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hat do you call the person who gave birth to you? “Mother” “mom”, “mommy”, “momma” or “mama”? In my own family, I call my mother “mamih”, my son calls me “mama” and my mother called her mother “emak”.

My grandmother was small in stature, and donned the traditional kebaya blouse and kain (batik cloth) daily. But in fact, she wore the pants in the house. My grandfather, a gentle man, towered over her physically, but it was clear who was the “boss”.

If Giwo Rubianti Wiyogo had met my grandmother, she might not have objected to the term emak. Giwo heads the Indonesian Women’s Congress (Kowani), a federation of 90 women’s organizations. In a video in connection with the organization’s 90th anniversary, she expressed her objection to women being referred to as “the power of emak-emak” (Read “Women’s group rejects ‘emak-emak’ reference”, The Jakarta Post, Sept. 15).

Giwo’s statement generated much controversy. Detractors criticized her for rejecting the term emak, which is a traditional and respectful way to address a mother. But what Giwo was rejecting was not emak, but emak-emak.

Emak on its own is neutral, but emak-emak can have a derogatory, or at least condescending tone. Instead, Giwo said we should use the term, ibu bangsa, or “mother of the nation”.

On Sept. 4, I was invited to a reception at the residence of the United States’ Ambassador, in honor of Maizidah Salas, a recipient of the US’ 2018 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report Hero Award. I was really excited to meet her as I had read about her amazing achievements — as well as terrible suffering.

Maizidah, whose nickname is Saras, hails from Wonosobo, a small regency and town in Central Java. She was raped as a teenager in 1992 by a fellow Pramuka (boy scout) member. For the sake of her “honor” (sic!) she was forced to marry him. In the marriage, she experienced domestic violence, which didn’t stop even when she was pregnant.

Eventually, he deserted her, lived with another woman in Jakarta, and he and Saras eventually divorced. To heal her trauma, as well as for economic reasons, in 1996 she decided to become a domestic migrant worker (TKW).

Her first destination was Hong Kong, but she had to return to Indonesia in 1998 when Hong Kong experienced an economic downturn due to the global financial crisis.

Saras then went to work as a TKW in Taiwan. She was unlucky enough to work in a family of eight, had to work very long hours, and was often verbally abused. She had no breaks, holidays and wasn’t even given a salary. Luckily after four months she was transferred to another employer, much kinder than the previous one.

But then she was told she had to return to Indonesia as her first employer could not hire another TKW before she returned to Indonesia. Saras refused, ran away from her agent and worked illegally in Taiwan for four years. She was able to earn enough money to rent an apartment, and started thinking of helping other TKW. She took them in, fed them and helped them in any way she could. Finally the police caught up with her, jailed her for 16 days, then deported her to Indonesia.

After returning to Wonosobo, she received various offers to work abroad again, but instead, she founded the Solidaritas Perempuan Migran Wonosobo (SPMW) or Women Migrants Solidarity of Wonosobo. In November 2015, the membership of SPMW had reached 229. The SPMW was later renamed Kampung Buruh Migran (Migrant Worker Village) whose activities are run by former migrant workers for other former migrant workers and their families. Kampung Buruh Migran was officiated by the Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI). Currently it has 600 members.

Since 2012, Saras has received numerous awards for the work she has done. The most recent was the US’ 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report Hero Award, where Saras was one of 10 awardees. The award was presented by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ivanka Trump, which I thought was pretty ironic since she’s a fake feminist whose main claim to fame is being the entitled daughter of the worst president the US has ever had.

Domestic workers in Indonesia are called pembantu rumah tangga (PRT). In colonial times, they were called babu or babu-babu when plural. They were considered “part of the family’ which meant no pay and long working hours. So TKW, certainly those who are trafficked, could also be referred to as modern babu-babu, by virtue of the fact that they are virtually treated as slaves, having to endure heavy work conditions, harsh treatment and no rights. But Saras is showing what the “power of babu-babu” can achieve.

Back to our friend Giwo, the chairperson of Kowani who balks at being referred to as emak-emak. Depending on the context, even emak-emak doesn’t have to be negative. In fact, there is something comforting about it, like the warm, unthreatening persona of a matronly woman.

In any case, you can take almost any term and inject it with a meaning that suits your purposes.

Remember the “SlutWalks”? It’s a transnational movement of protest marches that rejects the perception that women experience sexual harassment and violence (including rape) because of the way they dress or their appearance.

The SlutWalk originated in Toronto, Canada, when a police officer said that “women should avoid dressing like sluts” to avoid being sexually assaulted. Well, guess what? Women reclaimed the word “slut” and empowered it, so much so that SlutWalks became viral and were conducted in so many countries, including Indonesia.

Giwo seems to be more in the mold of Ivanka, meaning a privileged, elite, well-educated woman, who in this instance at least, seems to be more interested in labels than in substance.

Quite honestly, I am fed up with women being put on a pedestal, referred to as pilar bangsa (pillars of the nation) since the days of president Sukarno, when in reality, neither state nor society protect them from being downgraded, used or abused — up to now.

Give me the “power of emak-emak” if the woman involved is my grandmother, or women who demand that the government lower the price of basic commodities (as they have been doing recently), or the “power of babu-babu” if the woman behind it is someone as fantabulously inspiring as Maizidah Salas, than insisting on ibu bangsa in all its flaccid impotence.

So let’s stop these silly semantic mental masturbations and get on with the real work, like Saras and her friends are doing!