On inheriting female rage: sexism, smallness, and shame

Congratulations you're an heiress!!! to a fortune of repressed rage!!!

When I was seven, my Cantonese grandpa looked at me across the kitchen table and said, “If we had known you’d be a girl, we wouldn’t have wanted you to be born.”

My mom was sitting next to me. My dad was sitting in the living room, reading the newspaper. Neither of them said anything. In our household, "respecting our elders" equaled staying silent and letting them say whatever they wanted to say. So this was normal. But my 7 year old self bristled inwardly: “WTF DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME, OLD MAN?!”

Mysogyny, sexism, and female oppression show up in countless cultures. In China, the practice of foot binding was pervasive until 1949. It’s a graphic symbol of how women were not just metaphorically, but LITERALLY forced to become "smaller". I've often wondered how many of my ancestors walked through life with broken toes.

In my family, my mom worked full time, managed the household + all caregiving, medical, educational, administrative responsibilities for three kids, two in-laws, and her two parents. For a few years, all four grandparents lived in our home.

Before marriage and babies, my mom used to be a self-taught artist. As a kid, I loved staring at her watercolors and portraits - in awe of her talent, the beauty her hands effortlessly created. But after she gave birth to her first child, my sister, she stopped painting.

It's been over forty fucking years since she's picked up a paintbrush. Her creative expression relegated to the basement, her life crammed full of endless administrative tasks followed by a hours of Chinese & Korean soap operas.

Though multi-generational living can be a beautiful thing for others, I witnessed power struggles, weak boundaries, chaos, & resentment hidden under the veneer of newly acquired wealth and success.

My mom became a wild mass of pulsing rage.

Though she couldn't express this rage at my dad, her parents, or in-laws, she took her rage out on her kids & relieved her anxiety by strictly controlling the cleanliness of her home.

We grew up walking on eggshells, actually tiptoeing on carpets to avoid leaving footprints. If I spilled a drink on the carpet in the opposite corner of the house, I panicked. She could see - even HEAR - a tiny stain from 100 feet away.

Eventually, I inherited this rage. But the rage didn't start with her.