Sometimes I Feel Bad Referring Myself as a Feminist
This story has no hatred towards feminism whatsoever.
I live in Indonesia, a third world country, a developing country, you name it. In this country, people are still fighting over religion and most of them don’t think this as stupidity. Most of them are agree that this kind of fight is needed. In this country the social economic gap is real. Based on Oxfam Report, four richest men in Indonesia have more wealth than 100 million poorest people combined, how tragic is that? Don’t even start talking about poor women in Indonesia, their lives are definitely 100 times harder.
Meanwhile, there’s me, living my middle-class life. Fortunately, I’m not trapped in poverty. My parents can afford to pay my tuition fee until I get my bachelor degree. I have access to the Internet (FYI, not every Indonesian have this privilege), but sometimes I still go to a coffee shop just to find another WiFi simply because that’s how we spend money as a middle class. Surfing the web since I was 8 years old brought me to feminism eventually. We can all thank Tumblr for that. The first time I saw posts about feminism, I was astonished, it felt like my questions about womanhood were finally answered. The high school me was 100% sure feminism was the answer to a better life for both men and women, even though I only used Tumblr as the source of my ideology. I felt like a true feminist every time I argued with boys about why it’s perfectly okay for girls to masturbate too or why boys don’t have the rights to catcall girls with sexy clothes. It was very satisfying to shut some ignorant boys with feminism.
Not only after a few years later I realize that being a feminist is much more than get into an argument about those things. I realize that there’s this wage gap, sexual harassment in the workplace, victim blaming on many rape cases, and many more issues, especially in Indonesia that I, the self-proclaimed feminist knew nothing about. It disturbed me for a pretty long time knowing that I’ve never done anything real to help women and I still had the guts to referred myself as a feminist.
Being a true feminist, in general is challenging enough, but being a true feminist in Indonesia is even more challenging. Most of the women don’t think there’s nothing wrong with this patriarchal world and their favorite phrase to describe it, is “God’s will”. Therefore, Indonesian feminist not only gets skepticism from men, but also from women. The other reason is, most people here don’t know what feminism is all about and simplify it by thinking feminism equals sexually liberal and surely this is a bad thing for my beloved “religious” country. What would happen then if you were a feminist that fight with a non-sexual women issue? The fact that you question your “nature” as a woman in the first place is a very wild idea and will most likely lead to people label you as a liberal and of course, that’s also a bad thing in Indonesia.
I never actually involved with all those things, not even when Women’s March finally held in Jakarta. I never really felt the skepticism towards me. I only rant to insignificant people about what I think is right, but never actually done anything. I’m nothing compared to them who fight the real battle. With all this privilege I have, I’ve never really helped women. And as much as I wanted to be called a feminist, I don’t think I deserve the title. At least not until I actually do something useful for others.
The only thing that makes me feel better about this being-a-feminist issue is, I know I’m not the only one here, I know many people out there calling themselves feminist only because they buy H&M t-shirt with something related to feminism printed on it, quoting Simone de Beauvoir to look “credible”, and listen to Beyonce’s “Run the World” as their anthem*. The difference is, I know I’m still far from being a true feminist and I promise someday I will do something that will make me worth the title.
*the example maybe exaggerated, but oh well!
