Shila Behjat Söhne großziehen als Feministin. Ein Streitgespräch mit mir selbst
[Raising Sons as a Feminist. A debate with myself]

If you write about men, you can’t get around writing about women. If you write about short men, you have to write about tall women. Anybody who peruses the book “Raising Sons as a Feminist” by German-Iranian journalist Shila Behjat can see that for themselves. The book explores what it means nowadays to raise the men of tomorrow: how can we stop reinforcing the status quo of patriarchal gender formats, while not turning the attempt to create an egalitarian relationship into an ideological re-education program. “Feminism, as I have learned it, also envisions the end of man as an end vision; at least of the white man’s dominance over everything and everybody. And now I am the mother of two future men. And they also happen to have blond hair and fair skin. How did I get there? And above all: what am I going to do now?”
            That’s a good question! First of all let’s do a recap: Behjat's opening gambit reveals that she has a dilemma in terms of raising her two boys: what kind of men do we want for the future? And which counterproductive gender roles are we reinforcing while raising them? Shila Behjat has not written a manual for raising children, rather it is a book that reflects on herself and others. Surprisingly, it has little to do with her two boys. Behjat attempts to raise boys with the same virtues that society has always expected of women, and which has benefited society for centuries. “Only if you’ve learned empathy are you capable of opening space for others rather than taking it over,” she writes. And then she immediately contradicts herself, for as a mother she wishes her boys had a “killer instinct.” On the soccer field, they not only should dish it out, they also need to be able to take it. And yet, aren’t such guys precisely the problem that the world has, in terms of male dominance and male triumphalism, and shouldn’t it therefore be abolished?

            The answer from the Girls Power generation, which conquered one male domain after another from the 1990s onwards is devastatingly honest: “The men we so desire to fight and defeat are actually supposed to admire us, choose us. That’s the deal with the gatekeepers who are everywhere, and as always are mainly male, mainly white, and mainly heterosexual.”
            It is easy to understand the complexity of the mandate on herself as a mother and her offspring. On the one hand, they are expected to perform at their best within the old system, and on the other to be different and break with established power structures. On their own? In any case, fathers are still supposed to be soccer dads who secure the pole position in the sports club for their children, and mothers are supposed to be world champions in competing for the best daycare center. Feminism itself turns into a question about power rather than dealing with gender equality.
The emancipatory value of this book lies in this realization. It calls on feminism to uphold the so-called female virtues in society as a whole, rather than subjecting them once again to a logic of competition and petty capitalist assertiveness. Boys should also learn that caring and nurturing, consideration and empathy not only foster happiness, but also are laudable skills.
            In a decades-long study on the relationship between family planning and careers among US women, Nobel Prize winner Claudia Goldin of Harvard University found that even in an era of alleged equality, most women do indeed enjoy the same job opportunities as men, yet they make far less use of them. The reasoning for this has to do with the belief that time is a precious resource. Most women choose a path of less demanding work in order to have time for existing or future families. The notorious gender pay gap has more to do with female priorities than with companies that discriminate. A conclusion that will anger many a feminist. “In the public discourse, we have neatly separated motherhood, womanhood and especially feminism,” Behjat criticizes her fellow feminists and advocates for mixing it back together again. After all, how can you raise sons who value femininity, if even aspects of feminism are misogynistic?
            “Femininity is seen as an inappropriate influence on men from a certain age onwards, precisely at the moment when they are read as men.” Behjat warily wonders when her sons will refuse to help with household chores, because they see them as a “lesser activity,” or believe maternal nurturing is a natural expression of femininity, while receiving maternal nurturing is naturally masculine?
Behjat’s book has no patent solutions for the problem, but it does focus on one aspect. And that is on the power that streams from myriad female biographies—women who achieve this not from going for it on their own, but who depend on cooperation as an all-round vision and interpersonal commitment. “I am not the one who needs to be liberated from caring for my children, rather it is caring for my children that needs to be liberated from its bad reputation,” the author writes. However, this also requires a “demystification” of paid employment, which many fathers still pursue to an extent that is not family-friendly. “Only then will it be possible, at least for me, to shed the load of relentlessly unnoticed, unpaid work for the family.” Shila Behjat shows that feminism in late capitalism is a question of social freedom and that this in turn can only be realized beyond gender stereotypes.