Feminism is… freedom of expression
TISHANI DOSHI, 41, DANCER AND AUTHOR, CHENNAI
When was the first time you learnt you were a nasty woman, and what made you realise?
The nastiness always showed itself inadvertently. I remember being 9 or 10, when I marched up to the top diving board at the Madras Gymkhana Club, where a huddle of nervous boys were deciding whether or not to jump and strode right past them to leap off without so much as an excuse me or a downward glance at the water. Perhaps this was more showing off than nastiness but it was an early gleam. I knew that the idea that there are certain traits that men have—some inherent capacity for valour and fearlessness—was rubbish even as a child. But even this knowledge didn’t undo the centuries of social conditioning and brainwashing about the inherent capacities of women. The notion that women are patient, caring and capable of multitasking, creates a creature that is comfortable with self-suffering, that relies upon being liked, that does not want to offend, that receives barbs with a smile. This is extremely damaging, and this is why, channelling nastiness is about a kind of reclamation. It’s not about everyone descending to a level of assholery and aggression, but about women collectively transforming that threat or assault into an act of power. There is a literary precursor to the hashtag ‘nasty woman’ — the #derangedpoetess — that emerged in 2016 when Sarah Howe won the TS Eliot Poetry Prize, and again, it was women coming together to resist being called poetesses (ugh), and retaliating to male condescension. When a man is threatened, he will pick the thing he feels sure will harm a woman—deranged (think of the once common diagnosis of ‘female hysteria’), or in Trump’s case, nasty. So, there’s something very strong in being able to counter this, to claim that negativity and chant it as a battle cry. But its strength lies in the collective. For me, this is what feminism is about. You may walk alone, but you don’t stand alone.
Growing up, what shaped your idea of women and their role in society? Did you deal with any blatant sexism and how did you respond?
I spent the first 10 years of my life being confused for a little boy so gender fluidity is something I’m inherently comfortable with. On Sundays, we’d go to my grandfather’s house in Madras. The dining table was small. People were many. The eating order was like this—men, children, ladies, maids. Because I was always hungry and because I was tomboy-ish, I used to sit with the men for the first round, and afterwards, when they rolled off onto couches to snore, I followed suit. I think
I became a subterranean feminist and ardent afternoon-napper during those Sundays at my grandfather’s. I must have perceived that it was a better deal to go first with the gents, rather than eat cold leftovers and then have to find bits of carpet and bed to squish onto as my aunts and girl cousins did. As a result, I spent my life avoiding kitchens and didn’t make a meal for another person till I was 36. I have since learned to renegotiate the kitchen as a space not entirely of enslavement. I grew up in a multi-cultural household so things were reasonably liberal at home. My friends were always very excited to use my house as a base for all
nakhras because “your parents are so cool.” However, my ideas of male and female roles were still largely traditional. My father worked, my mother was a homemaker, and most of their friends had a similar set-up. In my mid-20s, after finishing university in the US, living in London, working crap jobs, learning about loneliness, I finally returned to India in 2001 and that’s probably when I began to question gender roles and expectations.
My younger brother has Down Syndrome, and I think most of what really pissed me off while growing up was the rampant insensitivity that people in India have towards anyone with any kind of disability. So yes, I’m sure there must have been a ton of uncles of the early mansplaining variety, but that was a secondary issue for me.
You’ve shown biological clock the metaphorical finger, tell us more about that?
My clock never made its ticking sound loud enough for me to hear. I debated having children—gave it serious consideration, but there was never this biological urge to procreate. I have god children, nephews, and what I call an alternative son (better than stepson). I don’t believe true love or deep love needs to rely on DNA or blood or family. I can appreciate how this is bedrock for many, how fiercely protective and binding those connections can be, but I believe that experiences of love are varied and mysterious. It’s taken me a long time but I can pay my own way through life by doing things I love, and this has nothing to do with smashing gender roles.
Over the years, you would’ve heard of women adopting various forms and versions of feminism and feminism being bashed from several corners. Your take?
This is a polarised moment for feminism. There tends to be an ‘anything goes’ version—so you can be Kim Kardashian and post boob selfies and claim that you’re in charge of your erotic capital, or you could be Malala-Yousafzai, who got shot in the head by a bunch of brutes but survives and becomes an activist for female education, and this is also a version of female empowerment. It’s a large spectrum and there is a huge berth, but the amazing thing is that some women are still adamantly against the idea of calling themselves feminists. That seems bonkers to me. There are so many forms of feminism now—survival feminism, marketplace feminism, intersectional feminism, radical feminism—and admittedly, a lot of it gets lost in jargon and confusion; it’s
beyond gender roles now, it’s no longer about the binaries of male and female.
You’ve written about surrogacy and (nasty) women coming to fight back (the girls are coming, they’re coming)— your writing style and subjects are varied and beautiful— how would you describe your style and why do you think you decided to write?
Dance happened by chance, but not writing. I had only ever had one clearly stated ambition in my life and that was deciding at the age of 20 that I wanted to be a poet. The thing with discovering this glowering intent or ambition early in life is that then you’re pretty much stuck with it. I don’t see myself ever giving up on poetry. As to why I write, it’s impossible to explain. A poem arrives. You listen. Rather, I like to think, how could you not? To invoke Pina Bausch again, who said, “Dance, dance otherwise, we are lost.” You could equally say, “Write, write….”
Other than Fountainville being inspired by the rent a womb business and the poem referred to above, which works (both writing and dance) would you classify as feminist writing/ choreography. What is your frame of mind when you create these?
Everything I do comes from a place of memory. I think anger and compassion, while they have their valid place, are not universals from which to work. Anger is constantly cooling. Compassion is always in danger of turning into apathy. But memory belongs to the area of time, and when you are writing you are speaking to the past, to the future, and always trying to negotiate the present, so everything I do and engage in has in some way to do with manipulating time, understanding time, touching time. Also, while I see everything through the prism of being a woman, through the anatomy that is my own, through my experiences of being a woman in the world, and while much of my work reflects this, I have increasingly been trying to think beyond gender. Even the wonderfully potent and strong symbols of feminine power that I have used in dance particularly, but even in writing, I sometimes find oppressive.
Tell us about your relationship with Chandralekha and your love for dance. How important is it to find and embrace other women who uplift and inspire them, professionally or personally?
I remember returning from London after having lived there for two years and realising that the entire time I was there I didn’t have a single close female friend. It was only after tumbling back into the warm clutch of female friendships at home that I realised how important these friendships were to me. They were the great core of my life, I needed that dialogue, that understanding of who I was via them. As for Chandralekha—she arrived in my life like a true guru— unexpectedly, and as one who removed the darkness. I could write a book on that relationship, I probably should, but I’ll just say that there is something glorious about meeting a woman of a certain age who has defied, rebelled, created, loved, who has stormed through her life without bitterness, with only curiosity and joy and fierce intelligence.
As told to Asmita Bakshi