My Father Made Me a Feminist

A common insult about Mexican feminists is that they had no father — but that wasn’t my case

Family photo provided by author

My dad’s active fatherhood made me a feminist. This is the conclusion I came to while mourning him.

How to measure a good heart

In Egyptian mythology, after death everyone must pass through the judgment of Osiris. This is a kind of a “good heart” test.

In the underworld, Anubis would extract the Ib, which means the heart (which represents conscience and morality) from the deceased and place it on one side of a pair of scales. The Ib was counterbalanced by the feather of Maat (symbol of Truth and Universal Justice), which was placed on the other side.

The person’s heart might or might not pass the test. If the Ib was lighter than the feather of Maat, Osiris let them enter paradise. Otherwise, they were thrown to the Ammit, the Devourer of the Dead or the Eater of Hearts — a creature with the head of a crocodile, the hind legs of a hippopotamus, and the mane, torso and forelegs of a lion.