The other day, I met this girl I used to work with. We were talking about life in general, what we have each been up to and so on, when she said, “I’m not a feminist. I don’t get these feminist types.” I was as outraged as Arnab Goswami on Newshour. How can a woman say that she is not a feminist? And who are these feminist types? The nation wants to know.
This is not the first time I’m hearing a lady say she is not a feminist. For some reason, being a feminist seems to freak the general public out – they tend to assume that you hate men. Which implies you are a lesbian (or asexual). Also, if you are a feminist, then in all probability you don’t believe in wearing a bra or waxing your legs; your eyebrows need more pruning than the shrubs in your garden; you would rather starve than go to the kitchen to make yourself a sandwich. Because, well, feminists don’t cook. They are from a different planet. Sadly, these sweeping generalisations and misconceptions have become the standard against which feminism is evaluated.
When feminism is looked at through this prism, of course, the women who advocate equal rights and raise their voices against injustice, seem to look like lunatics. I’m no expert in feminism or gender studies, but my understanding is that feminism is about humanism – it’s about equal treatment, equal wages, equal freedom and equal opportunity for all sexes. Everything else, including stereotypes about what a feminist should look like, is aimed at distorting the movement and taking away from the core issue that feminism seeks to address.
So when you have women, like my friend, who say they are not feminists, it’s perhaps because they have been exposed to this extreme and ridiculous version of a feminist being a deranged woman who wants to eliminate men from the face of the earth. And obviously, no sane woman would identify with that brand of feminism; it is purely sensational, like a caricature in a sitcom. It’s non-existent even.
We need feminism because it’s the only way women can claim their space – physical and intellectual. It’s the only way women can assert their strength and individuality in a patriarchy-infested world. Because it’s not rocket science to understand that women are handed a raw deal every time. Even when a woman is raped, it’s her fault. Her dress was too short. She was out late. She had too much lipstick on. She was with a guy. She was at a pub. She was smoking. She was eating chowmein. She was asking for it. She did not fight back. Recently, the Goa chief minister’s wife had this to say about rape: “When girls used to follow Hindu culture, there were no instances of rape. Now, people have changed the way they behave and dress and you have seen how the number of rapes is on the rise.” And her husband followed it up with this gem: “My wife has always worn saris and has never been eve-teased.” Apart from the fact that these statements are downright retarded, kindly note the phenomenon of victim-blaming where the onus is on the woman to ensure that she is not groped or raped or murdered. The debate on ‘Hindu culture’ calls for a different blog post altogether.
Unfortunately, we ARE being conditioned subconsciously and otherwise to behave a certain way just so we do not attract any attention. Right from childhood, little girls are trained to become invisible, so that by the time they are adults, they turn into machines that can make coffee, clean up the home, produce kids, cook for them, and be good wives, good mothers, who exercise – of course, the belly fat is not going to burn itself. And obviously, give up their careers because it’s impossible to have one. And even if you do, you have to deal with harrassment at the workplace and a huge pay gap (men are paid more always, even if they are not as qualified). You cannot be ‘ambitious’ because good girls do not ask for a promotion or a better pay.
While I do acknowledge that men have to deal with a number of issues too, they are not as disadvantaged due to their gender, the way women are. And the worst part is we are being asked to shut up and get on with our lives; we are being told that we are overreacting, and that we need to chill. Well, really? As a guy, do you ever have to worry about being groped while walking down the road? Or do you have to deal with sexism every single day – at work, at home, with friends? Also, do you know that basic women’s products like even sanitary napkins, soaps, deodorant and underwear come with a luxury tax making it more expensive than men’s products, yet women are paid less? Have you ever waxed your legs, or removed your mustache with a thread? It hurts, okay.
Despite all this, we women are considerate. We avoid walking down the road at night because we don’t want to be ‘targets’. We cover our legs and try not to show that we have boobs or butts by wearing clothes two sizes loose, so you don’t get ‘provoked’. We let your veiled sexist-remarks-disguised-as-jokes pass; we open doors for you and pay for your dinners because we believe that chivalry is respect for all humans, and not a way to ‘score women’. Every day, we try to be ‘less feminine’ so you don’t have to go through the trouble of stalking us or raping us.
This is not normal. This is not how it should be. Women should at least be able to perform mundane everyday activities like walking to a store or talking on the phone, without fear. Our bodies are being institutionalised by the media, which celebrates patriarchy and the male gaze; we are being shamed into conforming to unrealistic standards of physical beauty – apparently our vaginas need some tightening and whitening too. Who’d have thunk. How do we break these shackles that are holding us down? How do we fight these insecurities?
Enter feminism. It’s not some abstract idea that the privileged and elite women/men toy around with. Women today are in a much better space than those a few decades ago, mostly due to strong women empowerment movements across countries. Some of us are privileged enough to have the freedom to choose our husbands, choose whom we want to sleep with, if we want to get married, what careers we want and when/if we want kids. There are millions of women who do not have that choice, and here’s where feminism can help. Don’t ask me how, because I’m clueless. I suppose it would take ages, and I already know of some women who have been doing groundbreaking work with women in villages. Like this lady I met who built toilets for women in a village near Trichy, and it empowered them – they could now go to the washroom without fear of being molested, while earlier they had to deal with creepy men lurking around in fields.
A lot of media campaigns on women, though well-intentioned, seem to have lost the plot. Like this one about men vowing to protect women. I am not very comfortable with the idea because it once again re-affirms the patriarchal notion of a man being the protector. I want men – and women- to be sensitive to women’s issues. I don’t want to spring to the defense of my gender every time a snide remark is passed, and I also acknowledge that some women are part of the problem, in that they are more patriarchal than most men, and are just as ready to indulge in victim-blaming and body–shaming. So let’s forget about academic labels like post-feminism and anti-feminism, and try to be more sensitive human beings, maybe?
Paperback writer 