Confession of a male feminist writer
Writing is my cure for sadness. Since I found myself being an introvert among the extroverts, my high school years weren’t a coming of age love story, nor a teenage Hollywood road trip movie. They were a dark comedy series about a boy who discovered himself as a feminist.
I grew up with my fabulous single mother who has always been my heroine. Being raised by her makes me understand the term “Girl Power”. At the time, at an all-boys’ school, I was not a fan of Thai society’s idea of masculinity. It clashed deeply with what I had learned to be true throughout my childhood. The idea of bullying girls or objectifying their bodies was and is not my kind of happiness. So, I usually enjoyed being alone at the library, where I discovered authors like Roald Dahl, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami. I had fallen in love with their words and the magic of literature. I knew at that moment, when I started writing a diary, that I wanted to be a writer. I once wrote a poem to my high school crush, and in return she taught me about unrequited love, which could be both inspiring and heartbreaking for a hopeless romantic like me. Unexpectedly, the heartbreak didn’t change my attitude or feelings for girls at all. After graduating from high school, I made friends with a lot of girls, which made me feel more comfortable than when I was around boys. I found more compassion and dreams in their eyes. Even while sometimes they are naughty when it comes to their passions like ice cream and lipstick, I took them all as the inspirations for my writings.
Without a secure, full time job, I’m a nowhere man in my early twenties. I went to New York to mend my broken heart and find the true meaning of life. It turned out that New York’s feminism scene inspired me to find my hidden compassion through the eye of feminists. Understanding diversity of life is to be who you are and to love people the way they are without building a wall of gender or race. Some say a heart was made to be broken. But without my broken heart, I would have never learned how to fall in love with the world. I found a new definition of love, outside of affection and romantic relationships. The love of humans and equality are the most important kind of loves. Perhaps that’s why we are here, on planet Earth.
Even though it took courage to write about what I believe, after a few years I’ve made it through becoming a published writer and poet. I stared a community for the girls who are feeling lost, insecure by traumatic love and get their heartbroken. I’m trying to empower them by the thing I loved the most, which is poetry – my very first love.
Time flies. I’m now a 27-year-old man who dreams one day he will publish an English novel about his bittersweet childhood memories and journey towards becoming a feminist.
I wish to write a big love letter to the world to celebrate things I love, and reveal a secret about a man who is a feminist. If people ask me why I’m a male feminist, I will smile and tell them that we should all be feminists. And then one day, if I have a daughter and she asks me, “Daddy, what is a feminist?”. I will tell her, “Sweetheart, it means you are beautiful, fearless and feeling the love of equality.”
Win is a Thai poet, writer and songwriter. He is a feminist who loves writing poems, eating ice cream and travelling abroad. He has written 3 books of poetry. Sometimes he draws inspiration from playing folk music and hitting the dance floor. He lives in Bangkok.
