A Righteous Feminist

I can’t help but indulge my seven-year-old boy in his games. I don’t do it because this is what I experienced growing up, nor do I do it because it’s the right thing to do, according to child-rearing theorists and psychologists. I don’t do it because my boy enjoys it, at least not only. I do it because I enjoy it. Most of the time. There are the odd occasions where the generational gap hits me in the face. Those times I enjoy less. 

I laid the board on the floor and squatted on the floor in front of my son. There was a box of dice, knights, princesses, and dragons. There had to be dragons, obviously. This made the game much more fun. At least for him, it did. My boy, eager to start the game, rolled the dice and then asked me how to play. I needed to read the rules to determine what each token and figurine did and how to navigate the board. The story was original, never told before! A knight is locked in a tall tower guarded by a flame-throwing dragon. Each player is handed a princess figurine, and we were to roll the dice to see who gets to reach the tower first to rescue the knight. I laughed, and he laughed with me. 

What are you laughing about, papa?

The princess needs to rescue the knight!

And so?

Nothing. When I was your age, it used to be the knight who saved the princess.

I ended my comment right there and waited for him to roll the dice. I saw the wheels of his brain turning. I didn’t intend to challenge the logic of the game nor the wisdom of the reversal of gender roles. And yet, inside of him was a little boy who saw himself as a hero fighting dragons or a dragon throwing flame at those that step in his way, and the princess figurine didn’t really jibe with the elaborate play in his mind, the one that he stars and directs and where we are accessories to the ode of his continued heroism. 

He flipped the board upside down to reveal another game, where dragons must hop from rock to rock over burning lava to reach a safe cave. He got to choose his preferred dragon figurine and insisted I get my least favorite figurine. I suppose he worried that if I had a figurine I liked, I would be more motivated to hop quicker than him and save my dragon first. I never play to win. I’m simply happy to be invited to the table. The dice, however, can be shoddy, and I ended up winning despite my preference to watch him win. I took it as a teaching moment to explain to him that losing is a part of life. He didn’t like it, but he accepted it nevertheless.

I relayed the story innocently or rather naively to his stepmother. I found the whole story humorous, not aggravating, not infuriating, and certainly not a part of a sinister leftist agenda aimed at attacking the very foundation of society and blurring the lines between genders. I just found it funny, not sad funny, not inappropriate funny, just a simple good old funny. My partner, my son’s stepmother, didn't see the humor. I tried to explain the obvious, the reversal of roles: the knight, literally in shining armor, peeking out of the tower window, waiting for the princess to save him. I was, apparently, very wrong.

It seemed like yet another seismic shift in my stance on the cultural debate, which I hadn’t expected. In my mind, it was only yesterday I was a rebel advocating for liberal ideals and equal rights. My views were forward-thinking, feather-ruffling, out of the box, disrupting, and, for many, quite disturbing. I carried it like a badge of honor, and the dissent it provoked in others was the fuel that got me carrying on. It was inevitable that I left home and ran to the West. It was a matter of time before I would have ended up in prison or dead. Naturally, my views in Europe were not forward-thinking and barely out of the box. I opted to see myself as a moderate, a centrist, a person who holds both the East and the West in my palms. A compromise that no one cared about but my good old self. 

I didn’t consider time as much as I should have. I was too obsessed with the place. I moved from the East to the West, and that, naturally, meant something. I’m yet to know what that is, but it must mean something. I looked up at my partner as she discussed the frustrations of the middle-class American girl who hated being the princess locked in the tower. I also wanted to be a knight. I wanted to carry the shield and play with the sword. I was braver than the boys, and just because I was a girl, I was confined to the role of the princess. It doesn’t help that she is blonde with green eyes and refined aristocratic features, her peasant feet aside. We have an obligation to teach our son that a girl can also be a knight.

My mind drifted to an old joke built on an old theme rooted in cliches and stereotyping.

A plane lands on a deserted island. The passengers consisted of two Egyptian men and a woman, two Chinese men and a woman, two Japanese men and a woman, two French men and a woman, two Saudi men and a woman, and two American men and a woman. The Egyptian men waited for someone to introduce them to the woman. The Chinese men built a grocery shop and got the woman pregnant to man the shop floor. The French men and the woman engaged in a ménage à trois. The two Saudi men wrote their number on a piece of paper and threw it at the woman. The American men hid from the American woman as she ranted about how the situation they were in was a blatant system of toxic patriarchy.

I tried to stop myself from laughing, but a smirk slipped through. I opted not to share my hilarious joke. I didn’t think it was the right moment; timing is crucial in comedy, or so they say. I also feared my joke would be described as a boomer’s humor. (The audacity of this woman!) I am often hilarious and occasionally on purpose. She saw exactly what went through my mind, or most of it. Yes, yes, yes, I’m a privileged American girl, and my suffering is dwarfed by that of the emotional and sexual oppression you had to go through in the Middle East. I had cable, and you had 30 minutes of cartoons on the one-channel TV. But you know I’m right. I laughed, yet again, because I can’t find a better way to cope with a life that, despite all my attempts, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.