A Call for Boisterous Feminism

As I sat down to pen my debut article on this DELL™, I noticed one thing in the very first place. It was a blemish which I never wanted a portable device I’d like to own, perpetrate. Yet I stopped caring. There’s a minute streak of line that separates caring from noticing: a streak quite wider than that which differentiates looking from seeing. There is a wide range of things worth noticing, but only a very few in this wide range are worth caring about. It’s simply the riddance of care that causes a lot of chaos! As to quote Shaw here, “People who say it cannot be done shouldn’t interrupt those who are doing it.” I’m sure a pretty good number of you seem perplexed at reading this discrete quote at likely a wrong place. I must say the quote is related to the article and I didn’t want my readers to be bored at my soporific introduction and scene- setting.

I’m able to reminisce a promiscuous guy who’s the protagonist (Yes! Believe me! He’s the protagonist, not the antagonist. ) of this Sanskrit work of fiction which I’d read in my middle school, although unrelated to my academics. This guy here does a big load of ‘good’ deeds: Agreed! But it oughtn’t to mean that he’s all perfect and that everything he does is right. It’s simply like taking me as a model and credulously giving into the conception that all I do is right, all the time, all the way. I’m very sure I make mistakes. I make them quite often, but I’ve always loved to confess and I do. A really perilous scene sets in, not even when I don’t confess my mistake but when I try to rationalize them. This protagonist, I’m speaking about here is one such dogmatic, dangerous guy who wanted everything he ever did, rationalized. (Why did this guy wanted his wife to prove her chastity just because she was away from him? Why wouldn't he get himself to prove his chastity by stepping into fire, because he was away from his wife too? Why is it the women of the species that have to undergo such perilous tests?) The story of this guy was handed down to children since generations and the people who grew up with these stories stopped thinking out of this box: out of this story. People began to live by the ways of this story. People began to establish some sort of a chauvinism at the end, over women. Women being the poor victims of this inhumanity became dumb by the end of the day, that they were too scared to question the “people”. It’s a couple of weeks back, my friends and I convened a rendez- vous with my mates at the High School. Many showed up, although there weren’t as many as who were invited. After all, we were quite certain that there are parents naive enough not to send their children: girls especially! Five girls showed up, and as many as twenty boys were at hand. We’d a stroll along the campus, talked to a few of our high school teachers and bade a good bye to the school. We took a stroll back to the carport and shared some beverages: sparkling for those who weren’t “health- conscious” and still for those who were! (And I know that sounds really brilliant! Umm… At least in India, perhaps. ) And I admit my mistake of dropping the throwaway cup down on the road and not even being able to realize that until a friend of mine pointed it out to me. (You know, that’s really so sad and uncivil of me!)

Well, let me get back into the scene: as we were about to leave for an old- age home (which was a part of our get together too.), it was almost six. And then came this curfew jackass who’s the biggest jackass almost every Indian girl is bound to encounter at least a countable number of times and at most to a really considerable times which makes them totally forget that they don’t have the freedom they’re supposed to have! And please clear your heads if you think I’m talking about freedom of choice (Although that must be discussed in a new article too.) here. I’m not! I’M TALKING ABOUT THE DENIAL OF BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS! I tried to make them understand that they must question such inequalities. 

They almost understood and everyone of them bade an almost similar reply which went on like, “Look, dude! You’re looking for drastic changes in the society for a society which would be perfect for everyone. But you know, we can’t just come out and speak the way you do. And if we do, we’ll only end up having a bad picture amidst the people. Also, our parents put this curfew just for our safety, right?” That really annoyed me and I’d to say a boisterous “Nope”. I tried to make them realize the difference between not learning to drive at all, and learning to use a seat belt so that they could have the difference between safety and liberty vividly stated. And again, they come up with the same reply, “We understand, buddy. But we can’t do what you do. We can’t step out of this system that easily. You know, we can’t even speak against the system, let alone thinking about speaking against it!”

*FACEPALM*

I, so desperately wanted to quote Malcom Reynolds’, “You think following these rules will buy you a nice life even if the rules make you a slave?” Yet I held back from quoting Malcom or speaking something which would convey the gist of the quote. But why did I?

Did I give up?         

Did I think that, I can’t change the system?

Did I really want to stop arguing?

“Why did I not argue any further?”, was the only question which kept pinching me, hours later when I threw myself on the couch in my living room. I felt so bad that I preferred to stop arguing. It felt like, I literally stopped caring like the rest of them. But I didn’t! I cared. I always do! Maybe I realized that it’s no use talking to the victims, and reminding them that what had been done to them is a cruelty. After all, they had understood that it’s cruelty. But they aren’t able to fight their case. I must either help them fight the case for the time, or at least try to build a whole new generation which is totally free from this cruelty, in the long run. I had always dreamt of that time when the phrase, “because she’s a girl” becomes extinct. Yet, how could I make that dream come true? I scantly lost hope even after their bleak replies all of which summarized to, “Women can’t be as free as men.” It’s perhaps because I’ve found some open feminists even in my god- forsaken abode. I’m still able to feel that euphoria which I first felt right after I heard a few of my mates second, “I support you here: men and women must be treated equally, everywhere.” I had never had someone who would second me in this academic campus especially because most of my ideas were heretic and blasphemous. It gave me a lot of hope, that there are people by my side too, although the ratio was like one to a thousand.

When I was contemplating this topic, I could relate the scenario to my early days in agnosticism. I was primarily too scared to question the god hypothesis. I wasn’t even aware if I could question the very existence of any possible god. It was thru social networking sites that I could be sure that there are people like me and that it’s completely normal to question the god hypothesis, whereas restraining from such questioning is almost abnormal. I made a few friends with whom I could discuss topics which I then thought couldn’t be discussed in public. I could muster up courage and declare myself an open freethinker only when I was sure that there is enough people who themselves are freethinkers and that they are able to live without threats.

I thought of applying the same here. I thought it would be really heartening to these girls if they can be aware that there are enough girls who are bold enough to question the inequalities. I could understand that my friends were so convinced that only men can dare talk pro- woman. The picture my friends are in, is the projection of what the vast majority of the women folk here face. At certain places the condition is still shoddier. I just thought, it is time we help them understand that they can grab their rights, and no one has to give them rights which are solely their own. It is time, we helped each and every Indian woman understand why slutwalks were organized in key cities of the country and around the globe.

I pen down this post, as a call for every feminist around the country, especially for those unvoiced feminists who find it perilous to be open feminists. I’m sure this small effort can help build a society where curfew isn’t based on sex, where toys are not based on sex, where jobs are not based on sex, where administration has nothing to do with sexual difference, where everyone realizes that silence is different from prudence.


PostScript: I had a few messages pop up in my facebook inbox (after sharing a link to this post on my wall) asking me how I could take the right to criticize their "dignified culture" for granted, thereby attempting to rationalize all their patriarchal acts. I simply don't give a fuck to your dimwits. I wish you get the fuck off my facebook list! I put this PS here for posterity that whoever finds this post offending their misogynistic sentiments, please just don't limit yourselves to closing this window, but make sure you unfriend me from your facebook list. 'Cause this and similar stuff are most of what you're gonna see on my facebook wall, now on!

இவ்விடம் ஓரிதழின் கண்ணீர்

Prologue: I penned this down as I was contemplating on how stupid, oxytocin- overdosed and testosterone- overfilled I was in my High school days. Schooling meant love- making and memorizing to me. So naive, so crazy and so like a wackadoodle  I was... Back now, I just tried to imagine for myself how I would've been if my oxytocin- levels hadn't fallen in the past three years: this post is what I would've penned down.

 

கண்ணிநீர் தாக்கம்கொண்டு

வேல்விழிக் கண்ணிரண்டு

செவ்விழிகளானதென்ன?

ஆனதும் ஆகாதென்று

உன்மனம் ஏக்கம்கண்டு

என்மனம் தன்னில்கொண்டு

அப்புறம் சென்றதென்ன?

அப்புறம் சென்றவகத்தை

இப்புறம் வாராயென்றே

விளித்திட்ட நேரம்பார்த்தது

கட்டுற்றிருந்ததென்ன?

'பசித்ததுபோல் புசித்திட்டாய்

செவ்விதழை நீயென்றே'

ஊடல்கொண்டு புறம்கொடுத்த

கோலமுங்கதையானதென்ன?

வயிற்றுக்கும் தொண்டைக்கும்

உருவமில்லாதொரு உருளையும்

உருளக்கண்ட காலமின்று

இறந்தகாலமானதென்ன?

வானத்து விட்டத்திற்கீழ்

கையோடு கைசேர்த்திருந்து

விண்மீன் கிளிஞ்சலெல்லாம்

பொருக்கிச்சமைத்துண்ணும்படிக்கண்டிருந்த

தேனிலாக் கனவுகலெல்லாம்

புலராதுதிர்ந்த பூக்களானதென்ன?

வீற்றிருந்த கடற்பரப்பும்- கண்கள் நான்கும்

பார்த்திருந்த நீர்வீழ்ச்சிகளுமெல்லாம்

கானல்நீராய் வற்றிப்போக

தானழுவதற்காய் ஒருசொட்டுக்

கண்ணீர் யாசித்தெந்தன் கண்கள்மட்டும்

கையேந்தி நிற்பதென்ன?

PS: The epilogue doesn't mean that I'm not crazy at all now. It means I'm out of the high oxytocin levels that drove me crazy in the past.

PPS: And now, I go crazy if you don't laugh when I tell you, "The bartender told Helium, "We don't serve noble gases here" and Helium didn't react." :-P