Dear feminists
Dear feminists(both men and women),
I appreciate you on taking up this noble venture. Your efforts in fighting for the rights of women who have been oppressed in our society for long and your yearning for equality are laudable. However, I feel many of you have lost direction off late and you are simply clinging on to the feminist raft to find shore rather than to set sail. I wouldn't blame you, the precedents are bad.
Feminism demands political, economical, cultural and social equality for women. Fair demands, I believe. In the west, feminist movements began with the calls for equal representation in polity, voting rights, right to education and property, workplace rights such as maternity leave and equal pay, reproductive rights and things alike. In the east particularly India, feminism started out as a movement aimed at abolishing sati, killing of girl children and child marriage while promoting the rights of a woman in marriage as well after the death of her husband, and her right to inheritance. These movements were against any form of discrimination against women and offered protection to the victims.
Over the years, the colours of men(women alike) have changed and feminism has changed with them. Presently, its ideologies lie somewhere between misanthropy and misandry.
Yes, women are being groped and raped every minute. Girl children are still being killed in villages. Dowry is a big problem in the country. But what have you done to address these problems other than crying out loud against men on TV and social media? How have you helped the victims? What have you done to prevent these incidents? There are thousands of pages on Facebook and other such sites where women are targeted and are slurred. How many of you have reported these pages? I don't justify any of these acts and I believe these crimes must be severely punished. However, you feminists(at least many of you) have made it a fashion to abuse and bully men by portraying them as pure evil rather than finding solutions to these issues. Before calling men pure evil, I would politely suggest you to think about the man who walked you home the other night and how he wouldn't let you walk closer to the road nor let you leave his arm.
You claim that sexual crimes against women are on the rise in our country. I don't know if they are on the rise or if they are on the fall. All I know is that victims of these crimes are able speak out more freely now than before. That's empowerment. That credit does not belong to those who are on the other side of the shore. It belongs to the feminists like you who until a few years ago had direction. They knew what they were fighting for unlike many of you today.
You also go around claiming that women are objectified and their bodies are being politicized. I wouldn't disagree. However, that's only half of the story. In today's world, even men are being objectified. And the story doesn't end there. Life evolves by attraction and nature has created humans in a such way we would be bodily attracted to the opposite gender so that life can continue. There starts the problem with flaunting. I would be disgusted by a man flaunting his abs as much as by a woman who is flaunting her breasts. I would be disgusted by a man flashing his briefs as much as by a woman flashing her bra. It's not fashion, its indecency. And it is not a gender thing.
Now, coming to the family argument. Running a family is a lot similar to running a ship. In either case, you need a captain and you need a first-mate. When the first-mate tries to become the captain, more often than not, a mutiny breaks out. In a relationship, it is up to the husband and wife to decide to who wants to be the captain and who wants to be the first-mate. If both wants to be the captain, shipwreck becomes unavoidable. That's where compartmentalising can help. Dividing the responsibilities rather than trying step into each others shoes is a good way of staying afloat. If you think cooking, cleaning the house, doing the laundry and others kinds of domestic work are means of exploitation, I know many men who do them, my father being one of them.
Another big argument of feminists today is that women don't get to exercise their free will and they live in fear all the time. I agree everyone should get a chance to exercise their freewill irrespective of gender, but what some of you have been marketing as free will is the right to stay out late at night, right to drink and the right to wear anything. Is that your only definition for free will? If you are my friend, my colleague or a relative, I would advice against all three, doesn't matter if you are a woman or a man. It is not curbing your free will, it is advising caution.
I agree that women live in fear of being sexually exploited, irrespective of what they do, what they wear and who they are. I really think feminists and everyone else must fight for these women. In a country where rape is used as means of shaming not just the woman but her whole family, fighting against these kinds of sexual violence must be one of the top priorities of the feminists rather than fighting to stay out late. I would have loved to see you come out with the same intent and rage with which Nirbaya's case was fought for the serial rapes across U.P. Sadly, I didn't see that happen.
Finally, let me end by saying that real men don't hate women. They don't rape women. They don't demand dowry. They don't kill girl children. And they want to fight against these, on your side. Please don't distance them.
Women and men can not be the same. If they were, there would have been nothing beautiful about life. And there is no shame in being a woman.
- The concerned human
I appreciate you on taking up this noble venture. Your efforts in fighting for the rights of women who have been oppressed in our society for long and your yearning for equality are laudable. However, I feel many of you have lost direction off late and you are simply clinging on to the feminist raft to find shore rather than to set sail. I wouldn't blame you, the precedents are bad.
Feminism demands political, economical, cultural and social equality for women. Fair demands, I believe. In the west, feminist movements began with the calls for equal representation in polity, voting rights, right to education and property, workplace rights such as maternity leave and equal pay, reproductive rights and things alike. In the east particularly India, feminism started out as a movement aimed at abolishing sati, killing of girl children and child marriage while promoting the rights of a woman in marriage as well after the death of her husband, and her right to inheritance. These movements were against any form of discrimination against women and offered protection to the victims.
Over the years, the colours of men(women alike) have changed and feminism has changed with them. Presently, its ideologies lie somewhere between misanthropy and misandry.
Yes, women are being groped and raped every minute. Girl children are still being killed in villages. Dowry is a big problem in the country. But what have you done to address these problems other than crying out loud against men on TV and social media? How have you helped the victims? What have you done to prevent these incidents? There are thousands of pages on Facebook and other such sites where women are targeted and are slurred. How many of you have reported these pages? I don't justify any of these acts and I believe these crimes must be severely punished. However, you feminists(at least many of you) have made it a fashion to abuse and bully men by portraying them as pure evil rather than finding solutions to these issues. Before calling men pure evil, I would politely suggest you to think about the man who walked you home the other night and how he wouldn't let you walk closer to the road nor let you leave his arm.
You claim that sexual crimes against women are on the rise in our country. I don't know if they are on the rise or if they are on the fall. All I know is that victims of these crimes are able speak out more freely now than before. That's empowerment. That credit does not belong to those who are on the other side of the shore. It belongs to the feminists like you who until a few years ago had direction. They knew what they were fighting for unlike many of you today.
You also go around claiming that women are objectified and their bodies are being politicized. I wouldn't disagree. However, that's only half of the story. In today's world, even men are being objectified. And the story doesn't end there. Life evolves by attraction and nature has created humans in a such way we would be bodily attracted to the opposite gender so that life can continue. There starts the problem with flaunting. I would be disgusted by a man flaunting his abs as much as by a woman who is flaunting her breasts. I would be disgusted by a man flashing his briefs as much as by a woman flashing her bra. It's not fashion, its indecency. And it is not a gender thing.
Now, coming to the family argument. Running a family is a lot similar to running a ship. In either case, you need a captain and you need a first-mate. When the first-mate tries to become the captain, more often than not, a mutiny breaks out. In a relationship, it is up to the husband and wife to decide to who wants to be the captain and who wants to be the first-mate. If both wants to be the captain, shipwreck becomes unavoidable. That's where compartmentalising can help. Dividing the responsibilities rather than trying step into each others shoes is a good way of staying afloat. If you think cooking, cleaning the house, doing the laundry and others kinds of domestic work are means of exploitation, I know many men who do them, my father being one of them.
Another big argument of feminists today is that women don't get to exercise their free will and they live in fear all the time. I agree everyone should get a chance to exercise their freewill irrespective of gender, but what some of you have been marketing as free will is the right to stay out late at night, right to drink and the right to wear anything. Is that your only definition for free will? If you are my friend, my colleague or a relative, I would advice against all three, doesn't matter if you are a woman or a man. It is not curbing your free will, it is advising caution.
I agree that women live in fear of being sexually exploited, irrespective of what they do, what they wear and who they are. I really think feminists and everyone else must fight for these women. In a country where rape is used as means of shaming not just the woman but her whole family, fighting against these kinds of sexual violence must be one of the top priorities of the feminists rather than fighting to stay out late. I would have loved to see you come out with the same intent and rage with which Nirbaya's case was fought for the serial rapes across U.P. Sadly, I didn't see that happen.
Finally, let me end by saying that real men don't hate women. They don't rape women. They don't demand dowry. They don't kill girl children. And they want to fight against these, on your side. Please don't distance them.
Women and men can not be the same. If they were, there would have been nothing beautiful about life. And there is no shame in being a woman.
- The concerned human
Comments