They banned single-use plastics. Yet today, women are still used. It’s easy to be the victim, and that’s true. But how can our women be empowered to stand strong as the threat of the conservative society stands on the sidelines, ready to strike out at a single wrong move made?
How many of these disposed bodies pollute our seas?
The ongoing romance with traditional fantasies condones the backlash against ‘westernized elitist feminists.’ This means it’s open season on any woman deemed to be liberated. Pummeled by globalization and its sought-after culture, social conservatives fancy the golden age of India, a shallow imagination of a so-called ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ homeland.
This is actually a globalisation-inspired love affair with ancientness which legitimizes the curtailment of a woman’s democratic rights. There are two dimensions here: On the one hand, the sanctimonious inclination for a Sati-Savitri who will toe the line and quietly submit to everything a man may propel at her.
On the other hand, there is an interminable demand for sexual gratification in every form comprehensible as seen in the ascending demand for porn and commodifying women in entertainment media.
A different approach to the commodification of women has been ineradicable since the ancient ages- Kanyadaan and the traditional dowry system in the Indian ‘vivaah’ or marriage has led people to the justification that women are property. Since childhood, a female is defined by numbers, inches, feet, pounds, appearances, net worth and beauty- the hollow word still tailing us closely and never letting go. In social situations too, people still bear the shallow mindset of asking husbands about their work, and wives about their husbands.
Once again, women are compelled to wear something less provocative. If “she’s too young to be wearing that”, then she’s too young to be sexualized, thank you very much. You should be teaching young girls to be proud of their bodies; we’re all masterpieces in ourselves.
Why are we teaching girls to cover themselves up instead of teaching the men to have control over their attitude? And if someone says that girls wearing provocative outfits ‘are really asking for it’, there’s a solution. What if you’re out in the public and not wearing protective headgear, doesn’t that mean I can smash your skull if I want? I mean, you’re really not wearing headgear, are you? “You’re just really asking for it.” When men are oppressed, it becomes a tragedy, and when women are, it’s just a part of being a woman?
We are people, not objects.
Crimes against women continue to escalate; female foeticide remains common even among educated women; stray incidents of Sati still take place, with women either jumping or being thrown on to their husbands' funeral pyres. Arranged marriages are commonplace. The reason we need feminism is because the world is still a place where a man in a room full of women is ecstatic, and a woman in a room full of men is terrified, and it’s not something men should be proud of.
Just a few days ago, a woman was called out in Lucknow for slapping a cab driver who wasn’t really at fault for an accident that was just stopped from happening.
The girl does deserve punishment at the hands of law, but doesn’t this very incident balance out with the hundreds of crimes that take place against women everyday? This incident did cause massive outrage and stirred up the debate for ‘whether feminism in India made the men defenseless?’ Feminism fights for the equality of genders in a society that is clearly unequal. How is the action of one horrible woman who isn’t even endorsed as a feminist icon reflecting upon the entire feminist movement? In that case, is it okay for calling every man out there a rapist because we come across dozens of cases of rape where men are the perpetrators? Feminism doesn’t need women to be held superior to others; it just calls out for women to be held equal and on the same plane as men.
If we can learn how to work together, communicate, build each other up and work on our goals as a team, we can take over the world twice. But if we remain oblivious in the midst of escapist fantasies, we will only inflict suffering on ourselves. Speak up. Scream, so that a hundred years later, another sister will not have to dry her tears and wonder where in history she lost her voice.
Unless we relentlessly demand governmental accountability, competent maintenance of law and order and destruction of caste prejudice, neither citizens nor daughters are safe, and females will remain to be termed as poisonous ‘femi-nazis’.
How many of these disposed bodies pollute our seas?
We aren’t for ‘use and throw’
(The writer is a Standard-X student at DAV Public School, Unit-8, Bhubaneswar)
