Dear Muba

Dear little person,
you bring joy to my life. You have a curiosity for the world around you. I used to be like you too, bursting with curiosity for all the things I did not yet understand. My mum told me I was a little philosopher, since I always had new questions. You know what? Life was more interesting back then. 

There are many things I would like to teach you. 

1. Sense of belonging outside of your comfort zone: you do not belong to an isolated part of the whole. You belong to the whole, just like any random kid at the street does. You belong to the society, just like I do. 

2.  You have a great sense of fairness and I want you to grow in your moral courage. Yet, I want you to act wisely and consider real threats. When you pointed out to me that a little person was being beaten down on the street, I know you expected me to do something. I wanted to interfere by walking towards the grown-up bully and the victim. I wanted to confront the bully, but I reminded myself that I am chance-less at fighting. Instead I picked up my cell-phone. I acted by taking precautionary measures. Whether dialing 112 or actually stepping into the fight zone is the best choice, depends on what you know you can handle and what risks you are willing to take. When you do not know how to handle a certain situation, turn to someone else for help. 

3. The values of our society: our societal values about equality stretches far and need to be respected. I think you understand the importance of women and men having the same rights, since we are human beings first and foremost. I think your mum would agree with me that any faith which puts men above women, is a misguided faith (this applies to both Christianity and Islam). 

Another kind of equality is about recognizing the rights of the people who have been considered deviants by others. Our language structure is changing because of two main reasons: a) a gathered effort to introduce a new pronoun which is not limited to sex b) people have advocated the importance of including people from all gender identities in our linguistic usage. All of my teachers (professors, doctors) use this new pronoun in their writings. This gender-neutral pronoun is widely accepted by now, although our national language academy has been resistant. The society has spoken: we want a gender-neutral language (the national language academy has been shown the way and has no other choice than to conform). 

Another important social value is that all love is equal. You know the book I gave you about those two male penguins who adopted a baby penguin? It's a simple but yet so powerful book. As the first book you have ever read in English, I think you will remember it and the valuable message that love doesn't discriminate. I also think you have the cognitive abilities to see that. On the other hand, I had several prejudices when I was a kid. I didn't understand better, until I learned to challenge all the prejudices I had. I learned that there is no such thing as "a deviation from normal", since there is no "normal". We are all equally normal in that sense, or equally weird. If you someday find that your peers will make fun of the openly gay kid in the class, I hope you will be the one to sit down next to him/her and say: "There's nothing wrong with you. They just don't understand better."

4. Intersectionality is the next step after equality, isn't it? With this I want to point out the ugly reality: social inequality. We are constantly judged, which is why we should avoid judging other people. We live in a system of oppression. Back in the day when our country was considered the most equal in the world, my teacher (professor) handed me an article with the title "A woman will earn more by investing in a sex reassignment surgery than in a college degree". That was my first day at Lund university and I learned that we have no reason to brag about the equality and justice in this country. Our equality might be better than in most countries, but it's still not good enough. The ugly reality is this: a white man is valued the most in our society. As a white woman I am valued less than a white man, but valued more than a black woman. As a black man, you will one day be valued less than a white man, but valued more than a black woman. Skin colour and gender are not the only factors we will be judged for though. Cultural background, social background and sexual orientation are other factors. I won't go through a sex-operation, because I don't think I should change. Neither should you change who you are. The system is what has to change - not us. We should not adapt to the system. However, since we both score less in the intersectionality hierarchy, we have to be prepared for the obstacles which we will face.  

The best way to defeat oppression is with knowledge. Fear of knowledge leads to oppression. Look at the women who belong to fundamental Christianity or fundamental Islam. There you will notice all of the following: internalized misogyny, learned helplessness and learned incompetence. Those women believe they can not handle power or independence. Within fundamental Christianity, children have been home-schooled and "protected" from knowledge. If they would choose to live out in the real world someday, they would need all sorts of special help to adapt to that kind of life. Their lack of education and knowledge disables them. While this is an extreme example of what happens when you do not get access to reality-based knowledge, we can also learn something from it. Those women believe a husband is the head of the wife. You see, they discredit their own heads (brains) that way. People who aren't educated don't know their own power and therefore surrender it to others. There's definitely a lesson to be learned here. Without a great amount of knowledge, you will find yourself fulfilling society's limited expectations.

While the idea to protect someone from inconvenient facts, could be well-intended, it's not ethical. I don't believe in "protecting" a child from knowledge. There's no good or bad knowledge. Of course, there are things I haven't told you. I hesitated in writing this letter to you, because I wanted you to be unaware of certain aspects of reality a little longer. Then I realized that a little more knowledge never hurt anybody. Knowledge is supposed to prepare you for reality (among other things). All knowledge helps you understand the world a little better. 

I do not doubt that you will become a football pro someday, if that is what you want. All it takes is motivation and will-power (and a good health obviously). However, we always need a back-up-plan. For whatever reason, things don't always work out the way we want them to. An education (e.g. university) is always a good back-up plan. The knowledge you gain can never be taken away from you. I hope I have managed to prepare you for that idea. 
 

Love,

me