Dad, You’re a Feminist!

The month of June leaves its mark in many ways. It’s the official start of the summer, the middle point between the beginning and end of the year...and it’s also Father’s Day in the United States.

And, depending on the relationship you might have with your father, this can mean one - or more - of many things:

• It’s a celebration of that familiar bond
• It’s bringing back fond memories from the past (this more so when you can’t create new ones)
• It’s coming face to face with feelings you’re unsure how to unpack
• It’s rubbing salt in a wound that hasn’t fully healed

Personally, I had a complicated relationship with my father for a large part of my life. 

Whenever I looked at him I saw an authority figure, a provider, a professor... 

To me, my father was always the silent one, the serious one, the more unaware one, the cold one, the insensitive one…

And the list goes on. Always pointing my finger at him, him, him...but never at myself.

The Disconnect Between Cultures

My dad and I were constantly clashing. Our opinions and visions differed so much that I’d dread seeing his name pop up on my screen. “This will only lead to an argument”, I’d tell myself as I suited up - like some sort of battlefield warrior - ready to call him out with a script-full of arguments in the back of my mind. 

So I’d do my best to keep the calls and interactions brief. 

We’d discuss superficial things, knowing well that if we were to veer off into uncharted territory - read: personal and life matters - he’d unleash a barrage of advice that I’d immediately shut down.

Some days, when our moods were even less aligned, I’d even fully engage. 

How? 

By lunging in with (what I believed) was my ultimate weapon: “You’re wrong. The world has changed and you’re stuck in the past. Just let me do me.”

But, when I entered the world of Cultural Intelligence, I realized that I was approaching these interactions with my father from an asshole perspective: I was always the knower, never the learner, and I needed to change how I kept showing up.

Cultural Intelligence taught me to look at me and my dad’s relationship from a completely different perspective. He had his own ideas and beliefs about trust, respect, and what matters. As a child of immigrant parents, I adopted some of those beliefs, but I was raised in a completely different country AND culture. With my cultural intelligence “glasses”, I could see we had a disconnect between cultures...

I needed to learn to make room for conversation, instead of immediately assuming that I knew everything. Let me be honest and say this is VERY hard, especially more so because I believed I “knew” everything about my dad… I knew him my entire life, what else did I need to “learn” about him and what other conversations could we have?

That’s the hardest part about applying a cultural intelligence lens with the people closest to you… we think we know because we’ve KNOWN them. We know their personality, what makes them tick, and what they feel good about… but that’s where we get it wrong.

We don’t know everything, even if we’ve known someone our entire (or almost entire) life.

Because even if we've known them OUR entire life, we haven't known them for THEIR entire life.

Connecting vs. Creating

You know that tired, old line: “Those who can’t do, teach”? 

Fuck that. 

I believe it’s a little more like: “We teach so that we can do”. 

After all, we teach what we want to learn more about. This is why I have no trouble admitting and accepting that I can be the BIGGEST asshole in the room sometimes.

So I took this knowledge and looked back on older conversations with my father, trying to figure out how else I could have shown up:

• What could I have asked that I didn’t ask?
• What opportunities did I get to learn more about my dad’s perspective that I had initially ignored?
• When could I have taken a moment to sit in silence and actually listen without pre-judgments to skew my views?

Because, most times, in the heat of the moment, we become a little more primal: we’re wild, we’re buzzing, there’s adrenaline coursing through our veins. This gives us tunnel vision: we’re on a track and we can’t get out.

For me, it was important to sit with myself, in a moment of calm, to analyze the situation. To shed light on these new things I had discovered. To understand how I could apply them in the future.

And that’s exactly what I did when our next conversation happened: I knew that I had finally learned how to LISTEN.. Or at least I had finally learned I was never really listening.

So, when I mentioned that I was creating a feminist group in Madrid (check out: Madrid Lean In), his initial reaction was to - what I perceived as - “come down” on feminism, I knew I had two options:

1. I could get defensive because I didn’t connect with him on this point
2. Or I could get reflective and create a new, shared meaning of feminism

As someone who regularly reflects on conversations, I was able to transform this fight-or-flight moment into a reflect-and-understand situation.

So I leaned into the conversation and asked my “silent, serious, unaware, cold, insensitive..” father: “What do you understand by the word ‘feminism’?” And, as he spoke, I got even more curious

• What does it mean to you?
• To what extent do you feel that women and men are equal?
• What do you think of the opportunity gap and salary gap?

The more I asked, the more I could feel my dad’s defenses come down (alongside my own). 

Why? Because I was asking out of genuine curiosity - as a learner, not a knower - instead of trying to find new ways to prove MY point.

And that’s when I realized: my dad IS a feminist! 

He just believed that feminism ignored his experience as a man who believed - again, as a knower - that he had to live up to societal expectations of what it means to be masculine. Which, in his head, meant giving up the chance to watch his daughters grow because he had to be the financial provider of the family.

And from that ONE conversation, my dad and I were able to create a new, shared understanding of equality and equity. This happened because we both chose to create instead of connect.

Bridging Communication with my Immigrant & Refugee Parents

All this to say that some complicated relationships, especially as children of immigrants, refugees, or third culture kids - with our father, our mother, our siblings, our friends...you name it - happen because there is a disconnect between cultures.

Oftentimes when there’s a disconnect between cultures with people who are closest to us, we immediately default to react, instead of reflecting. 

The next time you have a conversation with someone close to you - your parents, siblings, cousins, or friends - instead of REACTING, take a moment to reflect, first. 

Approach the conversation as a learner, not a knower.

And if you’re thinking to yourself “HAH! Shiva, the relationship I have with my immigrant/refugee parents is complicated with a lot of miscommunication…”

I get it because that’s the SAME type of relationship I have with my parents - try these questions to start and see where the conversation takes you:

1. What was a memorable experience you had at my age?
2. What does respect mean and look like for you?
3. Did you ever have an embarrassing “lost in translation” moment in [INSERT COUNTRY HERE]?

You’d be surprised how being curious opens an entire channel of communication.

Enjoyed this article? I’d love it if you could share it with someone in your network who could benefit from it!

Child of immigrants, refugees, or a third culture kid? What was the most memorable conversation you had with your parents, siblings, or family members? I’d love to hear about it in the comments! 

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