Saying the F Word Loud

Miss R-Evolutionaries page on Facebook memed a comment which goes like this-

“If you don’t want to be a feminist, that’s cool. There’s a basket by the door where you can stick your college education at an institution of your choosing, your independently rented/owned residence, your credit cards, your car, your right to vote, your birth control, your career, your job if you get married and/or have a baby, your money as well as your autonomous control of it, your ability to consent to sex, your ability to make your healthcare decisions, your ability to serve on a jury your ability to compete in sports at various levels, any military service you have done/want to do as well as accompanying benefits, your right to run for public office, your right to breastfeed in public, your ability to fill for divorce and other legal protections including child support, your right to have domestic violence and rape committed against you to be investigated and tried in court. Now that I think about it, if all these ‘I don’t need feminism’ chicks want to give ALL THAT back, then we may need a U-Haul instead of a basket”

It has not even been a century since the world gave half its humankind the political right to vote.  If United Kingdom gave it in 1918 (only to propertied women above 30 years of age when men above 21 could vote; universal suffrage was attained only in 1928), then Saudi Arabia joined the wagon only in 2011.And have we grown tired of the F-word already?

Disclaimer: This is not an attempt to make you a feminist; far from that. This is an attempt to vindicate a movement that finds itself maligned amidst an imbroglio furthered by a syndicate of vested interests.

We know there is discourse going on against feminism. Oh you are a feminist?  You mean the one belonging to the man-hating-wagon? Or is it the one for whom gender equality means women above men? Or the one who is responsible for breaking homes and families.

This typecasting has been responsible for much that has gone wrong with the way the movement is perceived to be (mind it, ‘perceived to be’). For record, it is not, never was, man versus woman, but was always about man and woman as a society versus patriarchy, no matter who its agents, caretakers and beneficiaries be.

Patriarchy. The term which, simply put, refers to a society where men hold relative power, dominion and status (economically, politically, legally). Now as soon as we hear this word, we get defensive. No I don’t treat my women as inferior beings; no patriarchy has gone down the drain and replaced with matriarchy.

Firstly, congratulations to you for treating your womenfolk as they deserve to be treated and not how patriarchy would they were, but you do not deserve any more appreciation than this. Secondly, equally worrisome as this new matriarchal society is, it is untrue. Has patriarchy really gone?

Are you telling me rapes do not happen? Or that rape culture has nothing to do with patriarchy? Are you telling me rapists are not breathing the same air as you and me do but belong outside the spectrum of our possibilities? Are you telling me that my body is free? That I can play Holi as bare breasted as my brothers? That it has been desexualized and it can breathe and bra straps and cleavages do not give to rise to “passions”? Are you telling me I am free of sexist jokes? Are you telling me you find nothing patriarchal about the institution of marriage wherein by the way it is not arbitrarily decided that I as a woman will have to relinquish one thing that serves my existence and identity- my name?  Are you guaranteeing me that no one will sneer at my buttocks as I cross the general compartment before you spit your argument against having a women’s coach? Are you telling me parents have stopped giving and asking for dowry? Or that there is no such thing as female genital mutilation? Or that there is no difference in the way parents raise their sons and daughters? Or that parents do not thump their chests when they say, “I have raised my daughter as a son?”, or that there is not a huge disparity in the number of women who graduate and number of women sitting in boardrooms of top companies? or that religion has had no contribution to all this, where if Islam allows polygamy then Hinduism will never let me, a faint-hearted woman, cremate my parents when they die? The day my fears as a 21 year old are same as that of a man my age, and you tell me all these things with modicum of veracity in them, I will readily relinquish my claim. We must get the question straight and our politics right- as long as patriarchy exists, the fight against it will.

Feminism has long been accused of rupturing cordial family lives and peaceful homes. I think the main reason for it is that cordiality and peace, doesn’t not guarantee equality. If it is engrained in the very consciousness of each partner to play particular roles, they will play it and they will play it well. They will feel a sense of fulfillment because they played it so good. What feminism does is to bring consciousness, to reconsider these roles, to make known that freedom of choice is the most natural right of a living being. Choice is a privilege my friends. Choice to work, not to work, to cook, to not cook, to have only two children and no more, or none at all, to have sex or not to have sex, and most of all, to be respected for these choices. To adjust and compromise as equal partners but to never sacrifice. Ignorance is bliss, consciousness is uncomfortable.

Indian laws like the draconian section 498a dowry act, sexual harassment at workplace act, domestic violence act, are issues that are responsible for the downcast of feminism. These laws are made on majoritarian basis such that in majority cases women get domestically violated or sexually harassed at workplace. This is not gender equality. It is the failure of legal system to provide immunity to even minor number of cases. Our legal system fails if it is based on majoritarianism. TOI pointed out in a recent article dated March 22, 2015, that 10% of dowry cases are false leading to mental, social and physical torture suffered by husband and his family. This is a feminist fight because this is the misuse of a right that the movement earned. With rights come duties.

If terrorism is waged in the name of God, God does not get maligned. If pseudo-feminists, government policies and laws, and one section of society’s attempt to orchestrate a well-organized vendetta against a political, economic and cultural movement, it should not malign that which is the only neutral stand to take as long my father’s approval overrides my mothers’- feminism.

In the end I’d like to quote Arundhati Roy,
“Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power”

Flowers are good, but give me a revolution.

- Cheshta Rajora