Reality of a Desi Girl™

The deeper I go into my journey of screaming from the rooftops about South Asian women being ignored -- not only in everyday society -- but also within their own diaspora communities -- whether that be because of forced child marriage, adult forced marriage, domestic abuse, religious or ethnic affiliation, colorism, caste, or everyday artificially created societal cliques – the more I discover that I am in fact…on point. South Asian women are indeed ignored and cast aside.

I started digging into history books after my grandmother died. I did this to discover my own family history. To find out what exactly it is my ancestors went through. In those pages of discovery, I have found layers after layers of traumatizing stories of women and men who have been brutalized throughout South Asian history. I found stories of women who were separated from their families and forcefully married to their rapists before during the Partition.

I found stories of millions of missing women who still to this day are unaccounted for after the Partition, who are either dead or have been forced to live with strangers -- as their new sudden family members – and forced to have children with them. 

I found stories of women who were forcefully married to start new lives with men of opposing tribal affiliations, ethnicities, or religions. I have found stories of women who have been belittled, traumatized, and repeatedly brutalized for generations and generations.
 
Now take a pause and imagine how those women were treated in those households. What they must gone through. How their children were treated and what they learned, and what they witnessed and what they experienced because of this. What they are still learning. And how their behavior continues because of all this. How it enables this toxicity to continue.

I believe this is the main reason why when story lines like the Patel sisters being someone’s back up doesn’t phase audiences to their treatment. You know why? Because our own South Asian society has gotten so conditioned to seeing their own brown women being treated so horribly, that seeing them being belittled, and treated the way they were treated in that Harry Potter movie, like that on-screen is normal to them, because they themselves have treated their own women so horribly -- why shouldn’t anyone else.

It doesn’t even phase anyone anymore. 

So do you see how, when the time comes for someone to stand up for another girl in desi society...especially when they see an atrocity occurring it's normalized. It's not a GASP...clutching your pearls situation. I mean, even when I started speaking about my own traumatic situation, people around me would be horrified, and react with such uncomfortable feelings...that I would just look at them bewildered like: What's wrong with you? Then I would realize, this is not normal.

And even sometimes in desi diasporas...for girls who are raised in loving households...they literally have nothing to say to me. Because we cannot relate to each other. To them, we are not friends. We're either no in the same ethnic structure. I mean, we're DESI, but we're not the "right type of desi." So we're not going to hang out. C'mon American Desis. Let's call a spade a spade. So you see. when there's so much of this apathy around us, how do you expect anyone else to treat the brown woman with respect, when our own are treating each other like this. Standing back as we're given away. Or apathetic to our very existence. Or our state of being.

According to the CDC, Child abuse and neglect are serious public health problems and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have long-term impact on health, opportunity, and wellbeing. This issue includes all types of abuse and neglect against a child under the age of 18 by a parent, caregiver, or another person in a custodial role (such as a religious leader, a coach, a teacher) that results in harm, the potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child.

Child marriage is not included as an adverse childhood experience on CDC and NIH websites, not referenced in the H.R.1620 - Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2021, and currently 44 states in the United States still allow child marriage to occur.

The culmination of this means victims of child marriage are not receiving the federal protections they deserve in their workplaces.

Additional advocacy and workplace HR policies are needed to protect child marriage survivors and domestic violence victims who are in similar situations like mine where bullying and abusive behaviors exist in the workplace. Many child marriage survivors grow up to experience bullying and abuse as adults in the workplace, which are magnified for those who live through the maltreatment our abusers throw at us in our professional lives. 

Child marriage survivors are constantly revictimized over and over again, and there is no law protecting them from the onset. 

The US government t is ignoring a massive epidemic in its midst and failing children in this country, whose futures are being constantly retraumatized because of lack of laws and protections.

There is a massive disconnect in U.S. laws and policies protecting child marriage survivors -- again, the reason being that U.S. laws are archaic in believing a child whose brain is not fully matured, is emotionally mature enough to get married and run a household and have babies. 

I urge U.S. Congress to add Child Marriage Survivorship as a protected category, into the public and private sector, and into Human Resources policies, to help child marriage survivors finally get the dignity and respect they deserve as adults.

An Observation of How Generational Trauma is Passed on to NextGen South Asian - American Children 

First podcast from Sasha Taylor, CEO and Founder of REALITY OF A DESI GIRL. Please visit www.realityofadesigirl.com or e-mail [email protected] to collaborate with Sasha for a U.S. federal marriage law and tackle the issue of forced child marriages in the United States.