When I started this rant book, I thought I'd be ranting about trivial things that only  slightly bother me but oh well, here we go.

Child abuse and toxic parenting are so  normalized in my culture, it's fucking disgusting. At this point we're making memes about our abusive parents, like that's how normal it has become.

If you don't believe me, just go have a look at South Asian meme pages yourself. Most of us can't even see it's "abuse".  And if someone points that out, the responses you get range from " you're being too sensitive or "acting white and liberal".

When I was a young ignorant little shit, I believed that too. I thought it was totally normal to hit your children when they were misbehaving, to try to control every aspect of their life. That's what I was brought up to believe. My parents never really hit me but they don't have a problem with other parents that do, they think it's "good parenting" and you have to do whatever you must to discipline your child.

I have cousins who got beat up by cloth hangers. I have a dyslexic cousin who's mum slapped him with a shoe so hard that it left a bruise on his face, just because he was having problems learning.

Obviously, no one supported such extreme abuse and even my parents had to go talk to the kid's mum but what I'm saying is, this is so fuckin normalized. Why? If this level of abuse is practiced in urban areas, just imagine what it must be like in the rural ones.
Many people, who are even aware of this don't speak up because of blind patriotism and the fear of being stereotyped.

That used to be me too.

And then you have the  kids who go, "NoT mY pArEnTs"
Yes, obviously, not every South Asian parent is toxic, you special snowflake but we're talking about the majority here. Just because something doesn't effect you on a personal level, doesn't mean it has ceased existing. So stop silencing the kids who are actually speaking about this bs and stop with the, "You're only defaming your country" guilt-trip.

Basically, this is the South Asian parenting strategy: Terrify your children into listening to everything you say without question. Then when they're past that stage, keep guilt-tripping them so they can't leave you  and you get to control every aspect of their lives.

I've had this on my mind for a really long time but I've never really spoken  up about it because I do feel guilty saying all this. I feel like I'm being an ungrateful shit to my parents which I have to keep reminding myself is not true. I'm grateful for all they've done for me, the sacrifices, the love, etc and I've never opened up about this shit to my friends because I don't want to paint a one-sided picture of my parents or the other South Asian ones. But that's just how they're brought up, they're brought up to believe this toxicity and abuse is love.

And this isn't going to change until people start speaking up.

I'm not even going to proofread this because writing this made me angry and I don't want to look at all of it again right now so please do tell me if you see any typos.

xoxo
Nushie