Last updated on January 12th, 2026 at 12:24 am
Many times, I think about what direction to take for my website—the one place that now hosts all of my writings. This evening, I’m really thinking about some of my feminist values. I’m a struggling feminist. Can you be a radical feminist if you live with a man, what with the unavoidable gender roles and overall conventional expectations from family and society and even yourself?
One time, I was loud about them, my values. I was loudly angry. Then the anger got to me; it was too stressful. I didn’t have to convince anyone. Then I was just dissatisfied with my relationship. Where was the romance I was promised? Then I thought I wasn’t in my feminine energy after several YouTube videos. Then again, I thought that was just bullshit and another means to enable sexism. Now, I’m just a struggling feminist; imperfect, still struggling with social indoctrinations, yet still maintaining my thoughts and stance on feminism.
Why not write these things on my website? I thought. I dislike the vulnerability and wonder if it’s necessary, but really, it’s not that deep, and I deserve to squeeze out every single thought in this ever-busy head of mine. I’ve not been able to write much this year; this same year that has had enough events that’d typically occur in three years. But yesterday, I attended my partner’s colleague’s child’s dedication and the loud noise blaring from the speaker, coupled with being with my partner’s colleagues and tbh, just being outside with humans in general, sort of pushed me into this writing space.
Between yesterday and now, I have once again gotten flooded with words and ideas. These are the days when I deeply feel like writing is my calling, but nothing is absolute. At my partner’s colleague’s child’s dedication, his boss (also his friend)’s wife asks me when we’re getting married. You know something about the solidarity in suffering that women have; it irks me. Something about encouraging, almost coercing, other women to go into an experience that doesn’t serve women, then in turn, we all get to hold hands and say, “My sister, it’s not easy. That was my experience also.” No shit!
There is no honour in any form of suffering that can be avoided. There’s no honour in the loss of individuality, particularly in my culture or at least, how much I know of my culture, attached to being married. This is my experience, after all. For about four months in total in this same year that’s only now eight months, I struggled with feelings of sadness and despair. I got too attached to the outcome of a desire and had to face the consequence when the desire didn’t work out as planned. But all I had to face was myself, not others, not the many others that being married pushes me into serving.
I tell her to speak to my partner, all the while maintaining a smile. I wasn’t pissed off. It didn’t feel intrusive. But it felt outdated. She told me that I had to put pressure on him, except I was fine with waiting for five or ten years. Waiting? No one’s waiting around here. Heterosexual relationships are a threat to women’s individuality and desire to show up as themselves. In retrospect, some women wait, and she was probably genuinely concerned. Some women get “shut-up” rings. Some women’s time gets wasted. But mothers that have been before me didn’t go through all that struggle only for me to willingly, especially now that it seems that I have more options, go into it.
I just don’t see myself doing it, the traditional wedding thing. I was barely fifteen when I had conversations with my classmates about my career (I wanted to be a doctor, I’m now a writer) and getting married, about how I couldn’t get a live-in maid because she could steal my husband. So I’d have to manage and take care of the kids and my husband, I thought. Of course, I didn’t know the implications of what I was saying. But that’s how culture shapes what is seen as normal. My partner says they didn’t have such conversations at that age.
Later, my struggles were with how to cope with my imaginary husband’s family. Some women get “lucky,” but many times getting married means signing up to be embarrassed and insulted by your husband’s family. You had to show up for events days earlier so you could assist, and then your husband showed up on the day of the event. The way to navigate this was by being the rich wife who would send money instead. To avoid other forms of embarrassment, you had to accept that you would be the crazy wife. So many women put up a front before getting traditionally married, and unveil their true selves after the wedding or when they have their first child, particularly if it’s a son.
I consider this to be too much drama. The struggle and performance to make them like you, to be accepted, for your value to their son to be seen. And there’s just this insistence on getting settled because of our biological clock. It’s always there, this feeling that my life’s goal and the reason I was born is to fill up a man’s life and help him sustain his legacy by providing him with children and making his whole life easier. Like an inevitable destiny. One that causes me genuine cringe and a feeling of worthlessness.
