It’s quite great a saying that your eyes cannot see what your brain doesn’t know. Trust me it will awaken you the most from your doze when you don’t want to be.
As for very long, even up till now this feeling has provoked my thought process to dig into the fallacy that – feminism is just for female welfare and not for any other sexes. Is this even remotely correct? No, right?
It was my initial days in the college when I first expressed my views on feminism… (hold on) If you are wondering that this post is going to be like just another work of pillorying the feminists and denouncing their works and then be sanguine and content about the same then you are out and out wrong.
This is an account of my search for feminism as a concept that was there present within me always. It’s a tale of my youthful days when I was being brought up in an environment where I just saw that how each member of my family ought to be treated with goodness. Where no sense of privilege shall be granted to me as I was as equal and as aware about the concept of equality as much as was my sister. Where my mom would not have to wait for very long till my father puts his opinion on a subject matter as mansplaining was a bird that was flying miles away from my remote sense of the meaning of it. Where I instilled the principles of the commune from the poems of Maya Angelou in my sophomore years and did not let the ordeals of discrimination and oppression slip my mind and surmise them to be a thing of the past. Where I managed to imbibe the sensitivity towards the other binary of the gender, inter alia, other genders and did try to wrap my head around the notions of feminism but could never pass at it.
However, all this while I used to wonder whether other sets of gender were also going through the same screening of programming of sensitivity. Till date, I haven’t got the answer. Still and all, I do perceive that it is your, awakening and realisation at the right stage, and receiving of shared values that will ingrain in you the right way of treating others (irrespective of gender) rather than certain concept or movement.
In my later adulthood (with the broadening of my perspective) things were not the same as before, a wide chasm developed (no one has seen them made or heard them made), everything was not so hunky-dory as much as it used to be, I could hear the saga of feudal differences between sexes. During all this discovery, by the time I could interpret the most ideal meaning of feminism, I realised that it can never be used in a consistent sense in every context. It has evolved and it will. However, I vehemently desire that in way of developing a patriarchy-free society, feminism should not become that other extreme end of the sword which might turn this sword into the sword of Damocles for the equality lovers and let that aperture of chasm be more widened.
As for very long, even up till now this feeling has provoked my thought process to dig into the fallacy that – feminism is just for female welfare and not for any other sexes. Is this even remotely correct? No, right? But for some, it seems to be validly taken. That’s why the odds are slim to none to find out that any of the men’s issues are being taken up and getting addressed by the upholders of feminism. I’m fully aware that where, if the vices in this society associated with men is one then they are in veritable multi folds for other sexes. But, does that necessitate not getting them (men) relieved of those (vices)? Are we really letting men lose their faith in feminism, I don’t think I’m losing it nor will I but do other men feel the same, that’s undoubtedly doubtable and is the question of the hour.
Before I leave you, I’d drop in certain questions I would want to know the answers of. In Hindu weddings, we have the ritual of ‘kanyadaan.’ ‘Daan,’ which translates literally to ‘donation’ or ‘alms’. Okay, so putting it together, the parents are donating their daughter. Is that woman in question a commodity which you feel must be transacted? ‘Paraya dhan,’ with teary eyes, is what a mother tags her daughter with as soon as the latter gets capable enough of understanding what marriage is. And who exactly gives us the right of ascribing her fate when she should be preparing to soar free in the sky? How does it even make sense?
Similarly, what is the point of being unnecessarily masochistic about a female driving a vehicle? What is the point of laughing and belittling girls in educational institutions when they put forth a point? What is the aim of making misogynist jokes and dark humor? How is derogation funny? What does it reflect? What rather should we feel sorry about? The helplessness of a community, or the toxic sadistic tendency of the other people propagating and imposing their unnecessary superiority?
I am proud to be a feminist for all. I am proud of women who consider it their right to venture out and assume leadership, and I am proud of those men who shatter the boundaries their patriarchs build for them and boost their women to stride the stage and take over with confidence. That said, I am equally skeptical and saddened by women who falsely coerce their male colleagues into acceding to their demands, or otherwise, they shall use the social empathy to get ‘the men sorted.’ This is blemishing the white wall that women like Sylvia Path, Sarojni Naidu, Kamala Harris, and Jacinda Ardern have built in their societies for the young girls to rely and paint their dreams on. This is not 'feminism.’ Just like terrorism has no religion, misuse of law is no empowerment. That is a statement, and that is the truth.
“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”
Hence with the words of Maya Angelou, I sign off and yearn for the right way of pervading feminism, believing in the allusion that feminism is a feeling, an expression, an idea which can neither be imposed nor can be confined to any particular sex.
This insightful post has been written by Mr. Shiekhar Panwar, a third-year student at the Army Institute of Law, Mohali