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Aren’t you oppressed? Why are you teaching us about gender equality?
Women remain the most fitting unit of the definition of the oppressed by those whose preference is to go with “oppressed until proven otherwise”.
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Muslim outfit: A teacher and some of her female students wear the hijab during a class at SMA 87 state senior high school in Jakarta on April 8, 2022. (Antara/Hafidz Mubarak A)
A
s a PhD student, I am blessed with the opportunity to also work as a teaching assistant, where I help convene small group sessions called tutorials.
One day, as I was about to start a class, a male student entered, and he stared at me confusedly. At the time, I did not know the rationale behind his expression.
I kept seeing the same perplexed look as I convened the session on gender norms, in which we discussed how societal expectations and attributes of being a woman versus a man shape unwritten and written codes of how women and men should behave and should be doing.
Ninety minutes later, the class concluded, and as I was about to leave the room, he approached me and said, “Sorry, can I ask a question? Why do you wear a headscarf?” I asked if he had a minute to sit down so I could explain. We then found a proper place to sit down and started the conversation.
He mentioned the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran due to the “morality police” that punished her for breaking the mandatory headscarf law and said, “To me, when I see a woman wearing a headscarf, it is a symbol of gender inequality” he said.
I asked a clarifying question whether he actually said, “gender inequality” instead of, “gender equality” and he confirmed the former. To him, I fit the ideal look of the oppressed, and my teaching gender inequality contradicted his expectations of what a “free” woman looks like.
I then explained how wearing a hijab is a conscious choice that I made as a Muslim based on the verses of God written in the Quran. “It’s not oppression if no other people dictate the action that you take,” I said.
