I’ve been trying to remember if I would always have considered myself a feminist. Well, yes, I have always “believed” in equality and that’s what feminism is; a “belief” in gender equality, an understanding that women are entitled to the same rights, opportunities and treatment as men. But would I have always used the word itself?
Anyone who has spent any time with me recently can’t have failed to have noticed that my thoughts are becoming gradually more and more consumed with issues surrounding women’s rights. If it was a subject that had interested me before, then life in India has certainly helped in turning it into an obsession. As the thoughts and questions in my mind entangle themselves in one another, I have slowly become engulfed in a vast sense of injustice that does not belong to me. Patriarchy is engrained so deeply into India’s veins that it has driven me to moments of sadness and rage. I’m sure many of us have come across stories in the media about some of the issues facing women in not only South Asia, but across the globe; female foetocide and infanticide, access to education, dowry, child marriage, arranged marriage, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, harrassement, rape and victim blaming to name but a few… It’s all old news now. But living in India has made some of these issues feel less a far away nightmare and more an actual reality. However, in colliding first hand with some of the manifestations of patriarchy and sexism, I have also begun to recoginse that prevalent Western attitudes claiming to be so superior and so far removed from their distant, “backward” counterparts, often need not look so far from home to find what they believe is so abhorrent. The common misconception stands that feminism achieved all its hopes and dreams the day women won the right to vote… You women got what you wanted, so stop banging on about it now. Whether you care to accept it or not, gender inequality, violence and discrimination against women are daily realities in all the far flung corners of the globe. These are not problems that have been left behind in the dark realms of history; they never left our sides. Would I consider myself a feminist now? Definitely.
However, I fully accept that the term feminist has become problematic and many of those who share in my belief that rights and respect really should be universally applied, still have trouble associating with the word. Sadly, the concept of feminism seems to be often misconstrued with the image of the angry bra-burning woman who thinks “all men are bastards” and she in fact deserves some kind of special treatment because she was born as a member of the more righteous sex. I wonder if some would even go as far to consider feminism to be a kind of misogyny in reverse. It’s no wonder then that even women who have worked hard to achieve far greater success than the average man will in a life time still shy away from using the word and that most men will switch off at the slightest mention of it.
I, too, sometimes have my doubts.
I’m going to assume, if you’re joining me on team equality, that you recognise, apart from the obvious biological differences, that gender is largely a social construct. What it means to be male or female are often qualities lacking in any substantial justification, but that are continually and subtly reinforced by the media and by society’s expectations and therefore the majority of gender discrimination, bias and stereotype is wholely unjustified. Do you believe women should be allowed to vote? Go to school? Go to university? Have a job? Leave the house? If not then, ok, you’re not a feminist, but you’ve probably not got many friends either. Feminism, or at least the concept behind the word, seems like it should be a fairly normal state of mind. So why should we need to ask, “are you a feminist?” almost as if it were a dirty word. In a rather contradictory manner to my claim of feminist status, I find it frustrating that the word feminist is necessary at all. To illustrate; the term racist is applied to people who are clearly still living on the wrong side of history and whose thoughts and behaviour are thus deemed unacceptable. There is no word to define those who are not racist and nor does there need to be; racism is the expection to the rule and the rule deserves no greater praise than it being considered normality. So why should the opposite of sexism – feminism – seem to be a club with an exclusive entry policy?
Perhaps one of the most obvious problems that comes attached to ‘feminism’ is the linguistic one; you simply can’t escape from the links to other words such as ‘feminine’ and ‘female’. This is a word that appears to be all about women and all about ‘women’s problems’. It disassociates men from any need for involvement and often gets equated with being sexist in itself. But any official definition of the word can confirm that, despite its linguistic flaws, this is a word, a concept that involves both genders. Feminism is: “advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.” Period. Nothing about man-hating, nothing about superiority. Men can and should be feminists too. But in reality most men are not going to want to stand up and pronounce themselves to be a word that sounds so very much like ‘feminine’. The social pressure standing behind the conception of the ideal masculine man has done its work to ensure that that’s not a desirable image. Maybe if I had a time machine I would go back to the late 19th century and rewrite the word as something that implies both genders. Maybe I’d only need to change one vowel… Are you a femanist?! But we all know it’d never catch on now and that’s why I’ve decided to speak out alongside the others who are working hard to try and reclaim it as a positive concept. Feminist is the word we have and we should just learn to stop equating with the the girl who wants to murder her ex and ‘become a lesbian’ because she got dumped. Because as much as I normally dislike labels and as much as I wish it weren’t necessary at all, it is. Feminism is not a joke, it’s serious. It’s about respect, it’s about dignity, it’s about taking women seriously and it’s about standing up for the little girl whose parents won’t let her go to school, because who needs school when your only purpose in life is to cook for your husband and have his sons. . .
From London To Jaipur... 