5 Things I Consumed Last Week (kinfolk 👩‍👩‍👧)

on don't fall in love with a woman

International Women’s Day is on Mar 8 and I have a tradition of posting the same poem every year. I was not on Substack last year so this is the first time on this platform. Brace yourself! This one is for the kinfolk :)

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Whenever I think about these occasions and how cringe messages on WhatsApp find their way to everyone, it makes me more averse to the idea. Nevertheless, I do appreciate reminders in life (that is exactly what self-help books are for me)- reminders because they are like a professor making you accountable and reminding you to revisit certain things. Hence, I settle with Women’s Day being the way it is.

The original idea was to publish an elaborate issue on content related to women to emphasize on how we live parallel lives while occupying the same space.

Like a lot of women, there’s a stew of misogyny I have gulped throughout my life or have come to know about it and certain triggers continue to force me to revisit them — experiences that would take a lifetime to heal. But I also think, perhaps even more acutely, of men who have deliberately terrorised me. Men, acting both alone and in groups, who made it obvious they were following me, taking clear pleasure in their ability to frighten me, and in this way reminding me that the streets are not mine in the same way they are theirs. And the reason I think of these experiences in particular, where technically, nothing terrible happened, as opposed to the ones where something did happen, is that this feels the closest parallel to what I feel now.

These experiences affect what we wear, how we walk, where we go, what we say, how we sit, where we run, what we do, how we work, how we think. It affects pretty much every so called free choice in our lives. Whenever we are in a mixed-sex environment, the office, the street, even, sadly, often the home, we are constantly game-planning and risk assessing how people with bodies like yours will react.

When I think about all of this, I do imagine what would it be to live without these thoughts - a life where I would be able to wear everything and anything without thinking how people would react, where I can stroll outside at any hour without thinking twice and where my voice as a woman is respected equally as everyone else. I am sure many of these are not applicable to a chunk of women but most women I have spoken to (my audience is restricted to India) face these issues.

I know it’s not possible for you to fully, bodily experience that, as it’s completely alien to how your minds have been shaped by your own lives. But I’m asking you, as men who read this newsletter and therefore care about women, to try to think about this reality.

Try and think about someone living a parallel life which you are not even aware of.

Only if you need any help, listen to this podcast - The Loneliness of the Indian Women

Okay no more cribbing, read this beauty.

Don’t Fall in Love With a Woman

~Martha Rivera Garrido

Don’t fall in love with a woman that reads, with a woman who feels too much, with a woman who writes

Don’t fall in love with an educated, delirious, crazy woman.

Don’t fall in love with a woman who thinks, who knows what she knows and also knows how to fly; a woman secure of herself

Don’t fall in love with a woman who knows how to turn her flesh into spirit;

and don’t fall in love with a woman who loves poetry (those are the most dangerous) or one who spends half an hour staring at a painting and can’t live without music.

Don’t fall in love with a woman that is interested in politics; and one who suffers an immense pain from injustice. One who enjoys ball games and doesn’t like television at all. …Not even with a woman that is gorgeous in spite of her face or her body.

Don’t even fall in love with an intense, joyful, and lucid woman.

You don’t want to fall in love with a woman like that because when you love a woman like that – she stays or not with you, she loves or not you – from her, from a woman like that, you never come back.

May you be surrounded with women who nurture you while nurturing themselves :)

Happy International Women's Day!

See you next week.

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Always grateful for the love,

The Hummingbird🌺

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