Thursday 21 May 2009

Women and Feminism

Inasmuch as we men know, women are not us and thus it makes them "they". How could this riddle be solved. If in the order of nature a complement was required for everyone , and thus manifesting duality, then why did this duality become so perplexing. Throughout animal kingdom , male dominates its female counterpart. This hasn't changed to this date, while with the Homo Sapiens its been a remarkable shift since the times of fabled Adam and Eve.

Humans differ from animals , very remarkably , in their power to think. Human beings could read a situation, analyze it and then act as per their moral deductions. Can we , then, attribute the rise in the status of women in the society to the thinking power of men. It seems to be so . In a very recent debate about the post poll results , M J Akbar, made a point about BJPs failure, "BJP fails to understand why India is secular. It is not secular because it houses so many religions together. It is secular because the Hindus (majority) of India are secular". Drawing parallels from this can we deduce the reason for rise in the status of women in the society , "Men recognized ( by virtue of improved education and other conditions ) that women deserve equal space in the society ".
At least it must have had started this way, and slowly as the wave of change gained traction from different sections , women overpowered the authoritative men and came up in the strata. Even today in the orthodox societies,like ours, women are tethered by authoritative male . However, with the advent of time and educational quality of the large swathe of our population , the trend is almost sure to change , but the resultant effect is going to be quite unpredictable. It could very well be a new way with the mix of traditional value and individualistic freedom, as could be seen to some degrees in our urban populace.

But is feminism all about raising the say of women in the society. It seems to have skewed onto that notion. Women had their own space of favor and respect in every period of history. That still remains as its niche. However, with the growing lure of coming up on the front and be at the helm, feminism has ignored the women in traditional yet significant roles.

Speaking non-politically, in larger part of our society, women is an object of pleasure, care,warmth, love but not of authority. She is not entitled to choose her own way of life. Boys enjoy special privilege since boys don't get pregnant. Huh! what a sham!

But society, in pursuit of maintaining its framework needs to chain the women. What would happen to the existing order if women were to go astray. This specious argument reeks of chauvinism and racism , albeit wrapped in a wool of social concern . In a civilized society , if we could consider ourselves to be so, why can't women declare their own way and their own framework of society . Let the reins of everyone's life be in their own hands, and a society be formed of the individual will and not by forced subjugation.

Wishful as these Ideas may seem to be , for world is not yet perfect , not yet civilized to the extent to accommodate both the sexes with equivalent status, they are very pertinent .World would tale time to mature to the next level,till that time , there will be censures and rebukes on both sides of the conservationists and the feminists , until one day when feminism tips over its bar and stands shoulder to shoulder. Till that time we men continue to shamefully pride ourselves as better race.

3 comments:

mythripk said...

nice post , though i do disagree with some of the points :)

Siddharth said...

Of course you could! Would you like to mention them ?

Yash Manwani said...

I really appreciate the flow in which thoughts have been organized. There was time when humans blindly used to believe whatever was told by Dharmgurus. In this age people have started using their own brains and hence a major change is inevitable. Science has evidence that women who are exposed to this competetive world biologically start developing masculine characteristics(like harsher voice, more body hair). Women certainly need to be respected but the difference needs to be respected too. Men who dominated the world failled to respect their housewives,mothers,sisters and women in general which has led to all this. I believe humans do make mistakes but are blessed with wisdom to change themselves too(otherwise we would be extinct by now). The argument of women going astray has some weight, but it is not forever. A considerable population of women in future might go astray giving in for bodily urges but as I said humanity has wisdom to choose good over bad(good as in what makes us exist in peace and bad as in what endangers us) eventually the society (both men and women)will learn to respect differences and each other.