Editor’s note:
At the beginning of this article, I would like to ask a few questions:
From childhood to adulthood, in your observation, who is the parent who undertakes more housework?
Who will be more involved in your daily life and studies?
If you were sick at school, who would the teacher call?
If your grandparents and grandparents are sick, who will take care of them, and who will accompany them to the hospital?
I want to share an article with you today, and I want to talk to you about what life we really want as women?
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He has a lot of sharp insights. Many people who have read his writings say that they are becoming more and more “daring” – daring to draw boundaries, daring to refuse, daring to ask for…
The more exploration, the braver, the more freedom
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Source｜Wu Zhihong
One of my female clients said:
I feel like I’m going crazy.
I have never had such a bad temper, not only yelling at my child, but hitting him. I felt completely out of control of my emotions.
I have met more than one female client who described herself this way.
In the past 7 years of counseling, I have heard many marriage and family stories from men and women, and found that there are three things in common-
First, there is a cognitive divide between men and women in relationships.
Speak like this:
“I feel so sad.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Women are more comfortable and smooth in expressing their feelings and emotions; men see this as vulnerable, useless, and ineffective.
This divide creates misunderstandings and disputes in communication between men and women.
Even, they don’t understand each other what the other is saying or wanting.
This is the opposition between men and women caused by different gender parenting styles in a patriarchal culture.
(Figure | “Home on the Ramp”)
Secondly, as the “vested interests” in the patriarchal culture, it is difficult for men to really be aware and sympathetic to the situation of women.
Especially in marriage, most men do not understand a series of difficulties and sufferings faced by women in childbirth.
I even think, isn’t this what women should do?
These differences in perception and experience have led to alienation and even rupture in many relationships.
Postpartum depression, too.
Third, women generally feel powerless.
This is also where it stabs me deeply.
Women feel injustice, feel disrespected, but often feel hopeless in their relationship and that nothing can change.
In counseling conversations, I often do only two things:
Tell them again and again: You’re okay with how you feel.
Talk to them again and again: what else is possible?
What else can I do? If no one supports me, how can I get the support I want?
How to get out of this powerless state and find a sense of autonomy and power?
I mentioned female clients at the beginningis also like this.
She is home alone full-time with a baby over a year old.
And I need to tell her often:
You are not crazy.
No one can handle parenting 24/7 alone.
Anyone in your position can lose control.
In this situation, what can you do?
After these conversations over and over again, I gradually began to think:
Women’s voices are hard to hear in most mainstream narratives.
Those about dysmenorrhea, workplace discrimination, sexual harassment;
Those about unwed pregnancies caused by women in relationships because men refuse to wear condoms;
The “subordinate” and “submissive” roles of women in relationships;
The unpaid labor that women experience in marriage—
The pain of conception and childbirth, the near breakdown of caring for a newborn, the ordeal of active or passive abortion…
All of this seems “off the table”.
Few mainstream voices think in women’s shoes.
Even women themselves treat themselves and other women the same way.
All of this made me slowly become a feminist.
Tokyo University Emeritus Professor Chizuru Ueno (hereinafter referred to as Mr. Ueno) gave this definition in her program “The Last Lesson”:
“Feminism is the pursuit of a society in which the weak are respected.”
She said that from birth, we are a “weak” who is completely raised by our parents, and we will become a “weak” again when we get old, so no one can be strong all the time.
I think this is what I want to say too:
If women become “weak” during pregnancy and childbirth, are they free to ask for help?
When they need help, is it immediately available?
Does the unpaid labor, or forced care work, undertaken by women be shared?
Can they use their unpaid labor time to do what they really want to do?
These are questions for feminists to think about.
It’s not just about every woman, it’s about every man.
I want to ask a few questions first:
From childhood to adulthood, in your observation, who is the parent who undertakes more housework?
Who will be more involved in your daily life and studies?
Who is present at the parent meeting?
If you were sick at school, who would the teacher call?
Who drove you to and from school as a child?
If your grandparents and grandparents are sick, who will take care of them, and who will accompany them to the hospital?
In the book “Feminism from Zero”, Mr. Ueno and Ms. Tianbo discuss the “world of nursing and nursing” that has not been seen and paid attention to.
The farm uses a vivid metaphor: It’s like the A and B sides of the world.
The world of side A is the “outside world”: politics, economic development, pursuit of success, striving for income and career advancement…
Working regardless of the wind or rain, it seems that “as long as you work hard, you will be rewarded”.
The world is watched and seen.
And the labor on the A side is also paid labor, in other words, you can make money through labor.
B side is a completeA whole different world.
In this world, there is a mountain of housework and a fetus that has not yet been born;
There are babies who are completely unable to take care of themselves, and there are children who need to be cared for;
There are homework that needs daily tutoring, there are rebellious teenagers, there are elderly people who need to be cared for…
Works in this world are time-consuming and labor-intensive with no reward or even recognition.
(Figure | Feminism from Zero)
Once a couple came to me for counseling, and my husband complained to me:
Wife always gets angry “for no reason”, he doesn’t understand why, he thinks it’s just unreasonable!
At this point I asked my wife, what would make her angry?
My wife told me that every time she finished cooking, her husband would say, “If only this dish had more salt,” or “That dish would have been better if it was less cooked.”
At this point, she was very angry, and immediately lost her enthusiasm for cooking, and just wanted to put the pot aside.
I then asked my husband, who cooks most of the time at home?
The husband replied that the wife did it.
The husband and wife both work, but the husband takes it for granted that cooking is his wife’s job.
And he does not recognize his wife, but uses a “faulty” way of denying his wife’s labor.
As such, he also felt that his wife was “inexplicably losing his temper.”
I then asked my husband:
What happens if you give your wife some affirmation after she cooks?
Husband says:
I don’t want to praise her. I’m afraid that if I praise her, she will be even more indecisive, and the food she cooks will be even more unpalatable.
Frankly, as a female counselor, I needed to be “compassionate” to hear this man speak.
Free labor + hard work, this is the B side of the world.
In the patriarchal culture, women undertake this kind of unpaid labor for hundreds of thousands of years.
Women, under the discipline and enslavement of thousands of years of culture, have gradually become “self-slaved” – it is natural for them to take care of children and do more housework.
Ueno-sensei mentioned that to judge whether a kind of labor is valuable, it depends on whether it can be purchased.
Obviously, we go to restaurants and order takeout for money.
But the wife at home does not need to give her money for the meals, just the cost of the raw materials.
Now if you want a high-quality child-raising sister-in-law and a high-quality housekeeping service, it costs thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars every month.
Ueno made a statistic that in Japan, the annual labor of a full-time housewife is worth about 152,000 RMB.
Then who pays the money?
Will the husbands pay?
Obviously, no.
Ms. Tianfang said:
If the B-side does not make demands, the A-side will hardly actively participate in the B-side.
Because it’s a very cheap thing to only stay on side A!
Isn’t that the end of feminism is to escape from the B-side world and go to the A-side world?
Not really.
Many people have misunderstandings about feminism.
Ueno mentioned in “The Last Lesson”:
How do men understand feminism?
“Ah, gender equality, you just want to be us. Then give up being a daughter and stand here.”
But women don’t want to be like men.
Not only men, but many women understand feminism in the same way.
Many of my clients have asked me countless times: How do I become stronger?
I ask:
What is “getting stronger”?
They told me:
Impressed by others, no emotions, everything is result and achievement oriented.
And we need to step back and ask: Why is “becoming stronger” a particular concern to you?
Because this is what a patriarchal society demands.
Empathy and compassion are less important in this world than being the ruler of power-
Become able to suppress others and develop their own imaginations (such as lusting after others, even sexually assaulting and raping others, buying others as slaves, tying them with chains, doing childbirth) tools), and make others obey.
Such a so-called powerful person will not be influenced by others.
Because their words are authority, they cannot hear what others are saying.
But what we want is not such a society!
What we want is not to “pull down” those in power and stand on the top of power;
It’s not about putting yourself under the framework of patriarchal culture, fighting with men, and then “stomping on” men in turn, just as men once did to us.
This is not at all what feminism is about.
Feminism, like any affirmative action movement, was founded to respect and protect the dignity of every human being to live.
Many people think women want to “be a man” because they can’t think of:
Oh, there are other ways to live? There are other options and possibilities!
If the economic development of this world has always been based on the free labor of women;
If it is said that women’s care work as gestation, caregiver, and end-of-life caregiver is “not rewarded, not evaluated, not appreciated”;
If it is said that women are constantly running on the A side and the B side, exhausted and almost collapsed…
Then, the society we want to rebuild is a society that pulls the “unpaid labor” of the B side to the A side to be seen and valued.
At the same time, people who only live on the A side are also pulled to the B side to undertake and support each other.
This is what Ueno-sensei said“Let the weak be respected as the weak”.
I have a deep understanding of this immersion in “culture of power” or “culture of patriarchy”.
Every time I get sick, I blame my body for the first time – “so useless”, “so ineffective”.
When family members are sick, although they are willing to accompany them, they also subconsciously think that their work and career will be dragged down and delayed.
Last year, my father had stomach cancer (fortunately at an early stage), and my mother was hit by a car and fractured on the first day of my father’s hospitalization.
Every time I need to accompany my parents, although I am completely willing, there is still a voice in my heart that says: Look, I have delayed so much work.
We can’t stand in the position of the weak and we can’t comfortably help the weak.
Ueno said:
The strong cannot always be the strong. The strong used to be weak, and one day they will become weak.
In this case, what kind of society do we want?
When you become weak, you can say “please help me” without hesitation, and when you ask for help, you can get help from others.
To create a society where even the weak can live with peace of mind, isn’t that our goal?
If a man didn’t have to worry about “losing” his work when he took parental leave;
If he doesn’t have to worry about taking care of the children, he will reduce his working hours;
If he also values company with his children as important as work;
If he is willing to share the household chores with his wife, so that the wife has time to do what she wants to do…
What will the world look like?
Maybe what we want is a world where no one has to be brave and can support each other.
One of the problems I often encounter with clients in counseling is:
As a leader, if your subordinates don’t do their job well enough, do you take it to do it for them, or spend more time teaching them how to do it well?
As leaders, they are sometimes under pressure to do everything.
As a result, they are very tired, and the people below have no chance to get help and experience.
You will find that once everyone becomes “strong”, we enter a vicious circle:
Everyone feels that they are “alone”;
Everyone is thinking about how to maximize their own interests;
Everyone competes with everyone, and is reluctant to nurture and help others grow…
Is such a world really what we want?
I think the reason why women’s perspectives and voices are so precious is that we, who live in “side A” and “side B” at the same time, clearly know-
We cannot be a good world with only the A side.
It could even be said that without the B-side, the glamorous world of the A-side would collapse completely.
So as women, we know well that these unpaid jobs, once unseen, unpaid, and unappreciated, are calling for a more humane and humane culture:
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Share the burden, help each other, and stop it from being unpaid labor.
Men who are “prosperous” in mainstream society will one day need to rely on the care and compassion of others to survive.
In a patriarchal culture, retired or physically handicapped men, like housewives, are not seen and valued.
Since men will be weak one day, and everyone will be weak one day,
Why don’t we build a society where the weak can live with peace of mind and dignity?
You might say, this is too hard, where to start?
I would say: Do it little by little.
Strive for your rightful rights in every conversation; fight for your right in every moment of being asked to do unpaid labor;
When raising a boy, tell him “it’s a human right to express emotions and feelings”; when raising a girl, tell her “it’s a lie that boys are better at science” …
Ueno-sensei said:
What women lack is the sense of self-efficacy in setting small goals and achieving them.
The “impossible”, “certainly not” voices in our heads are too loud.
So much so that we forget that we can actually start where we can, even if it’s very small.
Almost every day, I am moved and touched by my clients.
Where the original “impossible” was, they created the “possible” again and again.
Wives, who were afraid to ask their husbands to do housework before, began to express their needs and demands;
A mother who was “widowed with a baby” by herself, began to “confront” her husband to let him also perform his father’s duties;
People who used to complain to their girlfriends and others are now willing to face their partners and express their feelings…
These may not be enough, but they are a start.
We envy the reality that Nordic women are respected and can share unpaid labor with their partners, but such a reality is not built overnight, but through the efforts and efforts of them and their generations. It is achieved through inheritance.
If nothing is done today, tomorrow, when our daughters grow up and we hand them over to them, the world will still be a world of oppression and exploitation of women.
We don’t want to say with deep regret at that time: I’m sorry for letting you live in such a world.
Instead, we would like to say to our daughters and sons:
You live in this better world because I have participated in the construction of it, I have worked hard for you and for myself.
If there is anything else I can do with my humble writing, I would like to invite you to imagine and construct a place where the weak can be respected as the weak.world;
To build a world in which we all become weak and can be helped;
To build a world where chores, parenting and caregiving are seen and shared, and support each other.
Whether you are female or male, I invite you to work together to build a society in which-
Women can enjoy sex without worrying about getting pregnant;
Boys don’t have to be “powerful” and “oppressors” to be respected;
Boys can cry and girls can be in power;
Do not fear the strong nor despise the weak…
A loving and worthy world.
This article may be a little pebble that I throw in your heart, may it cause little ripples in your heart.
Then, together with your talents, gifts, and goodwill, take one small step toward building such a world.
In addition, I would like to recommend their series of good articles to everyone!
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