Raising Feminist Boys in a Patriarchal World (with Sonora Jha)

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Introduction – 00:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Welcome to Relationscapes. It’s the podcast where we explore human identity and connection because we want to make the world suck a little bit less. I’m journalist Blair Hodges in Salt Lake City, and our guide in this episode about raising feminist sons is journalism professor Sonora Jha.

CLIP OF SONORA JHA: You have to pick a place in the world where you are willing to resist and organize now. And he is doing a lot of that. You know, when the Dobbs decision came, he called me and he said, “We are marching in the streets. I’m part of organizing the protests in Los Angeles. Mama, do you think they’ll come?”

And I said, “Oh, honey, yeah, yeah, they’ll come. The women will be there, the trans people will be there. People are going to protest this.”

And the next day he called and he said, “Oh my God, there were so many people that came to the protest.”

BLAIR HODGES: Leaving India was not an easy decision for Sonora Jha, but she hoped the United States might offer more room, more possibility, for a single mother like her to raise her son with feminist values. Of course, America’s got plenty of its own problems. It still takes a lot to help a boy navigate a culture here that’s saturated with misogyny, where the manosphere awaits to tell him all his problems can be blamed on women and queer people, where concepts like consent and bodily autonomy are mocked, and where solidarity with marginalized people is dismissed as virtue signaling.

Sonora has ideas about how to fend off influencers, friends, and politicians who are trying to make misogyny great again. She draws on academic research, her background in journalism, and her own experiences raising her son as a single immigrant mother of color. She put all that into her book, How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity, and the Making of My Family. And she joins us to talk about it right now.

 

Step One: Take Your Son to the Movies – 02:11

 

BLAIR HODGES: Sonora Jha, welcome to Relationscapes.

SONORA JHA: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: As a single mom of one son, you say you love going to movies with your son, and that you’ve done this throughout his life. It actually became an excellent place to help you build what you call a tender-hearted, sharp-witted, feminist boy. And that surprised me, because American film is hardly a bastion of feminist thought and representation.

So tell me how these movies helped you raise a feminist son.

SONORA JHA: Yes, absolutely. And I think I mentioned that in the essay. We were watching both Hollywood and Bollywood and foreign film—everything. Partly it was for my own benefit because I absolutely loved the movies, and I was definitely going to raise a kid who loved the movies.

And then as I started taking him to films, we would start chatting right from the time he was a one-year-old infant, which could be considered problematic, but he was quiet at the movies.

And later we’d have these great conversations about what was going on, who the characters were, the character development. And I saw in it a great opportunity to talk about the representation of women and girls in the films, and other marginalized groups, because that’s my political leaning.

But we were making these conversations really fun and engaging, right from Disney films to later the Marvel and DC superhero films and action films and all kinds of films. So it just became a place where we could have conversations that were about the characters in the films, but also sort of about our own lives.

And my own life as a woman, his life as a young boy. We’d talk about race and gender and politics, and sort of make jokes about, “Oh my God, that guy—it was all about revenge for him, and the women were just little props for his own journey.” Just inserting these little feminist takes into the discussion of film.

And even today, my son will call me and say, “Have you watched this? Have you watched In Treatment? Well, it’s this Black woman therapist who is talking to people about their lives.” And without making it a feminist discussion, it’s just that feminism is part of storytelling.

So it just became one of those places where I say in the book I was raising a feminist in the dark, in a way—feeling my way around in the dark, but also in the dark of the theater.

BLAIR HODGES: I like how you mentioned he’s seeing the film, but he’s also knowing that you’re seeing the film as well. And so he’s got to think about how you’re seeing it, too, because you’re watching it together.

SONORA JHA: Yes, yes. And there was this moment when he was older—I think he was in high school—and we went to watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And I was resisting it. I was like, “I don’t want to see a movie about monkeys.” And he said, “Well, it’s apes.”

And he said, “Let’s go watch it. There’s a scene in it that I want you to see.” And I was in the movie theater, and there’s this scene—no spoilers—but there’s a moment where Caesar the ape resists. It’s so dramatic and so compelling. Basically, Caesar has language, and he says no when he’s being beaten.

And my son was watching my face as I watched the screen. Because for him, he knew he wanted to see his mother’s face in this moment where there’s resistance and rebellion, and this sense of fascination with the development of a character and all of those things.

So it was a language tool of both unusual lives and of saying no and resisting, but also the magic of cinema. So, yeah, those moments are just so unforgettable. And I think he was watching—he was sort of bringing back to me the things I had been doing with him as a child.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And you talk about how film encourages empathy, and you say empathy is really foundational for feminism—for anyone. Empathy, the ability to perspective-take, to take on other people’s perspectives, to think about how other people feel.

And film gave you a great place to practice that. I think a lot of parents are worried about the media their kids are taking in. Or people who aren’t parents might be wondering, “Oh man, kids today are bombarded with so much garbage through social media, YouTube, and streamers.” So you don’t even have to be a parent to worry about the messages kids might be getting through media.

You’re advising that parents don’t just try to put children in a bubble, but to go there with them and help equip them to think—to be critics of media.

SONORA JHA: Absolutely. Absolutely. To have conversations—whatever it might be—in a critical appreciation is what we were doing. I love a lot of action movies while I’m also cringing and saying, “Oh my God, all this violence.”

And as a single mom who was a media scholar, I make a quip in the book about how I would put my son down in front of the television as I wrote about the effects of media on kids. So single parents will tell you there’s very little time. You’re trying to get your work done and everything.

I do think the media were co-parenting along with me. But what was crucial—and what stays crucial today—is having those conversations be part of it.

There are many aspects of media I don’t enjoy, but because my son is part of that, I will listen to the occasional Joe Rogan. I will listen to what’s attractive to young men today in these podcasts and things. I’ll dip my toe in. I can’t go too deep into that stuff, but I try to be aware so I can have those conversations, and so I don’t alienate my child or create too strong a generational divide.

Those things are so compelling and so addictive that they’re going to get to your child no matter what. Otherwise, all your child is going to feel is that they’re missing out on something.

BLAIR HODGES: And then there’s resentment there—like, “My parents are controlling. They don’t understand me. They’re out of touch.”

SONORA JHA: Exactly. And when he was growing up, Facebook and all this social media were coming in. So it’s about the conversations you have with your child, even occasionally.

There were times when I would say, “Switch that off. That’s horrible. What’s going on?”—like with Grand Theft Auto. And then he would say, “Yeah, you’re going to hate this because blah, blah, blah.” And I’d say, “Yeah, I do hate it.”

And he’d say, “I’m going to play it for a little while. I know this is problematic. I’m just going to play it.” And so I didn’t know I was doing the right thing. You question yourself.

So you don’t raise objections so much as raise questions. You get them to think critically along with you and say, “Maybe I don’t know this. Can you explain it to me? Can you tell me why this doesn’t bother you?”

You’re not going to win every time, but somewhere you hope you’ll sow a seed of doubt—and maybe learn something yourself. Because you’re not going to stem the tide of social media and who knows what else is to come.

BLAIR HODGES: That is such good advice—to raise questions instead of objections, and to ask for their advice, too. You talk about learning from being open to their perspective as well, and being willing to do some give and take. And that can be really scary.

Obviously, like you said, Grand Theft Auto can be really violent. That’s a video game. But you’re also getting your kid to think about it. How do you feel when you see this character in a video game beating someone up or shooting someone? What does it feel like? Tell me why you want to play that.

So then you’re hearing them out. They feel more heard. They’re probably more likely to value your opinion or trust you.

SONORA JHA: Yes. I was recently in New York at a benefit event, and there was a mother of a much younger child—he was 12. My son is grown now. She was talking about how she feels like she’s losing her relationship with her son.

She said he started saying such objectionable things and started to side with his dad, and to feel like she is too pushy and too bossy with her husband, with his dad. And he feels bad for the men in the family. And she said, “I don’t know what’s going on, because he was just such a sweet boy.” He’s about 12 or 13.

And I was thinking about how now, with all this stuff we’re learning about how young men have been feeling disaffected and disenfranchised in many ways—

BLAIR HODGES: Right.

SONORA JHA: —parents are beginning to feel this urgency to have conversations. You’re watching your kids be taken away from you in their minds, their hearts, their emotional lives, their growth.

So I think it’s become even more important to have those conversations—to not get on the defensive, but to say, “Why do you think that? What’s going on with you?” with a lot of care.

Because when they’re 12 and 13, they’re not fully formed. And yet they are being conscripted into a certain kind of masculinity by all those influences outside, or they’re searching.

And if they’re searching, you want to be there as part of that search. You want to ask, where is this coming from? Where is that feeling of being disaffected coming from?

 

Having a Son and Learning About Feminism in India – 12:14

 

BLAIR HODGES: Right. Well, let’s go back to where it began for you as a parent. You found out you were pregnant when you were 26. You were living in India, and you learned the baby was expected to be a boy.

You say your husband rejoiced, but you wept. And that wasn’t how women in India—or a lot of the people you knew—usually reacted. So why were you so upset when you found out you were having what was presumed to be a boy?

SONORA JHA: Yeah. And this was the difficult part to write about in the book. I grew up in what is a Brahminical patriarchy. So it’s the Brahmin, the upper-caste people—especially the men—who have a sort of equivalent to the white male in the Western world, especially in America. They have a high level of entitlement and privilege, and a lot of brutal history.

My family was fairly violent, especially the men in the family—my father, my brother, immediate influences. I had mostly seen violence and a sort of protector model. Either you’re being disciplined, or you’re being protected, or you’re being harmed.

And I was really afraid that having this boy—this son—how do I stop him from growing into the same thing? So it was partly a huge psychological shock for me. Will I have anything to do with the way he’s raised? Will he be like them? Will he grow up to beat me? Will he grow up to raise his hand on me?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

SONORA JHA: Will we just repeat history here, or will I have any influence? I burst into tears because what I wanted to raise was a feminist. And to me at the time, feminist meant a woman—a girl.

So I was all ready to say, “I’m going to raise a strong girl.” And then I thought, how do I put this title on a boy? Those were the coherent thoughts that came a little after the crying.

The crying came from the shock of it, from feeling helpless in that moment, and from feeling like the patriarchy would snatch my child and make him a violent, oppressive person—and that I wasn’t really going to be part of his story in a kind way.

BLAIR HODGES: And you talk about how difficult it was for you because you were still growing into feminism. You were still learning about feminism. Before raising a feminist, you needed to try to be one yourself and understand what it was about.

You say you first heard the word feminist when you were about 20 years old, and then had more of a feminist awakening about three years later as a news reporter in India. So take us to those experiences, and how they shaped what feminism is to you.

SONORA JHA: Yeah, thanks for asking that. You know, I—again, the word feminism is an English word, right? And it’s a Western word. But it’s definitely a phenomenon that everyone across the world experiences.

Women and children who—women and girls who have resisted, who have seen some sort of oppression and raised their voice against it, or felt inequities. Even if you sense inequities and feel and are aware of them, I think you’re a feminist, right?

So I already was a feminist, I think, as far back as consciousness can take me. I remember feeling that my brother had different rules and I had different rules. I did not know I could resist them. I did not know I could. But I just knew that this was wrong. This was horribly wrong.

And I felt marginalized, right?

But then when I learned of feminism, I started to read all these books—Germaine Greer, one of these early influencers, Simone de Beauvoir—reading feminist books, watching Indian feminist cinema.

There was alternative cinema that was growing in India that was depicting a lot of social issues, among them the oppression of women and people of lower castes and things.

And so watching a lot of that and feeling validated, all of that was really important. And then when I became a journalist and I was traveling across India writing these stories of the marginalized, I started to think more about these things.

And there was this one particular moment—and I write about it in the book—where I’m at this Allahabad railway station in northern India, which is more patriarchal. And uh, I mean...[pauses]

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Relatively.

SONORA JHA: Yes, there are degrees of all those things, right?

But I was at this railway station, and I was very hot. It was about 105 degrees. And I was clothed from top to toe to be modest and not attract attention. And I was 23 or 22, and I really, really badly wanted to take a cold shower.

There were these showers that were meant only for men who were ascetic—sort of like sadhus, what we call them in India—the sort of wandering religious men. These were open, you know, because these men are basically just wearing what’s called a loincloth, or like a little thing around their waist. And I just stripped down and I started to take a shower.

Now, I was hidden by just two little brick walls, but anyone could see me if they came in, you know, invaded that space. And at that age, you’re sort of a little more foolhardy. But I remember feeling such shame and such despair at just being this human being that was hot and couldn’t take a shower, whereas men around me could do whatever they wanted. And I just felt like, this is so wrong.

And I wanted to—in that moment—I just wanted to go home and be protected and not be doing these stories that would take me away from home and everything. But then home was a dangerous place, too. So that was a strong feminist awakening. And that, you know, in some ways I was privileged. I was, as you know, English-speaking, Bombay-raised, urban-schooled, young woman of relative privilege.

And I was leaving behind these other people whose situation would not change just by taking a train and going back to the city. And even in the city, there were other kinds of perils that were awaiting me. So learning to have that feminist lens—or, you know, really letting myself have that feminist lens—on everything that I did and saw and thought about really became a part of survival in a way.

 

Bringing a Son to America – 18:50

 

BLAIR HODGES: The more that you understood about a woman’s place in India, the more worried you were that your son would slip into the same kind of patriarchal patterns and possibly become abusive.

And it would be such a bigger challenge to raise a feminist there. And you decided to choose a less privileged life for him in America. You saw this as a path for him to become feminist himself, to remove him from that context. And that’s a really big decision. Do you think you would have made that move if you hadn’t had a son? Or is it all kind of part of the same package?

SONORA JHA: Yeah, there are two tracks, right? One is just what’s happening in my personal life, and then things that are intellectually making sense, and then the coming together of those. So I moved to Singapore with my former husband, my first husband. And he wanted—you know, I had a little more education than him.

So we decided our next move could be to the United States. I had never, ever wanted to move to the United States. A lot of my friends in college were moving here to study as undergraduates, and I had no idea. It was like, “Oh, terrible capitalist nation. Don’t want to go there ever.” And I loved my country, and I loved being a journalist in India. So I had no plans.

But my husband had wanted to leave, so I was doing the good-wife, wifely thing—quitting my good journalism jobs in every city and moving along with him. And Singapore was not that great for me as a journalist.

And so, you know, we decided, okay, let’s go to the U.S. I came here to do my PhD, which I was really excited to do, in political communication. That was very much in track with the things I had been doing back in India and wanted to do here.

So I came here to do that. And along the way I had a car accident and needed multiple ankle surgeries after that. My then-husband was supposed to follow me, and he decided not to. And so there was a break at that time in our marriage. We went our separate ways.

The big decision for me then was, do I go back to India or do I stay in the United States? And in that moment of reckoning, I was thinking about whether I raise my son among my people—which would be the Brahminical patriarchy of my father, my brother, those influences—or face the additional challenge of being a single mom with an only child in India, which was rarer at the time.

It’s become much more common now, and there are more alternative ways of being, but those were all the thoughts swimming around in my head. To me, denying him the privilege of being in that Brahminical patriarchy—which for him would be wonderful—was part of the decision. Every time we go back to India, he’s treated like a king, or like a prince at least.

Whereas here, he’s being raised as a young man of color, a boy of color, without the kinds of privileges that come from generational wealth or generational contacts—things that are difficult for immigrant families.

So partly the question was, where will his mother thrive? Where am I going to thrive? And is that kind of thriving also good for him in many ways?

I made the choice to stay here, even though it meant a more difficult life for me as a disabled single parent away from family, or at least family help. But I haven’t regretted it.

BLAIR HODGES: How are you feeling about the context now? Because, as you mentioned earlier, we’re seeing an uptick in young men becoming radicalized or shifting to the right and falling into more traditionalist or patriarchal thinking about the roles of men and women—not to mention the fact that trans and nonbinary folks are being oppressed or ignored altogether.

So when you’re thinking about the context of the U.S. compared to India, where are your thoughts now?

SONORA JHA: They’re very complicated in so many ways. I do think it’s going to be important to think globally. A lot of people are talking about where do we go away from the United States.

It was difficult raising him, especially watching him turn from a cute boy of color—a cute brown boy—into a young brown man who is then seen as a threat. That was so informative to me and so devastating. When he was a young man, seeing that people saw him as a possible thief or a possible burglar in some situations—

BLAIR HODGES: Like your neighbors calling the police on him when he was trying to get into the house because he was locked out.

SONORA JHA: Right. And this was very close to the Trayvon Martin tragedy and the horrific murder of Trayvon Martin. Having that moment of reckoning, and seeing where America has gone even since then.

My son and I still have those conversations. I’ve asked him, “Do you think I should have raised you in India?” But there was this moment when he was 18 years old, when we went back before he left for college. We went back to India on this trip, and he said to my mother, “I’ve seen that women in India are not treated well. I’m treated better than my mother here.”

To see that he noticed that, and that it made him uncomfortable, mattered to me. He’s talked about how he feels much more comfortable being brown-skinned among brown-skinned people.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

SONORA JHA: Being a young man in India, being treated better than me, I guess. But here, he is a young man of color who knows racism in a visceral way. For me, it was like, I would much rather be among the marginalized and oppressed than be the oppressor in India.

Inevitably, you fall into certain class and caste structures there unless you resist them. You have to pick a place in the world where you are willing to resist and organize now. And he is doing a lot of that.

He’s a socialist feminist. When the Dobbs decision came, he called me and said, “We are marching in the streets. I’m part of organizing the protests in Los Angeles. I’ve made the banners and the protest signs and everything. Mama, do you think they’ll come?”

And I said, “Oh, honey, yeah, yeah, they’ll come. The women will be there. The trans people will be there. People are going to protest this.”

And the next day he called and said, “Oh my God, there were so many people that came to the protest.”

I’m very proud of him for being an organizer and an activist, and for being on the side of resistance. That’s important to both of us. He’s definitely doing much more than I am.

But yes, he also feels that America may not be the place to be in a few years. So the question of where on earth we can make a better world is something we talk about now. It’s up in the air.

 

Building a Feminist Village – 25:46

 

BLAIR HODGES: You mentioned your disability. You had polio as a child. And I think—is it your leg?

SONORA JHA: Yeah. My right leg.

BLAIR HODGES: And then on top of that, you mentioned the car accident you were in that caused some pretty serious damage. This felt like a turning point in your story.

Up until then, you really were a single parent doing a lot on your own, thinking of it as you and your son versus the world. But you realized that in order to raise a feminist son, you would need community. And this accident forced that realization, almost because you had to.

SONORA JHA: Yes. In India, I would have had an automatic community of family and extended family and friends. And here I was a stranger. You know, after I finished my PhD in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I arrived in Seattle, and I really knew no one but the chair of the department who hired me.

So I had to start from scratch and build a whole life from scratch, right from the ground up. And my son was—at the time he was eight, about to be nine.

To seek out friends, and to seek out friends who would be that community in which I wanted to raise my son—with a sense of empathy, with a sense of shared experiences of being marginalized, shared experiences of even people who were allies who wanted to do the right things—and just people that we got along with. Not everyone had to be activists.

But it was really important for me to build a feminist village. And that’s what I still call it. To have the kind of influences of people who were really smart, or really wise, empathetic, and to give my son a sense of a larger world beyond ourselves, and to be really supportive as well.

That village came together. Either I’ve been really privileged in that way, or I’ve worked really hard at it, or it’s just that human beings are really kind and seeking those connections. But I feel very fortunate to have made that community, to have built that community, and to have it still be sustained.

BLAIR HODGES: I liked seeing the different relationships your friends could have with your son, because a parent-child relationship is a pretty particular thing. It can vary depending on the parents and the children, but the relationship between friends and a child can also be really interesting.

These offer other adults that a kid can triangulate their views off of. Or maybe this person can empathize with them on something the parent can’t as much. Or they might be able to advocate for the parent on something. So you had these friends around you with feminist ideals who could also have relationships with your son.

SONORA JHA: Absolutely. It’s the concept of the chosen family. Friends can be chosen family.

Even today, my son has a lot of regard for his friends. He has very close friendships. He’s a very loyal friend, a very giving friend. And whatever may be happening in our lives, I see him doing that.

I feel like that’s the one thing that has really gone right. You’re there for your friends, and they’re there for you. There’s a tenderness in that friendship, where you can pick up the phone and call and talk about anything—talk about breakups, be really sweet and tender—and not have to keep up this macho kind of appearance.

I really thank a lot of people around me, because again, there was a patriarchy within me. I was replicating some of those old things I knew and didn’t even recognize.

Like cooking incessantly for my son, thinking, he’s so wonderful and precious. And some of my friends were like, “This is nonsense. Put that down and let him do this. When is he going to cook for you?”

And I had to catch myself and say, oh my goodness. And for them to call him on some of his nonsense, too, and to allow them to have those relationships with him—that was really important.

 

Male Role Models and Relatives – 29:49

 

BLAIR HODGES: You also talk about how after getting divorced in about 2005, this could be a source of shame. You weren’t celebrating it as though you’d been released from the shackles or anything like that. You actually did want a family for your son that included a father.

And that was tricky for you. You wondered about men in your life—who could be influential as a man.

SONORA JHA: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I discovered in writing my book was how much love there was, too, from my father, from my brother, from extended family.

These are the complexities of things. And of course, you have to make choices about love and abuse. Can they go together? And often, no—you have to break certain cycles.

I think with my son, it was really important to break those cycles, but also not totally break away from male influences. He’s a cis het boy growing up, and what should I bring into his life?

I write about how it was everything from the Boy Scouts of America to extended friends, to remarrying a white American. Not that I was looking for a white American guy—it just so happened.

But I think examining and asking, how do we call in the good men? How do we call in the goodness of men who might be complicated as well?

Calling in all those influences, because there’s so much love there. And I’ve been thinking about that again recently, after this election.

I don’t believe as much in the idea of polarization, because I think we’ve always been polarized in America. There’s always been oppression of the marginalized. It’s just that some people are beginning to notice it now, whereas marginalized people always knew it.

But I do think about the goodness in people, and how we call that in. There’s a lot of research on this. I talked to some of those researchers for the book.

BLAIR HODGES: You talk about your son’s relationship with your father—his grandfather—and how that raised interesting questions. His grandfather was so kind to him, which was very different from how your dad was with your brother, and also different from how your dad was with you.

So your son wondered about that. He was like, wait—what did grandpa do? That doesn’t sound like him.

SONORA JHA: Yeah. I never forget when he was old enough—I think he was about 14 or 15—and I was telling him about domestic abuse. I told him, “He used to beat your grandmother. He used to be really violent with us.”

And he said, “What? Nana Ji?” That’s what he calls him.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

SONORA JHA: He said, “No way. No way.” And I was like, oh my gosh, you’re right. He’s changed so much that my son couldn’t even visualize it.

There’s such tenderness, sweetness, and kindness in him now. And to me, that’s such an interesting example, because it’s so complex. Of course, I’ve needed years of therapy to think about these things. Therapy is extremely important for anyone who’s had any contact with patriarchy, in any part of the world.

Thinking about forgiveness, calling in relationship, all of that. And thinking about my father’s apology—that he has offered, at least to me. I hope he’s done that with my siblings as well. But with me, he apologized. He stopped his violent behavior. Even violence in words is something I haven’t seen in a long time.

There’s regret for his own life and for the mistakes he made. At some point, maybe I’ll talk about how I’ve received letters from men from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds who’ve written to me about the book—about what it made them think about, the regrets they have about how they were raised, and how they behaved toward people in their lives.

My father has apologized for those things and wanted a relationship—with his grandchild and with me. So my son, knowing the things his grandfather was responsible for, still wants that relationship, because what he sees now is tenderness being more front and center than violence.

BLAIR HODGES: It’s such an important point—to talk about how men are harmed when feminism isn’t carrying the day.

Your father was harmed in some ways. Your brother was harmed. Their relationship is broken because of what they experienced. Men are cut off from their emotions. They’re taught they need to be in charge, be the provider. There’s social pressure to control women, or to disconnect from other people.

These are some of the messages you wanted your son to avoid. You saw what it did to your dad. You saw what it did to your brother.

SONORA JHA: Absolutely. And I often think about how, when someone sees this book—How to Raise a Feminist Son—there was so much vitriol that came my way right after, even just from the title. It upset a lot of men especially.

And I wanted to say, no, no, wait. This is about love. Do you not see? I love my son. Raising him as a feminist is an act of love.

For him, what that meant was me telling him, “Of course you can cry. Cry as much as you want. That was really sad. Of course you can cry at this beautiful art. Of course you can cry when you watch this movie. Of course you can cry anytime.”

Never saying, “Walk it off,” or “You’ll be seen as less than.” Instead, saying, “We’ll find our people. We’ll find other people who think differently, who think like us. You’ll find a partner who cares about these things.”

You don’t have to play the protector and provider. Recently, I was talking to him and asked, “Do you think you might want to be a stay-at-home dad? Would you want to not be the breadwinner?” And he said, “Yeah, that would be really cool.”

I want him to have that option. I want him to have the full spectrum of human emotion. That’s what this is really about. You can feel what you want to feel. You can choose how you want to live your life. You can be in conversation and negotiation with your partner without feeling like you’ve failed.

My first book was about farmer suicides. It looked at the pressure of masculinity—how so many farmers in India die by suicide because they feel they’ve failed their families and failed as men. That’s such a capitalist notion, too.

Capitalism and patriarchy intersect, and no one wins in that situation. My son is not going to win if he’s forced into being the strong protector-provider guy. That’s not what he wants. So who is winning? And what is he going to have to shut down? And when he shuts it down, where does that go?

BLAIR HODGES: That’s Sonora Jha. We’re talking about her book, How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity, and the Making of My Family.

I also want to mention that she has just published a new novel called Intemperance, which is about a twice-divorced, middle-aged, disabled Indian American professor looking for love. Her other novel, The Laughter, won a Washington State Book Award and was longlisted for the 2024 Aspen Awards Literary Prize.

Her work has appeared in places like The New York Times, The Seattle Times, and elsewhere. She grew up in Mumbai and moved to the United States, where she now calls Washington State her home.

 

Talking About Sex Isn’t Easy – 37:42

 

BLAIR HODGES: Sonora, of all the things you needed to talk to your son about—correct me if I’m wrong, this is just the impression I got—it seemed to me that sex was maybe the hardest thing for you. Did I pick up on that correctly?

SONORA JHA: [laughs] Yes, absolutely correct.

BLAIR HODGES: Why was it so hard?

SONORA JHA: Partly cultural. I’m from India, and it was like, oh my God, we really need your dad, pal.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay!

SONORA JHA: And it came up all of a sudden. Of course, his dad was not in the car in Seattle as I was driving my kid home from middle school. He had this question about when girls are ready to have sex.

I was floundering. I was like, oh my goodness, where is this question coming from? Can we talk about—let’s go eat some donuts or something? I tried to distract him.

I wasn’t ready for that, because it was not something we talked about in India. It’s something that, across gender, usually gets divided up. You say, go talk to your mom, go talk to your dad, and we create these binaries that are supposed to stay within their own realms.

So it was difficult for me. I know it’s difficult for people across the world. All of us culturally have different degrees of comfort around talking about sex.

But I also saw how necessary it was, so I went by instinct. If I were to do it again now, I would educate myself a little more. But I relied on my instinct and my own lived experience.

I told him that sometimes boys may be more ready than girls, that there’s an emotional attachment to it, that there’s more to it. Both of you should be willing. You should be friends. You should care for each other. It’s about that intimate connection.

Those were the things I truly believed and felt, and that’s what I talked to him about. It was definitely not the kind of messaging I was given—wait until you’re married, be a virgin, those kinds of things.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Abstinence-only.

SONORA JHA: Right, right. And so it became really open. He probably shared more than I wanted to know, or had more questions than I was comfortable with. But also—not really.

When he went to college, this was at a time when America was learning much more about date rape. This was a couple of years before the Me Too movement. That conversation was really taking shape.

I remember calling him and saying, “Hey, what’s going on with this date rape situation on college campuses that I’m hearing about?” I’m an educator, so I was learning about these things on my own campus, too.

He filled me in. He said, “We’re doing all these different things.” There were campaigns at his university—I forget exactly what they were—but talking to him about that over the phone while he was away at college was illuminating.

It gave me a sense of the culture, and also of his mind, of how he was approaching things. There was so much going on in the media that we could talk about—personalities in the media, what those stories were about.

The roles flipped a little. I was asking more questions. I was saying, “Tell me more about this. Explain this to me. What are your friends saying? What are the girls and young women around you saying?”

In becoming an informant about those things, I think he was also fleshing out his own ideas about how he wanted to show up as a young man.

BLAIR HODGES: Right. And you also didn’t shy away from talking about your own experiences with assault, but you do say you wish you’d done that a little differently.

SONORA JHA: Yes. Around 14 or 15, as he was developing into a young man, I was trying to give him a sense of his own physicality, and also the fears women carry—around safety, consent, those kinds of things.

I talked about a couple of my own experiences with sexual assault, and also about the breadth of it—that it was almost constant. That was very true for me in an Indian milieu.

We may not be in that same context here, but there are other forms—date rape, other ways these things happen. I tried to explain that.

Later, he told me that those conversations made him feel very insecure about us as a single mother and child. He felt scared. He felt anxious. I really regret that.

I didn’t realize it at the time. He didn’t show it, and I didn’t anticipate that effect.

Talking to therapists later for my book, I realized there could have been different ways to handle it—maybe involving a therapist, maybe a family therapist. To say, sometimes my responses come from my own experiences of sexual assault, and to explain that context more carefully.

What does that mean for him to have a healthy male sexuality? I wish I hadn’t frightened him in that way.

That’s one of those regrets we all have as parents. And that’s my big one.

 

Talking About Body Image – 43:18

 

BLAIR HODGES: It makes sense. You also made a point to talk to him about his own body. Talking about body image maybe wasn’t on your radar before. I think a lot of people understand that girls and women are bombarded with messages about unrealistic body expectations. And obviously, people who don’t fit the binary are bombarded with messages about what they should look like as well.

But when we think about boys, we don’t often think to worry about them as much. And you say maybe we should pause and think about this, because there are unrealistic body expectations being placed on boys and young men now. This isn’t a conversation we can really avoid at this point.

SONORA JHA: Absolutely. That one really caught me by surprise. I remember when he was headed to a pool party—one of his friends had a swimming pool—and they were going. I ran after him thinking he had forgotten his bathing suit, his swimming trunks. And I said, “Here. Here are your swimming trunks.” And he loved them.

BLAIR HODGES: He loved to swim, right? He was a swimmer.

SONORA JHA: He loved to swim. Yeah, he loved to swim. He used to harass me to go to the community swimming pool in Seattle. So it was like, don’t forget your trunks.

And he said, “Oh, no, no. I don’t plan to swim.” And I was like, what? What do you mean?

Later he told me, “I feel like I’m very fat.” And he was very thin. I mean, he wasn’t even average—he was a little under average, a thin boy. I was stunned by that.

I remember wondering, how on earth did I miss this? How did I miss that poor body image can happen to boys?

Later, of course, I saw this play out in other ways. His friend Sienna—she’s named in the book—said something about how he was a great ally to her. I think it was another pool party, or a pajama party, something she didn’t want to go to. And he said, “Oh yeah, let’s just stay back. Let’s not go.”

They’re still close friends. And she said, “I felt such solidarity.” And I realized, okay—so in a way, he showed up as an ally because he’d had that same feeling.

Not that I want my son to go through poor body image, but for him to be empathetic in that way mattered, too.

We definitely need to think about this. We’re seeing it now—young men pushing themselves at the gym. There’s what’s now called the gymcel. I don’t know if you’ve heard that term. It’s part of the manosphere.

BLAIR HODGES: And they’re trying to shape their jaws in different ways, too.

SONORA JHA: Yes. And those expectations of masculinity—this particular kind of brawn—it’s stunning.

My son goes to the gym a lot, too, so I still worry about it. I don’t think he’s a gymcel, for sure, but I know he cares about it. There are the protein shakes and all of that.

That’s something I keep an eye on, just to sense where it’s coming from. Is it a place of health?

I’m always very happy to see him eating a bunch of ice cream. Then I know, okay—he’s still eating ice cream. That’s good.

 

Learning to Apologize – 46:37

 

BLAIR HODGES: You also know, as his parent, that he’s not going to be perfect. He’s going to make mistakes. For all the discussions you had with him and all the teaching you tried to do, you knew he wouldn’t be perfect, and there would be bumps in the road.

You write about one of those bumps. It happened while you were on vacation. He had a younger stepsister by then, because, as you mentioned, you had remarried. Take us to that moment. What happened?

SONORA JHA: Yeah. So his stepdad and I and our two kids were headed to Soap Lake, this beautiful little town in Washington. She’s about four or five years younger than him, and she was telling him about wanting to grow up to sing like Taylor Swift.

And he had opinions about it—as a little boy. I think he was about 13. He said, “Oh no, you can’t sing as well as her. You’ll never make it. Very few people make it in the industry.”

She started to cry. I first checked with her and said, “Why are you letting him ruin your dream? Why are you making him in charge? Why does he get to have an opinion on your dreams and on your ability to sing? Don’t give him that power over you."

BLAIR HODGES: Nice.

SONORA JHA: And then, you know, I had him apologize to her. I said, “Look at what you’re losing out on, right? Someone is telling you about their dreams. What a gift.”

I know he wasn’t in the mood for that. Everyone was hungry and cranky, and of course he didn’t want to hear about this gift of being told about a little girl’s dreams. He was being dismissive. But in that moment, it was really important for me to teach him to apologize and to not feel like someone’s tears—or putting someone down—is okay.

Especially a little girl who’s looking up to you as her stepbrother and wants to share this with you.

In the years since, I’ve seen two things. One is that he still can be a mansplainer. I hope he only does that with me. I keep telling him, “Look, you can try that with me, and I will push back. You don’t think you can get away with this with smart women around you.”

And he’s like, “No, no, I don’t mansplain.” And I say, “Yeah—except to me, right? Because what you’re doing right now is definitely mansplaining.” So when I talk about the ways I haven’t been able to raise him to be entirely a feminist, that might be one of them.

The other thing is apology. I’ve definitely seen that most people find it hard to apologize, but for some reason men find it especially hard to apologize, to say they were wrong, or to say they don’t know.

And that’s a privilege we should give them—to say, “I don’t know. I don’t have to know everything. I don’t need to fix everything. I don’t have to provide. I don’t have to show up in all my masculinity all the time.”

I think that’s something we need to track. A heartfelt apology is something everyone deserves, and everyone deserves to feel—being the giver of an apology—the peace that comes with that.

BLAIR HODGES: You also say we shouldn’t assume people know what an apology is, or what makes an apology good.

You include research in the book from negotiation and conflict management scholars, where you lay out the steps of an apology: expression of regret, explanation of what went wrong, acknowledgment of responsibility, a declaration of repentance, an offer of repair, and a request for forgiveness.

Then you go one step further and add nuance to that last one—the request for forgiveness. You say there should be no demand or expectation of forgiveness. I think that’s crucial.

SONORA JHA: Absolutely. It comes so quickly, right? “Please forgive me” is almost a figure of speech. It’s treated like part of the apology itself.

But it places such a burden on another person. Now I have to take care of you and your need to be forgiven, rather than being able to sit with my own feelings.

One should be able to say, “I’ve heard your apology.” Maybe say, “Thank you for apologizing,” without necessarily offering forgiveness or comfort to the person who caused harm or insult.

I really do think one should not demand forgiveness from another person.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Men are often socialized to expect reciprocity, or to feel entitled to forgiveness.

I love the quote you include at the end of this section from Dr. Karen Weisbard. She says that in an apology, a person can say, “I made a mistake. I know I hurt you. I’m sorry. I’m not going to go out of my way to compensate or try to fix it in a way that only serves me.”

That really shone a light on some of my past apologies in uncomfortable ways—this idea of “I’m going to make it up to you,” even if you don’t want me to.

She goes further and says, “I don’t need you to forgive me. What I want to say is that I’m here to stand in the discomfort of what I did, and I’m here to repair our relationship.”

That willingness, without entitlement, stood out to me. In the story with your stepdaughter, you didn’t say, “Okay, apologize to her. Okay, tell him it’s fine.”

No—she needed time to process her feelings and do what she would with them. It’s not that you’re against forgiveness. It’s that people aren’t entitled to it, and that process can’t be rushed.

SONORA JHA: Absolutely. And I do write later in the book about how this came back to me in some ways, because I hadn’t internalized it.

We were in India on that same trip, and I was saying to my son, as he was leaving to go to Singapore where his father is, “Hey, I’m so sorry you didn’t get to meet your uncle.” My brother and I don’t talk ever since his last act of violence toward me.

I said, “I’m sorry you didn’t get to talk to him. My family just wants me to forgive him, and I’m finding it very hard to do that. So maybe by next time I will have, and then you’ll get to meet him.”

And he said, “You’re finding it hard to forgive him—but has he asked for your forgiveness? Has he apologized?”

And it hadn’t struck me until that moment that no, he hasn’t apologized—let alone asked for forgiveness. That hadn’t happened.

And he said, “Well, the ball’s in his court. It’s not your fault. Why should he expect that? Why should anyone expect that? He hasn’t even apologized to you.”

Then he got on the flight and left, and I was standing there stunned, thinking, wow. I hadn’t even imagined that this was available to me—this idea of wanting an apology from my brother all those years.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. It’s almost like, in family relationships—because you’ve read feminist theory, you’ve thought about this, you’ve written books about it—but when we slip back into our families of origin, sometimes we fall right back into old patterns of thinking and don’t even realize it.

 

What Success Looks Like – 54:13

 

BLAIR HODGES: My heart broke reading the moment when, if I remember correctly, your brother was violent with you at his wedding. Is that right?

That shattered the relationship. And I could see you in that moment, and I could see your son witnessing it and thinking, “That’s interesting—Mom didn’t notice this. I’m going to point this out to her.”

This was one of the ways you knew the feminism you hoped he would adopt was coming through, because you were learning from him.

SONORA JHA: Yeah. And in later years—even now—I catch myself. A huge part of this is also living a feminist life. Really intensifying that practice and questioning yourself until it becomes your way of being in the world.

There’s so much deeply internalized patriarchy. There’s so much judgment I may still have of women, and I have to catch myself in those moments.

But also, how much we serve the patriarchy. And patriarchy is not all men. A lot of the footwork—the work of the foot soldiers—is done by women upon other women. Women policing other women.

Whether it’s fashion, how we dress, what we wear, how much skin we expose or don’t expose—we’re doing that work for the patriarchy.

So staying in question with myself around that matters. And also constantly forgiving.

In all of this, you have to keep forgiving yourself and be gentle. Be gentle with the people in your life. Be gentle with yourself as a woman who has survived all kinds of things.

Find ways to practice self-love. That’s something that has deepened for me in the past few years—self-love, self-forgiveness, and a profound love for other women and for people of other genders, especially those who are marginalized and minoritized.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Chapter 12 of your book is helpful here. You include a list of things you think you might have messed up. Because again, our kids aren’t going to be perfect, and we aren’t going to be perfect. Aunts and uncles aren’t perfect. Adults aren’t perfect.

You say things like wishing you’d taught him to cook, that you let him mansplain too often, that you talked about your body or your weight in negative ways and think that wasn’t great.

Sometimes you wonder about raising him away from home, or regret not modeling a sustained relationship. There are a lot of regrets. But as you were just saying, you also invite people to be gentle with themselves and to extend forgiveness to ourselves when we fall short.

SONORA JHA: Absolutely. Especially as parents and mothers.

BLAIR HODGES: It’s a weird balance. I don’t want to be someone who just automatically says, “Oh, I forgive myself. Cool. I’m good to go.” I still want to maintain a healthy level of anxiety about the crappy stuff I do. It’s a hard balancing act.

SONORA JHA: I think if you’re a generally thoughtful, empathetic person, anxiety is going to come for you anyway—whether you like it or not.

BLAIR HODGES: Exactly.

SONORA JHA: There are new things to be anxious about, and new ways to mess up, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yes. Let me find all the ways to be anxious. Excellent.

Let’s talk about how we can tell we’re succeeding or doing a good job. What are some signs you advise people to look out for to see if feminism is catching on with a child as they’re growing up?

SONORA JHA: Absolutely. Empathy, as we talked about. Empathy is so important.

Seeing them be able to imagine other people’s lives—other people’s pain, other people’s triumphs, other people’s desires and hopes. It doesn’t always have to be pain or oppression. Just the ability to imagine someone else’s inner life.

Being able to be followers rather than leaders all the time is another sign. This is especially true for cisgender heterosexual boys, who are constantly cast as leaders—CEOs, people who reach the pinnacle, providers.

Seeing a child say, “No, I’m going to follow,” matters. Seeing that they can see and cheer for women in public life is really important.

The fact that we haven’t had a woman president in the United States is something you should talk to your son about. Wonder along with them. Ask, “What do you think is going on? Do you imagine yourself as president one day? Do you imagine your sister, or someone else, as president one day?”

It shouldn’t just be a dream for a little girl to have. It should be a dream a little boy can imagine, too.

If you’re seeing your child engage in those ways, I think you’re on the right track. If you see them drawn to kinder, tender-hearted boys in their friend group, that’s important.

Having healthy friendships with girls at school is important. Listen to conversations—even in the car. If you’ve got a bunch of boys in the back seat, listen for whether your child stands up to a bully, or speaks out.

When you notice those things, thank them for it. Encourage it. Acknowledge it.

All those little moments matter. And then one day, they’re organizing a protest against the Dobbs decision in Los Angeles.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And giving you an update about it.

SONORA JHA: Right, right.

BLAIR HODGES: That’s Sonora Jha. We’re talking about the book How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity, and the Making of My Family. She’s an essayist, novelist, researcher, and a professor of journalism at Seattle University.

Her latest book is a novel called Intemperance, so if you’re looking for your next bit of nonfiction to read—check out Intemperance.

 

Feminism and Celebration – 01:00:18

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, Sonora. How to Raise a Feminist Son ends with a crucial point about labels.

I can imagine someone hearing the things you’ve tried to teach your son and saying, “Why are we calling this feminism? It just sounds like you want people to be good to each other.”

As you describe the signs that signal a boy’s feminism, you wrap it up by arguing why it’s important to still name this specifically as feminism. It’s a great excerpt. Would you mind reading it for us?

SONORA JHA: Yeah, sure.

Some of these things may seem like boys just being compassionate, empathetic, kind people. Why label it feminism, you may ask?

We label it feminism because their compassion, empathy, and kindness turn their attention to the female condition—the condition of half of humanity.

It is allergic to misogyny, which turns the knife just a little more into the cultural wound.

Our boys notice the turn of the knife. They name it. They see how they are complicit. They call it out. They amplify. They learn when to be quiet and sit down. They learn when to get out of the way.

They heave together to topple structures that give them an unfair advantage.

Feminism is about love.

If we teach our children this new way to love, we will see that love grow and take new forms that will make our hearts burst open at unexpected moments.

And when this happens, we will slow down to feel the world turning, changing.

When our boys do or say something that shows us we have grown feminists, we will celebrate the heck out of the success.

We will shout our boys’ feminism from the rooftop.

BLAIR HODGES: I love the joy you talk about in experiencing a boy’s feminism. Because all too often, I see so much negativity about boys and men. And it’s understandable in feminist conversations, especially on social media, where people will say things like, “Why are men?” or “Men are garbage,” “Men are trash,” that kind of thing.

And in trying to raise a feminist son, that’s not what I want him to see. I want him to feel supported and loved in his efforts, and also not drowned by guilt or by the weight of everything patriarchy does. It’s not about making him feel guilty.

I think some people who push back against feminism will say, “Oh, you’re just trying to make people feel bad.” That’s not what we’re going for here. You close the book on a celebratory note.

SONORA JHA: Yeah, absolutely. And as I said, feminism really is about love. It’s about having a much more multilayered, rich life for your boy, and having him be available to love and open to love in so many different ways.

It’s also really good for their health. Feminism is really good for a boy’s health. You know—how about that? [laughter]

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 01:03:32

 

BLAIR HODGES: It’s true! [laughs] I love that.

All right. Relationscapes always wraps up with a segment called “Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises.” This is an opportunity for you to reflect back on the book itself. Is there anything you would change about it now that it’s been out for a while? What was most challenging about doing this project, or what surprised you most as you were putting the book together? You can talk about any of those—whatever you like.

SONORA JHA: Yeah. I think I’ll talk about what surprised me the most. What surprised me were the letters I got from men.

I heard from men in India. I heard from men in the U.S. I heard from older white men. I heard from men of color. And honestly, the letters from white men at different ages surprised me the most.

They wrote about how they were raised with certain values—being a protector, being a provider. Being raised to be suspicious of women. Being raised to feel like they were the ones who would discipline the family, make the rules, be the rule-keepers.

They were raised not to be tenderhearted, not to seem weak. Boys don’t cry—those kinds of messages. And the loneliness that came from that.

Men used that word—lonely—in their letters to me. Saying, “I’ve ended up lonely because I ruined relationships with my family,” or “I was violent,” or “I was abusive,” or “I was emotionally unavailable.”

They wrote about not knowing how to deal with any of it. Feeling like what they were doing was the right thing. Thinking they were supposed to go after women, dominate situations—and how that just ended up making a mess of their lives.

The regret. The loneliness. The looking back and seeing how things could have been different.

Some of them wrote that they now had young boys in their lives. “I’ve just had a son,” or “I have a young boy,” and “I want him to have a different way of being in the world than the one I was raised with.”

That blew me away. It really surprised me. I was prepared for the pushback and the backlash—and there was plenty of that.

But these sweet, tender letters moved me to tears. They surprised me, and they surprised me in the best way.

BLAIR HODGES: That’s awesome. With some of the backlash, do you feel like that’s ramping up at all? It seems like there’s this pushback against DEI movements. It’s become a political football.

SONORA JHA: Absolutely.

BLAIR HODGES: The mainstream parties have taken it up.

SONORA JHA: Yeah. And this whole thing with the trad wife—what’s that? Explain that to me, Blair. Explain it! [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: I don’t get it! I hope to have episodes about it, because I need to get my head around it too.

SONORA JHA: There’s so much that’s just stunning. At the same time, you see it. There’s definitely pushback. They think feminism or strong women are the problem, when actually they’re not.

It’s because there wasn’t enough of that. There’s an epidemic of loneliness, and most young men and older men are part of that epidemic. They’ve been trapped on all sides.

I do think there’s a rise of that backlash. But I also see, in my young male students and in my son and his friends, a lot of kindness. There’s a lot of really strong feminist support and celebration.

I think that’s going to be important, and we shouldn’t lose heart.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. The last thing I want to say is that the book closes with some great resources, and this was really helpful to me.

I’ve been asking folks on Facebook over the past couple of months, “Hey, I’m looking for stuff to watch with my kids. What are the books? Where are we at here?” We need good resources.

Your book gives some great advice—overviews of books, movies, and other media we can check out. Thanks for including that. I’ve already dug into some of these with my kids, and it’s been really great.

SONORA JHA: That’s great. I’m so glad.

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for talking with us, Sonora. The book is How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity, and the Making of My Family. This has been great. Thanks a lot.

SONORA JHA: Thank you. This has been wonderful for me too. Thank you.

 

Outro – 01:08:01

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to another episode of Relationscapes. If this is your first time with us, welcome to the journey. It’s great to have you along.

I’m going to recommend a few Fellow Traveler episodes. If this episode resonated with you and you want to hear more about masculinity, check out Matthew Gutmann’s interview, “Testosterone, Y Chromosomes and Other Manly Excuses.”

There’s also Ronald Levant and Shana Pryor’s episode, “Detoxing Masculinity.” Frederick Joseph’s interview is another favorite of mine, called “Masculinity, More Liberated and Free.”

And my good friend Mike Pope joined us for an episode called “Learning about Masculinity Today from the Ancient Romans.” It’s a fascinating interview, and we’re building a nice little collection of masculinity episodes for you.

I’d also really love it if you would rate and review Relationscapes in Apple Podcasts. It helps spread the word about the show, build credibility, and find new listeners. It also helps guests know this is a good place to come and talk about their work.

You can rate the show on Spotify as well. And invite a friend—send an episode to someone and have them join us on the journey.

Mates of State provides our theme song. I’m your host, Blair Hodges, an independent journalist in Salt Lake City, and I’ll see you on another episode of Relationscapes.

 

[Note: Transcripts are lightly edited for readability. When citing, always compare against the audio.]