know, when I came to the U.S., I never thought that the word feminist in the U.S. was considered problematic or had this other connotation to it, as, you know, an angry woman.

So I was surprised by that and when I would ask my friends in 2003, when I first started teaching at my university, I would ask my my students who identifies as a feminist and only one like in a classroom of about 25 students, only one or two women would raise their hands.

Whereas now when I ask students, I mean, I don't even have to ask them, almost every single child, you know, young person of every gender will raise their hands, right?

So they all identify as feminist.

What I like is that it's not performative, you know, in a lot of ways these kids are doing the work without sort of like claiming the title in order to seem cool there is some of that and my my son does say that he is wary of using the label for himself, not because he thinks of the label as problematic, but he doesn't want to be seen as performative that, you know, that he's doing it because he's cool.

And he says like, how can you not be a feminist?

Look at what's happening in the world, you know?

So and that gives me a lot of hope because I see how if you're going to fight against climate change and if you're concerned about the Earth, you're going to have to be looking at issues of women, equity, you know, and gender and race and everything else.

So all these things are connected.

And I do get a lot of hope that.

You use the term in the book Vulnerable Masculinity.

Please explain what that means.

It means that boys should be allowed to cry.

You know, when we say boys don't cry, walk it off.

And that's fine, you know, you need to be stoic.

I think that that does men such a disservice.

You know, it does everyone a disservice because where does that anger go?

If we don't allow boys to have a vulnerable masculinity where they can cry, where they can pick up the phone and call a friend.

So, you know, one of the things that my son does and that makes me really happy is that he calls his friend if he's feeling sad.

And he, he calls his buddy and he says, hey, dude, I'm feeling really bad.

Or, you know, they talk about break ups with their girlfriends and they talk about missing their moms, which is so great, you know?

And I want him to have that and I want young men to have that and grow into, into men who reach out to each other, who have a social life and friendships beyond that.

Because look at what happens, you know, what we hear about, you know, when there's a mass shooting, we hear about this alienated boy, you know, like the one a couple of years ago or a year and a half ago who shot all these Asian women.

And, you know, he was angry.

He said he was having a bad day.

I mean, what do you and I do when we are having a bad day?

You know, we may just go scream into a pillow or call a friend or maybe eat a tub of ice cream or, you know, write a letter to a senator, you know, something that feels that we we take care of it.

We don't pick up a gun and go shoot, you know?

So where are we teaching our boys?

How would you have a bad day to cry it out, to call a friends, to be vulnerable, to talk about vulnerability, to move, to be moved by art and have tears in your eyes because you hear some beautiful piece of music.

All of that is like a whole spectrum of human emotions that should be allowed and encouraged in boys.

Where do you think it is less welcome in this country?

Where do you where do you find it welcome?

I mean, maybe it's in in urban areas because urban areas tend to have more a greater percentage of highly educated people versus rural areas where, you know, there certainly are educated people in some rural areas.

But the predominance is that they're not, there in the cities they're not in the country, for the most part.

What we need is a cultural shift all through it, because so I teach media studies and I'm a journalism professor.

And so, you know, I think that when these things enter the mainstream media and culturally, we're beginning to see a lot of shows like Sex Education.

I watched this lovely show about two young LGBTQ men, two gay men falling in love.

What was it called?

Heart Stopper.

That's on Netflix right now.

A lot of good television programing is coming about that reaches everyone, you know.

And I think as we start to change the language and we start to change the lens, I think the Roe v. Wade decision, whatever is going to happen with it, is bringing a lot of attention to how vulnerable women still are and how much suspicion and hatred still exists for women and how much misogyny still exists.

I think once we start talking about these things and shifting things, but pushing things along, moving things along, it will become more common all across the country to have these conversations about masculinity and say, you know, what is it?

You know, why?

Why are we still imagining these traditional roles?

Why are we still asking our men to be stoic?

Why are we expecting our women to be obedient and and not in charge of their own bodies or be, you know, able to make their own decisions?

So I think you are right that it is, you know, I live in Seattle, which is a very, very progressive place.

I mean, although it has all its issues as well.

So sometimes one can get lulled into thinking, oh, everything is rosy, things are moving along at a faster clip.

And then, of course, you know, things happen in the news.

But I think the larger arch remains of hope.

Now, you shared with your son, you talk about in the book that you were sexually abused as a child and young woman.

First of all, how did he handle that?

And secondly, how did it shape his view and his desire to become a male, a feminist man?

I started to talk to him about it in, you know, sort of like age appropriate or at least what I believed were age appropriate ways when he was about 14 or 15, sort of, you know, if I were feeling sad or feeling triggered about something, I would say, oh, you know, I'm sorry, it's just a trigger of mine that I feel vulnerable because I have had men, you know, abused in the past.

Are men sexual make sexual advances are even at work, at the workplace, etc.. Years later, he told me that when I shared that with him, he had felt a little unsteady in the world and a little insecure and a little bit afraid for both of us, as a single mom and son.

And so that made me feel really sad.

And so I wished, you know, so in the book I talked to therapists and say, you know, how, what's the best way of doing it?

And they say, you can do it in ways where you you know, you're talking about sexuality a the body with boys, right from a very young age so that it doesn't seem like a big shock to them when you talk about these other issues.

Right?

So there are ways of doin And then you can also do it in the in the with the therapist, you know.

So I wish I had done that, but he didn't have that period where he felt insecure.

But now, in the longer reflection of time, he does say that, you know, he's very aware of his own physicality.

So he talked about a time when his friend and he was talking about how as grown men, you know, when they were 17 years old and they saw a woman was walking ahead of them and she kept glancing back to look at them.

And and they recognize that, oh, my goodness, she's a little afraid of us, that we are grown and our body is, you know, even though we are 17, we look like like men to her in the shadows.

And so we should fall back.

So that she doesn't feel afraid, you know?

And the instinct was to run up to her and say, ma'am ma'am, we are okay.

And then they realize, oh, if we run at her, she's going to be even more scared, you know, so, so recognizing their own physicality, recognizing that a woman is not asking to be raped if she's wearing a short skirt, you know.

Recognizing to read cues of consent, for instance, you know, read the cues that the bodies are giving off of.

They are, they are giving out to you that, no, I'm not ready for something.

And I you don't need to make an advance.

And even learning ways of having of asking for consent while being sexy or flirtatious, you know, it doesn't have to completely, you know, all these complaints that men have, like, oh, you're ruining romance and things like that.

If you bring in things like consent.

But they are finding ways of asking for consent while still being, you know, sexy or flirtatious and things like that.

So I think we talk about those things and, you know, and the best thing is that they to hear my son and his friends make fun of men who are toxically masculine and that toxic masculinity, they say, Oh, my God, that dude is just so toxic.

I mean, he's so problematic.

And so that makes me happy.

What do you think of women who don't try to raise feminist sons?

Are they more responsible for not getting rid of toxic masculinity if they don't try to raise feminist sons?

Yeah, so I have a, you know, a sort of a love hate, you know, more understanding one day, more frustrated, one day sort of relationship with that, you know, because, you know, of course, we recognize that that's how patriarchy works, right?

Patriarchy works through women for the most part.

We had the sort of the foot soldiers of patriarchy, where we are doing the work of patriarchy by policing other women and enabling our sons or our men.

And so men don't even have to do the work and they can point us at us and say, oh, look, women are doing this to other women, right?

So it is a common thing, but it does come from the larger structure of patriarchy because it's taught us so well that, you know, be suspicious of other women, be mean to your daughter-in-law.

You know, don't don't sort of stand in solidarity with each other, be suspicious of each other.

Right.

So so on some days, I recognize that and I feel a lot of compassion.

And, you know, the larger part of me feels that compassion toward all women who are doing their best but may not even see how they're enabling such behaviors right.

On other days it makes me so mad.

Because, you know, I see with my own mother, my my brother has been violent toward me and and it's never really been addressed.

And when I asked her to address it, she stopped talking to me.

So she's completely, you know, disowned me and said, no, you know, so it's a it's very personal for me and it hurts, you know, and that the kind of enabling of men and and not believing of your daughters, you know, that kind of thing just drives me crazy.

So, yes, I do blame women, but I think it's the larger blame lies with patriarchy.

So if you're not raising your son to be a feminist or you're not sitting him down, you know, you don't have to use the title or that label of feminism.

But if you're not sort of confronting certain kinds of behaviors, if you're not calling out the sexist jokes at work, for instance, right?

Not just as women, but as men as well.

I think you do.

You do have you have some of the responsibility for the ills that are happening in society.

But but I think it is patriarchy and so all of us have to work toward that.

All right.

That's it for this edition.

Thank you so much, Sonora Jha.

And your book, How to Raise a Feminist Son Motherhood, Masculinity and the Making of My Family.

That's it for this edition.

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