By Partha Chakraborty-
“The leaders of the movement trembled on seeing a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban… march deliberately into the church, walk with the air of a queen up the aisle, and take her seat upon the pulpit steps,” recounts Frances Dana Barker Gage, speaking about Sojourner Truth, who was born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree, at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention on May 29,1851. When Truth started, the hubbub in the room “subsided at once, and every eye was fixed on this almost Amazon form, which stood nearly six feet high, head erect, and eyes piercing the upper air like one in a dream. At her first word there was a profound hush. She spoke in deep tones, which, though not loud, reached every ear in the house, and away through the throng at the doors and windows.”
“An’t I a woman?” Sojourner asked, as recorded by Gage. As recorded by Rev. Marius Robinson in “Anti-Slavery Bugle,” Truth uttered “I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?” “And ain’t I a Woman?” If women are asking to do what a men do, why not let her if she can do just the same? Truth asked.
Her extemporaneous speech resonated, even if there were sneerers aplenty in the audience, and especially because very few women spoke at the convention on women’s rights (?!). Gage recounts “Amid roars of applause, she returned to her corner, leaving more than one of us with streaming eyes, and hearts beating with gratitude. She had taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely over the slough of difficulty turning the whole tide in our favor. I have never in my life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mobbish spirit of the day.”
Sojourner Truth fought for her right to be held by the same standards as men in 1851, a challenge supremely amplified by slavery that was still the law of the land for much of the country. Things have changed, in the US and in India where I grew up. Coming from a “Railways Family” in India, I take satisfaction when I see women loco pilots driving freight trains in India, long a bastion of men. In Indian armed forces, women have broken free from support and tertiary roles, especially in the Air Force. In the US, I cannot think of a single profession that is reserved for men, accepting the fact that few elite military units may lack representation, still. The US is yet to have a woman head-of-state, though there have been credible contenders at the finish line.
If Truth were to come back for a visit today, she would be pleasantly surprised.
Even then what a woman or a man can do, or not, is of contention, especially inside the home. It is routinely expected that, even in a two-income home, the bulk of chores, or supervision of the same if you are so privileged, e.g., in India, and most of the duty of raising a child fall on the woman. When a toddler cries “I want Mommy,” (s)he is not just asking to speak with the superior officer, (s)he is truly asking to speak with the worker bee.
I grew up fortunate, even privileged, in other ways.
Because my mom was almost always physically sick, and because we never really had money beyond a month’s paycheck, which, thankfully, was always secure, my dad did at least 80% of all household chores – cooking, washing dishes and clothes, mopping floors, fetching water, grocery shopping, all – while maintaining his job and taking care of my mother. In a previous life he was a firebrand trade union leader, but it was never an issue that he was taking care of home. It helped that each of them grew up effectively as orphans, so the common lores of a “(wo)man’s rightful place” never reached either.
Of course, it stuck like a sore thumb to our neighbors who rarely lost a chance to sneer at him, or us, often accusing my dad of being impotent, and a gay man, one of few slurs he took badly. That changed nothing at home. We were taught to look with contempt at the other possibility – that there is a clear division of work responsibilities defined by sex inside the four walls – even if that was the prevailing standard everywhere but at our home.
I carry that lesson of equality – especially at home, not just at work – to my own life.
When I met my wife she was candid that she was at a point in her life when she was prepared to be a single parent; ready, willing, and able to do jobs of both parents by herself. It did not surprise me a bit, because by myself I had reached the same conclusion. When we started a family, it was never a question of what somebody’s job was, because everything was everybody’s job, always. If work and other commitments, and lifestyle choices, dictate only one of us is available to do something, he or she will get to it, unasked, without any qualms about it. Long before work-from-home (WFH) was a thing, I had significant freedom to schedule my work commitments. When our son was born it was no surprise that I stepped in to pick up a sizable part of early care duties like bottle-feeding, diaper change and tucking him to bed. When visa idiocies forced me to move out of the country (“self-deport”), my wife had 100% of all duties, on top of her regular job. She did the same when I was convalescing after two heart surgeries, this time I was back in the US. After my recovery I made a conscious choice to make-up for months of being an absent dad and I continue in that mindset.
Even if our selves at home are melded into one big glob, there never was, or is, a question who the man in the relationship is, or the woman, nor shall ever be. Speaking for myself, I can never give birth to a child, nor can I breastfeed them; ergo, I can never be a mom. I am a father because I satisfy necessary and sufficient conditions – that I am a man and I am a parent. I am a man because I cannot change biology. Elementary, dear Watson. That does not stop me from having an abundance of care and concern for my family. That does not stop me from being profusive in expressing my love to them. That does not stop me from looking forward to cooking some dish for my son when he is back for a few days. That doesn’t stop me from holding his feet to fire when I feel he could have stepped up. The list goes on.
Care, affection, concern and duties do not define a man, or a woman. Biology does. Every one of us is created in the perfect image of the creator, and it is our job make ourselves a more perfect self – personally, professionally, and socially. Despite the accident of birth, we lift ourselves up, and therefore the society, with personal responsibility, equal opportunities, hard work, market forces, stable government, the rule of law, and other beautiful things our American experiment has in store for us. We create enlightened societies at home, and we push boundaries with the soft power of our example in parts of the world where the tide is not in our favor, yet.
Nowhere in the books of our lives it says that we are to deny the accident of birth. “In spite of” is not “denying.”
It is with concern and dismay that I note denialism of body identity and biological truth has reached a crescendo in the US. Unwinding centuries of patriarchy, still the reigning force in much of the world, means that women must be accorded private spaces of refuge – the last thing they need is to have men in there. Sports are sex-segregated precisely for that reason. I am all for integrated sports when that makes sense, but then it must be acknowledged as such, and not as encroachment on sex-segregated teams. Our hearts go out to parents whose children cry out thinking they are “caged in a wrong body”, but the answer to dysmorphia is not mutilation of a natural body progression, especially when data-dependent studies have shown that these efforts have no positive change in the very metrics they are supposed to improve. We cannot, must not, tweak creator’s alleged imperfections unless we truly do better.
That said, what somebody does as an adult is between them, their family, their personal faith and the (wo)men who guide them along that path, their doctors, and insurance coverage. We as society, and peers in the profession, can do nothing but show them our love, acceptance, and support broadly within the accepted parameters we have already set otherwise. In the same token, the rest of us must not be bullied into normalizing something that flies in the face of evolution, and biological truth. US laws have never really defined “sex,” even if it has been used extensively. The Supreme Court now has a chance to rectify, and settle this by aligning it with reality and common sense.
I may not have as much muscle as men Truth might have met, though I have tried. I may not have plowed nor reaped or husked or chopped or mowed as some women she was with because I was never in agriculture. I may have cradled, soothed and tucked to sleep a child more than Truth’s slavers left room for during her early pregnancies because I was never a victim of the cardinal sin of our land. I may have as much motherly instinct as any mother, and I enjoy the fatherly prerogatives as much as any other dad – simply because I am a parent ready to step in without hesitation. In my professional life I am known to make women and men feel equally included/ appreciated/ encouraged / incented, as peers, and up and down the chain. I am proud of all of that.
That makes me a human, not a woman. Chromosomes do not change even if one tweaks appearance inside and out. And that is why I never could be a woman, neither can half the population on this planet.
