Travel Blog: Regyna Goes to India

By Regyna Parker

Hey folks it’s me, Regyna Parker with another eye-opening adventure for the USI Travel Blog! As you may remember, I’m non-binary and my pronouns are zhe/zher. Don’t misgender me because I have terrible anxiety and I’m neuro-divergent and I could have a panic attack if anyone uses words that I’m not comfortable with! Those moron cis-gendered white men who run this awful website sent me to India and I’ve got to tell you, it was not an easy trip.

My journey to this so-called “spiritual” land has been, in a word, exhausting. Not from the travel but from the sheer, overwhelming oppression that radiates from every street corner, every temple, and every forehead! Yes, you heard me! The bindi! That little red dot, so seemingly benign to the untrained eye, is nothing short of a literal bullseye painted on every woman’s face, marking her as conquered territory.

I’ve had dozens of women try to explain it to me. “Oh, it represents the third eye, Regyna!” one said. Another, a brazen young woman, told me it was a symbol of her marital status. I, of course, had to correct her. “It is no such thing,” I explained, slowly and with exaggerated enunciation. “It is a symbolic shackle. A tiny, red reminder that you are not a whole person, but an accessory. A wife. A daughter. A piece of property.” She blinked at me blankly, which, as we know, is the first sign of a mind completely colonized by the male gaze.

I came here prepared to liberate the cowering masses. I brought pamphlets on economic independence and a fiery speech about the importance of screaming your truth from the rooftops. What I have found, however, is far more insidious than I ever imagined: a network of elderly women—grandmothers, mothers-in-law—who run the family like a paramilitary unit.

I met a woman of eighty-five years, in a small village. I asked her how she managed to survive a lifetime under the oppressive heel of her husband. She laughed and said, “My husband? He is a good man. He eats the food I cook and tells me when I have done well. But I run the house. I decide everything.” She then proceeded to order her grown son to go fetch her some water, and he obeyed without a word.

This, of course, is a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome. The women have been so thoroughly indoctrinated that they believe their subservience is power. They’ve been granted a small, meaningless fiefdom—the kitchen, the children—and they’ve convinced themselves they’ve won the war. I explained this to the old woman, but she just smiled and told me I was “very passionate.” Pathetic.

Perhaps the most infuriating experience of all has been my encounter with what these women call “feminists.” I attended a local meeting, expecting to find allies, sisters in arms who were ready to burn their saris and overthrow the patriarchy. Instead, I found disappointment!

Their topics of discussion were so provincial! Access to clean water, education for girls, safe transportation. They weren’t talking about the important things—microaggressions in the workplace, the oppressive nature of gendered pronouns, the symbolic violence of a man holding a door open for a woman. When I brought up the issue of the bindi as a symbol of female subjugation, they looked at me as if I were mad. One woman, a law student, actually had the audacity to suggest that my Western-centric view of feminism was a form of cultural imperialism. The absolute nerve!

I tried to explain that feminism is a universal, monolithic truth, not a choose-your-own-adventure game. They didn't get it. They're so focused on their petty, local issues that they're missing the bigger picture. They are fighting the wrong battles, and frankly, they are an embarrassment to the sisterhood.

The heat, the crowds, the squat toilets (a literal assault on the female form, I’ll be writing an entire separate post on that)—it’s all a manifestation of this oppressive culture. My blog, I realize now, is not a travelogue. It is a dispatch from the front lines of a global war. A war I am, apparently, fighting alone.