Dismantling Oppression with Love

In a book event at the London School of Economics, Angela Saini, a reputed journalist, who has  written a book called 'The Patriarch' spoke about the reason why men are more successful than women and it has to do with having support; friendships, kinships, mentorship and community. Men tend to receive more support, she said, in all formats, compared to women. Growing up in a South Asian household, where I have seen our women barely have any friends, I know this to be true. 

In my research as a Gender Activist, I have begun to understand how alienating friendships from women benefits the heteronormative family structure and the state. The mothers who are deprived of friendship for the family are starved for good connections.  And as I began to ask questions around it, I found myself amidst the grief that mothers never share with their daughters; the one of being lonely in a family, in a community, in an oppressive system.

Growing up, many women are trained to not see see friendship as something as important as their family but feminist friendships are spaces where love is provided without restrain, and where there exists freedom, joy and a form of community that is accepting of you the way you are and it is the space where people first experience redemptive love and caring community, as reflected by bell hooks in her book All about love. Friendship is also, according to her, a social power that women can access that can open more opportunities for themselves.

Women have begun to claim public spaces, as something we can see in the changing relationships with their friends.  In the cultural attempt to restrain women to their houses, an overthrow has already begun. 

For many, the motivation behind this is that they have seen their mother struggle in her life without friendship. We see it in popular culture where shows on feminist friendships have begun to take space, or in solidarity movements, instagram and tiktok reels. 

However, for women belonging to the Global South, even if they have immigrated to the West, there rests the struggle to accept friendship as their right, especially if they are older and mothers. I interviewed a few South Asian women, spread across the globe, in my attempt to understand the impact the absence and presence of feminist friendships has on their life. 

I interviewed Inaya, Nayla, Maira and Noor to understand the role of friendship in their and their mother’s life.  When I asked them where they have felt most love or most comfortable, they replied saying friends and immediately spoke about, as if reassuring me, that they also really love their family and their family loves them. It was as if they felt guilty that they were admitting to a stranger that they might feel better with their friends than they might with their own blood. bell hooks writes about how women are conditioned to prioritize their romantic relationships the most, followed by family. But their responses are also an indication that friendships, because there are not forced sense of duty or commitment, legal or biological relation, are filled with freedom, something that women in my interview gravitate towards. 

Inaya is a doctor who is pursuing a master’s degree in Public Health from University College London. With an extremely demanding career, the understanding and creation of her identity has been heavily impacted by the same. For her, she is determined to make sure that her friends continue to be a big part of her life irrespective of the changes life brings because they are “her constant and her biggest support” and she adds that “the priorities have changed. I cannot do what my mother did, I cannot give up my social life.” She talks about how normalized it is for women to give up their social life when they get married but it is really not normal or okay. 

Inaya’s mother gave her social life up and lost touch with her friends after she got married, when she was only 19. There weren’t any platforms to stay in touch, her mother having to move to another city where Inaya’s father was based. Inaya made a comment that added to the narrative of mother’s sacrificing friendship for family: “That’s what moms do, they sacrifice their social connections to have a good family life and raise children.” For Inaya, she recognizes that women need more than one support system, especially a system outside of family. Even her sister in law, who lives with Inaya’s family, despite having been able to maintain friendships, feels an enormous amount of guilt when she spends time with her friends because she is away from her son. Inaya is trying to change that by pushing her to enjoy more while other members of the family take care of her children. According to Angela Saini, “Deep down inside us is a desire to love and be loved, and to extend that love beyond our inner circles,” and while Inaya’s mother couldn’t fulfil the desire for herself, she pushed her daughters and daughter in law to share love with people outside their families. 

Maira, a finance analyst from Dubai,  shared how her mother refuses to make friends. Even though all her children have grown up and have left the house, and her husband has been busy with work, because she lost touch with her old friends, she doesn’t feel comfortable reconnecting or building new friendships. 

Sarah, a historian from London, shared about her family’s presence in protests. She shared that her aunt, someone who had a professional life and circle of friends, went to attend protests that were held to safeguard the rights of Muslim citizens. Yet, her mother did not. The differences in their life was that Sarah’s mother had no friends, and was never allowed to work to form social relationships. While the protests were equally important for both women, only one showed up for it because her social connections ensured that she knew that her voice matters. Clearly, echoing Lorde’s thoughts, there is something so significant about feminist friendship that enables the individuals to stand up for themselves and fight against patriarchy and oppression.  

Our desire to love and nurture extend to the world around us, people outside of families we are born in. Restricting that love, and expecting women to suppress the parts of them that want to pour love into friends, is suppressing their emotions and forcing it to be trapped inside of them. If today Inaya, Maira and Sarah’s mother cannot leave their homes, it is because for too long they had to pour all their love into family, and the value of the love they were forced to give was measured against the amount of sacrifices they have to make. 

Growing up Noor was constantly warned by her parents to not get too attached to her friends as that would be harmful because family has to be put first but this wasn’t something that was told to her brother who is only a few years younger to her. I wanted to understand where Noor’s mother's understanding came from. “For her entire life, even in the incidents that she tells me about her childhood and adulthood, she has been told the same thing that you put your family over your friends. And that is the learning that she has tried to inculcate.” 

Varisha: Why does the woman have to sacrifice for the family?

Noor: People think it is easier to manage women than men because women will not resort to violence.

“The patriarchal and conservative religious community does not like Independent women. I don’t know which doomsday sign that is, but I am sure there is one,” Nayla laughs. And does friendship hinders patriarchy? I ask her. 

“Men had more social relationships outside of the family because you do not have to uproot your life after marriage. My male cousins have been allowed to build friendships from school but the girls in the family were heavily discouraged to make friends and only in college.” Even during festivals only her father’s and brother’s friends would come, and relax while it was the job of the women to feed them. Their friends would not be allowed to come because they would distract them. In this case, women not having social connections benefits the men because they can enjoy and relax with ease while women do the labour. She also emphasises on how these sacrifices that women are forced to make, like limiting social connections and spending time doing domestic labour is what the culture around her promotes. 

“In learning how to make our differences and make them strengths, for the master’s tool will never dismantle the master's house,” I think of this almost constantly. The tool to dismantle colonial and patriarchal structure, we might have to stick together, unite and resist the oppressive structures that attempt to close in on us. In fact, I see these answers being applicable in any intersectional setting where resistance is needed to fight against difficult circumstances. State, family, patriarchy, religion often treats women as an object to be controlled, and disempowered when their agency does not strengthen their structures.

I did not look at friendship as something that was revolutionary, a narrative that feminist have been trying to convince the world of for a very long time. I thought of them as so ordinary, such a basic thing required to exist in this complicated life. The feeling of safety, fulfilment, and happiness that came from these relationships should be easily available to every woman. I have seen several women who did not have this support and how sad they often seemed. Women of colour are reduced to being a victim, yet, through the interview of my participants we could see how there are these women who are determined to create a fulfilling life for themselves, and create resistance to make that happen. Pursuing friendship which the system around you discourage is already a move of power, and of agency. 

It was in their moments of absolute despair, when things were too awful to bear whether politically or at home that they recognized the soft power of being loved and supported in the way friends do. Friendship has such a huge impact because friendship is something so biological and so necessary, and is just out of reach for many women. Women get married and can be forced to quit friendships, or little girls who would have eye opening liberal conversations with their friends and their parents would force them to cut those friendships off. It was almost as if, as a society, we understand the quiet power of friendship and patriarchal forces recognize the importance of cutting them from the lives of young women.

As women we might need to save ourselves, with the way politics, patriarchy and even the economy is rearing its ugly head towards the community. Friendships won’t change our situation but their soft power will flow through us, enabling us to exercise our agency and gradually disempower structures oppressing us. 

A few months back, after a hectic party organiszd by my family, I was lying next to my mother. My mother, married very early, never had any opportunity to form sustainable friendships until very recently. 

“I never thought–,” she said and paused. “I never thought there would be a party where I would have more friends than all the other members of the family.” Her tone was one of awe, positively overwhelmed at the turn of her life in her forties. My heart was smiling, warmth coursing through me at witnessing, in this moment of leisure, my mother’s confidence and joy at experiencing friendship. I hoped, at that moment, none of us would ever have to live a life without our friends.

Varisha Tariq is a writer focused on the intersectionality of culture, entertainment, and global politics with gender.