Dear young South Sudanese feminist,

Thank you for coming back.  I hope you rested your eyes, and that you also remembered to bring your favorite drink or snack I asked you to bring. If you haven’t, you still have time to grab one.

When we left off, I was telling you that my feminism was never lived in just one place. The questions I was wrestling with online were also showing up in my family, friendships, relationships, and community, and what happened in those spaces shaped what I brought online too. This part of the story is about some of what happened when all of those worlds met, because they were not separate.

So, where were we nyiirke? uh-huh! Yes, I was about to talk about finding your place.

Finding your place takes time

Belonging can get complicated when you start trying to fully live your feminism in your everyday life. It is one thing to talk about feminism online or in feminist spaces, and another to practice it at home, in your relationships, and within your community. I learned this especially with people I loved. Attacks from family, relatives, and friends hurt much more than anything a stranger could ever say to me online. With strangers, I could log off or walk away, but with family or friends, it was different. These were my people, and I still wanted to belong, even when some of the things I refused to accept challenged their beliefs.

I remember one family meeting when one of my brothers brought up the fact that I was a feminist. He described how his friends and colleagues would ask him why my family was allowing me to behave the way I did or discuss the things I talk about publicly. He continued, explaining that my feminism was embarrassing the family. I remember sitting there as he spoke, feeling my whole body tense. My heart started beating faster, and without even realizing it, I started rubbing my fingers. I could feel myself preparing for whatever was coming next. My sister was sitting across from me, and at some point our eyes met. She could feel it too, that this was about to become a whole other thing.

Before I could respond, one of my uncles stopped him and said there was nothing wrong with what I was doing and that this was not what we were there to discuss. I remember the relief I felt hearing him say that. Thankfully, my dad, who was next to speak, didn’t pick it up either. He simply continued with the meeting and responded to the other issues that had been raised. And just like that, the moment passed. That was the only time I remember someone, and an older person for that matter, in my family openly defending my feminism in that kind of family setting.

It was not only about what I said publicly online. Living my feminism also meant looking differently at things much closer to home. I have had many difficult conversations with my father about things I did not appreciate in how he related to my mothers. I have also had so many hangouts with friends where someone said something hurtful about women so casually, and I found myself pushing back. A conversation that was light a few minutes earlier suddenly becomes tense because I could not just laugh along without saying anything. That, too, gets exhausting because sometimes all I wanted was to just sit with friends and laugh, without constantly being made to feel like I am always taking everything so seriously, making everything about gender, or always ‘ ruining’ conversations or moods.

I think this is one of the harder parts of trying to live your feminism every day. You don’t stop being a daughter, sister, niece, or friend because you became a feminist. You still love these people. You still want to sit at their tables, laugh with them, celebrate with them, and belong to them. But you also start noticing things you can no longer comfortably ignore.

Please know you don’t need to choose between love and self-betrayal. It is possible to hold your ground without endlessly explaining yourself.  Holding my ground in instances where I felt overwhelmed looked different depending on who I was engaging with and what was at stake. There were times when I chose silence, not because I agreed, but because I was protecting myself. There were conversations I walked away from because they no longer honored my voice, dignity, or humanity. There were also moments when I chose compromise, not because I had abandoned my feminist values but because I was thinking about the relationship I wanted to preserve and the change I hoped to see over time.

Find at least one person who can hold space for you: an aunt, a cousin, a sibling, or a friend, because you will feel like an outcast for the most part. And allow yourself to grieve the reality that much of your feminist work will happen at home, with extended families and within your own community. That is some of the hardest work you will ever do.

Belonging will also be complicated in rights and social justice movement spaces. Women’s rights spaces in South Sudan are often dominated by older women, while youth spaces are often dominated by young men. And you will also learn that being in a women’s rights space does not necessarily mean being in a feminist space. Many women still shy away from identifying as feminist, even when they work on women’s rights. If your feminist politics is explicit, and especially if it is deeply intersectional, there will be moments when you feel like you are too much even in spaces where you thought you would naturally belong. Too political, too radical, asking too many uncomfortable questions, or bringing up things the room would rather not deal with.

Being both young and a woman can already leave you feeling like you belong nowhere, and being openly feminist can complicate that belonging even further. Hold on, because I see your generation is already creating more spaces for young women and feminists, building feminist communities, and making room for those coming after you.

You too are a maker of culture

People will invoke “culture” as though it belongs only to them or as though only they have the right to define it. They will insist that feminism is foreign and incompatible with South Sudanese values. Some will even defend injustice in the name of culture. Ground yourself in the truth that your feminism emerged from living within this very culture. Your feminism comes from the experiences, contradictions, and injustices you have witnessed and lived through.

Challenging harmful cultural practices is not rejecting your culture. It is refusing to accept that injustice is our identity. It is believing that our culture is capable of growth and committing to ensure that the next generation of South Sudanese women and girls do not inherit the same harms. Being a woman does not mean you are only a follower, preserver, or promoter of culture; you are a culture maker too.

Visibility does not have to mean access

For a long time, I shared almost every important moment in my life online. Celebrations, work victories, travels, fun times, birthdays, and so many other moments I was excited about. When I became a mother, that naturally extended to my children. I never showed their faces, so I thought I was protecting their privacy. But I was still sharing their birthdays, milestones, funny moments, and pieces of their lives. Without realizing it, I was building profiles of my children online before they were old enough to decide whether they wanted those parts of themselves shared publicly. I was giving people who had no business knowing anything about my children access to parts of their lives without their consent.

This is something I have only recently started thinking about more intentionally. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against parents sharing their children online, and I don’t think there is one right way to navigate this. This is simply something I have had to reconsider for myself. I am also learning that not every important development in my life needs to end up online. There are parts of my life I now want to experience without thinking about how I will share them, and parts of the lives of the people I love that are not mine to share.

Visibility can slowly make you feel as though people are entitled to access to your life because you have given them access before, but they are not. You can change your mind about what you share as you grow because you are more than your public or online feminism.

I have kept you long enough for today. Go stretch your legs, do something that has absolutely nothing to do with feminism, call a friend and laugh about something unrelated to the patriarchy, or go do your other jerejere you have been meaning to do today. Let’s meet here one more time and finish this conversation in Part Three.

Artwork by Bonslow Silas