Feminist Freak

I am a freak. Why? Because I’m a feminist. Or rather being a feminist makes me feel like a freak. That’s how unpopular feminism is. How unhip, how boring, how passé. Mention the “F” word at a dinner party and suddenly you know what it must feel like to have a turd on your head. Or leprosy. But the leper treatment I don’t mind too much. It’s the dimwitted, unsympathetic clichés that people (men in particular) come out with on the occasions when mentioning the “F” word does cause a stir – that really get up my nose.

Young, well-educated professionals (I’ll be specific; army officers, politicians, bureaucrats, academicians, high-flying business whiz kids, all established and all male) have come back at me with the most appallingly simplistic and negative views on feminism. Men who should know better. Here are some typical examples: “Feminists all hate men,” (yes, truly, I get that old stinker a lot). “Feminists are all victims.” “The trouble with feminism is that it makes men feel guilty.” “Isn’t feminism a dead subject?” “What do women want now?”

These are some of the typical comebacks I get from educated men. Here is what I never get the chance to say back.

“Feminists all hate men.” I can’t speak for all feminists, but, yes, in my case the bonehead who said this is right. I hate men. There, I’ve said it. It’s about time someone did. And before some stupid person jumps down my throat and calls me sexist, I’d also like to say that saying “I hate men” isn’t the same as saying “I hate women.” Hardly. I hate men for their explicit and deliberate actions. Because for centuries they systematically wrote us out of the picture. Everything. Politics, economics, education, oh, and that’s just the factual, historically documented active sexism. Psycho-sexual sexism, the stuff that you can’t see, but women can just feel, there’s all that stuff as well. And then there’s the huge amount of domestic violence, rape, sexual abuse and general menace. Mmmmmm…Yeah, well, I feel that’s enough for me to quite happily say “I hate men” and not really care too much about men’s feelings about the matter. When I say “I hate men”, I have good reason. Men hated us first; although we were “weaker, more stupid, less human, less intelligent, less rational, less capable” and acted on it. So I kind a hate men back.

Oh, and I also hope men reading this can read between the lines too. My man hatred is a group thing. I like Rohit who’s my best friend, and my male friends and I fancy men (though I’m not sure if my husband’s gonna like it after reading this). It’s just that you’ve treated us all so badly in the past and many of you still do. The least you deserve is a bit of hatred.

“Feminists are all victims”. Actually, feminism was invented because many women were and still are victims of a sexist society. Can we not forget this? It’s a simple fact and truth. Thinking that feminists are all victims is a malicious rumor, a transparent ploy, scaremongering backlash tactics to put women off wanting to be feminists. Of course, no woman of today wants to go out and shout about being downtrodden and constantly thwarted, especially if (thanks to feminism) today’s young women don’t feel weak or at a disadvantage. But all this is a decoy and a smokescreen, and has little to do with existing problems like glass ceilings and poor childcare. It’s great if women feel equal these days, but the sad fact is, in the big scheme of things, we’re still not.

“Feminism makes men feel guilty.” So? Who cares? Not we feminists. The least you can do is feel a little guilt. Be cool, be gracious and sympathetic, and try to change things along with feminists. The trouble with feminism is that we’re in the right; there’s no “debate” as to whether or not women have been discriminated against for centuries. We have legs to stand on, men don’t. What really irks me, and what is sinister and hateful, is how somehow men have made women feel guilty for being feminists. And the guilt trip we have has been called the Backlash.

Sorry, men, but you, not feminism, are the bad guys.

“Isn’t feminism a dead subject?” Who am I – a corpse? Try telling that to my friends and colleagues who are very much young, fit, alive and well. What men mean by this is “Haven’t you won/ got what you want?” Well yes and no, mainly no. Older feminists fought for what they thought was needed to redress the imbalance in society – equal pay, sex discrimination legislation etc. But a generation on, why don’t I, born in the 1980s, a seedling of feminism, feel equal? Something still isn’t quite right. I know this. Which is why feminism isn’t a dead subject. Right now, feminism and bright, enthusiastic feminists couldn’t be more needed to push for even greater change.

Finally, “What do women want now?” The only good question. Again, I can’t speak for other feminists, but I know what I want and I think it’s coming, except I’ll either be very old or dead when the plates have shifted enough for my liking. But I’d like to see the day when our daughters would say: “God, Mum, is it true that feminism was so unpopular? Were men really that bad when you brought the subject up?” And our sons? Our sons will ask themselves how they are going to manage. How they are going to cope with having children … and a career.

To Veil or Not to Veil

Egypt’s most famous university, Al-Azhar University, has banned female students from veiling their faces on its premises and affiliated educational establishments. However there has been demonstrations by women students in Cairo after a leading cleric backed moves to ban the niqab, a full women’s veils, in classrooms or dormitories. Surprised? So was I. Why are Muslim women opposed to de-veiling their existence? 

I always thought that Muslim women are coerced by their parents and society to remain in veil. Alas! I fail to realize that my beliefs are constructions of popular books like Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia (Jane Sasson). Personally, I’ve seen my classmates wearing a niqab, but they used to take it off in classrooms. But I never asked if they wore it out of compulsion for I presumed that they are.

This particular event is an eye opener. Women themselves want to wear the niqab, as they feel safe from prying eyes. It reminds me of the news an incident I read about in newspaper a year ago. A pro-niqab spam campaign that circulated by email last year:

A veil to protect or eyes will molest!

A translation from the Quran regarding the issue runs like this:

O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks all over their bodies.

Does this provide a clear explanation, or is it open to interpretation? I feel the latter applies.

According to the libertines of Egypt,  that niqab is not an Islamic religious requirement. It is a phenomenon that has started to spread from the Middle East and Taliban rule and has caught women’s fancy.

The explanation appears absolutely inadequate and simplistic. Are these libertines freeing women or do they feel women are ignorant nincompoops? The reason must be deeper ingrained in the belief structure of these women.

Feminist arguments against the veil is manifold. One, and the most well known, is the pop cultural feminist ideology which views veil as the sign of oppression of women by Islamic fundamentalists. A second group who are willing to hear to the reasons put forward by the women behind veils, however, are not willing to sanction it. They consider the veil to be a de-liberating factor of women in the patriarchal religion. However, many women consider it to be a liberating factor. According to these women a niqab is to:

give back women ultimate control of their own body. (Katherine Bullock, 180)

According to the belief of these women they are happy to be covered. To quote Naheed Mustafa, a 17 year old Canadian born Muslim  (who wrote an article My Body is My Own):

Women are not going to achieve equality with the right to bear their breasts in public, as some people would like to have you believe. That would only make us party to our own objectification. True equality will be had only when women don’t need to display themselves to get attention and won’t need to defend their decision to keep their bodies to themselves. 

So the question is to veil or not to veil? Who is correct and who is wrong? Frankly, isn’t it a matter of personal choice?

Death of Pregnant Women

70,000 women die in India due to unsafe abortions in India according to a report by Guttmacher Institute, Reuters. Human Rights Watch report shows that despite government aided maternal health programs, pregnant women are dying and most of them are in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) where 2300 women die during childbirth everyday. Here most women die of preventable causes. The state is among the most backward in India with abysmal health care systems.

In 2005, the last year for which international data is available, India’s maternal mortality ratio was 16 times that of Russia, 10 times that of China, and 4 times higher than in Brazil. Of every 70 Indian girls who reach reproductive age, one will eventually die because of pregnancy, childbirth, or unsafe abortion, compared to one in 7,300 in the developed world. More will suffer preventable injuries, infections, and disabilities, often serious and lasting a lifetime, due to failures in maternal care.

Report by Human Rights Watch identified four important reasons for the continuing high maternal mortality rate in Uttar Pradesh:

• barriers to emergency care,
• poor referral practices,
• gaps in continuity of care, and
• improper demands for payment as a condition for delivery of healthcare services.

They also found serious shortcomings in the tools used by authorities to monitor healthcare system performance, identify flaws, and intervene in time to make a difference. While accountability measures may seem dry or abstract, they literally can be a matter of life and death.

As detailed below, they believe that failures in two key areas of accountability are an important reason that many women and girls in states like Uttar Pradesh are needlessly dying or suffering serious harm during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period:

• Failures to gather the necessary information at the district level on where, when, and why deaths and injuries are occurring so that appropriate remedies can be devised; and
• Failures of grievance and redress mechanisms, including emergency response systems.

UP is not the only state. Other states where death of pregnant women has been high which are Punjab and Haryana. The report provided the study findings from the public health point of view, however the social point of view has not been dealt with. the real reason I feel is sex selective abortion in India.

Female infanticide is common in India. India is also the heartland of sex-selective abortion. Amniocentesis was introduced in 1974 to ascertain birth defects in a sample population, but was quickly appropriated by medical entrepreneurs. A spate of sex-selective abortions followed. Those women who undergo sex determination tests and abort on knowing that the foetus is female are actively taking a decision against equality and the right to life for girls. In many cases, of course, the women are not independent agents but merely victims of a dominant family ideology based on preference for male children.

However this anti-female bias is by no means limited to poor families. Much of the discrimination is to do with cultural beliefs and social norms. These norms themselves must be challenged if this practice is to stop.

Diagnostic teams with ultrasound scanners which detect the sex of a child advertise with catch lines such as spend 600 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later.

The implication is that by avoiding a girl, a family will avoid paying a large dowry on the marriage of her daughter. According to UNICEF, the problem is getting worse as scientific methods of detecting the sex of a baby and of performing abortions are improving.

These methods are becoming increasing available in rural areas of India, fuelling fears that the trend towards the abortion of female foetuses is on the increase.

Fashion Feminism

Be it Paris Fashion Week or Lakme Fashion Week, the shows are always lauded by the media for their services to humanity. Their motivations in dressing us seem more philanthropic than commercial. They want to help women in the competition for love and promotion.

You can’t get on, we are told, without knowing how to dress. This ability is regarded as a basic skill. Millions of us have acquired it, fearing what might happen if we don’t. Our high streets are catwalks, full of people working their looks. The British have finally worked out how to dress and it’s seen as a cause for national celebration. There are no countervailing forces – no one urging caution. The anti-fashion feminists have dropped their opposition. Their analysis of the dark side of dressing up has been mothballed. Everyone now asserts a woman’s right to self-adornment.
My mother says that in her youth, the woman of fashion was a pitiable figure. The books on my mother’s shelves  anatomised the precarious psychic position of the woman of fashion. Simone de Beauvoir baulked at describing her as victim of false consciousness. According to de Beauvoir, her fleeting sense of stability is founded on a misidentification with “the character she represents but is not”.

“It is this identification with something unreal, fixed, perfect . . . that gratifies her; she strives to identify herself with this figure and thus seem herself to be stabilized, justified in her splendor.”

It works for a while. Unfortunately, accidents will happen. Her dress might tear or, even worse, go out of vogue. She may see someone unworthy in a cheap rip-off of the same design. These disasters always strike; the moment of triumph never lasts.

This analysis reads like ancient history. When did we stop believing that fashion was bad for our psychic health? By my reckoning, the change came during the mid-1990s, when media implored their readers to stop fearing the consequences of submitting to our sartorial cravings. They portrayed that a dress obsession was psychically healthy, as long the garments in question were gorgeous “must-haves”.

These early fashion savants were ironists. Their paeans to Ghost dresses and sexy knickers read like a Loaded writer’s paeans to sexy women. The comic exaggeration makes it clear that the writer is identifying as someone who should know better.

However, pretty soon, the inverted commas fell away. Overwhelmed with longing for their must-haves, the savants were unable to sustain the pretence of knowingness. It wasn’t a joke; clothes really were more beneficial to women than feminism or modern medicine. So all self confessed puritans became busy finding their inner shallow fashion bimbos…

It was tricky at first – the language of fashion was quite complicated and difficult for the novice to decipher. Thank goodness for Sex and the City – a television primer on how to get date-ready in under ten hours. The program proposed fashion as the locus of female power. Natasha Walter agreed. A chapter in her book The New Feminism (1999) suggested that hot-pants were a route to “girl power”.

Savants such as Walter were desperate to prove that fashion was a suitable pursuit for women of their ilk, yet none has made a plausible case for taking them seriously. Their publications focus on making clothes matter more than politics or gardening. All cite the supposed taboo against intelligent women writing about clothes.

Personally I used to be one of those who believed looking good is important. But off late I have lost the knack of not looking good. So whenever I went to the parties with my husband in the well manicured officer’s mess ground, i deliberately  used to put on my most expensive sari and shoes and look my best even though carelessly so.

But today (I can’t say what prompted my change of mind) I feel differently. I realized that the smugness I exude when I think that my shoes are the best in the room isn’t confidence, but something brittle and transient. I reflected on the role that fashion had played in my own psychic downfall. Unarguably, my preoccupation with fashion had kept me away from more nourishing pursuits, or prevented me from enjoying them. In my Pilates class, I was too busy thinking about what everyone else was wearing to follow the teacher’s instructions. Most importantly, fashion marooned me in a world of absolutes wherein everything was gorgeous or vile. The woman of fashion is gorgeous, then vile to herself. She is always fleeing vileness, yet is never able to establish herself decisively in the camp of gorgeousness.

A truly thoughtful dresser would be able to rationalise the experience of appearing in an ill-judged ensemble.  Looking bad liberates us from the belief that we are, in some essential sense, un-presentable. Fashion is a pharmakon, remedy and poison to its adherents. We would do well not to underestimate its role in the present
epidemic of female misery.

Is Feminism Men’s Creation?

Do men participate and believe in women’s rights and freedom? Some believe so. With her recent book Men and Feminism, Shira Tarrant has penned an introductory tome explaining the relevance of feminism to men’s lives. The book documents how men’s promotion of women’s full citizenship can be found throughout history. Tarrant traces such support back as far as the philosophical work of Plato’s The Republic and Qasim Amin’s The Liberation of  Women. And while her application of the label “feminist” may be anachronistic, her point that male support of women’s subjugation has never been universal is well taken.

And yet the idea of a male feminist as either mythic or oxymoronic persists today. The reasoning seems to be that
since feminism is a struggle about women gaining rights, there is no legitimate role for men in that struggle.

Feminist theorists such as bell hooks, Alice Jardin, Aaronette M. White and Rubaiyat Hossain have written about the many ways feminism benefits men in addition to women. Those benefits include increased societal acceptance
of people who do not conform to rigid gender binaries, prioritizing fatherhood in the lives of children and decreasing the emotional stress of being the sole or primary financial provider for one’s family – which, in turn, can positively affect mental and physical health.

Today, an increasing number of feminist men are speaking for themselves about why and how they support gender equality. The Coexist Initiative (Kenya), Men for Change (Canada), Samyak (India) and the Men’s Resource Centre of Saskatoon work to move feminism forward around the globe. But the challenge of undoing institutionalized male
privilege is complicated, and because institutional privilege is largely invisible to those who have it, men must be  rigorous in their attempts at self-reflection.

From the White Ribbon Campaign (Canada) to Men Can Stop Rape (U.S.), to Program H (Brazil), anti-violence work is perhaps that most common form of male feminist activism. Perhaps the most oft-cited example of male feminism since its inception in 1991, on the second anniversary of The Montreal Massacre, the White Ribbon Campaign has become the largest male-led effort worldwide to educate boys and men about gender violence. In Canada, the  organization coordinates an annual national public awareness campaign that begins on the International Day for the
Eradication of Violence Against Women (November 26) and ends twelve days later on Canada’s National Day of
Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women (December 6) while supporting locally organized events throughout the year.

Physical and sexual violence has prompted many feminist men to lead violence prevention work around the world, particularly with other men. By modeling anti-sexist behavior, men teach each other to see the ways one’s gender is socially constructed and works to shape one’s thoughts, actions and sense of entitlement.

I believe that including boys and men in feminist advocacy does make a difference. But the task of enacting social change is at times fraught with complications, especially if men’s strategies to combat sexism do not involve  analyzing and disassembling their own power, empowering women, or both. For example, anti-violence programs run by men for men can unexpectedly reinforce men’s position of social authority and undermine the legitimacy of women’s voices by subtly conveying through the structure of the program that violence against women is  unacceptable only because another man says it is.

it must be understood that what women need to do is to shift the dialogue without changing the underlying power dynamic. Therefore, an ideal program model is one co-facilitated by men and women in order to model the type of egalitarian behavior one wishes to promote.

however, there is always the danger of invoking the privilege the men historically enjoy which may marginalize women’s voices in their own movement, inadvertently reinforcing patriarchal values. Ignoring these issues also prevents male feminists from acknowledging any benefits they receive from institutional sexism. Many women
have called men to task for enacting their male privilege, only to hear a defensive denial in response. This isn’t necessarily a response specific to men; it is a response that arises in all people with privilege.White anti-racist activists also fail, at times, to recognize their privilege, even when people of color point out ways in which they hold on to their power.

Overall, gender inequality is a historic inheritance that an increasing number of men are disavowing. Men’s involvement in the women’s rights movement can help create better, more equitable models for future generations of boys and girls. Full social, political and economic equality may still be a long way away, but the movement is more effective working in concert with male feminist allies.

Therefore one may contend that the issues of gender inequity, of structural sexism, of misogyny and the objectifying of women as commerce and property – these issues will not be deconstructed merely by women talking with girls. Men must take responsibility as well for this work. And we should not be commended for it. It is what  evolved, ethical, moral men should be expected to do

Am I a Feminist?

When somebody says, “I am a feminist,” and leaves it at that, what she (or he) means is anything but clear. Let us  try to make it clearer.  Feminism has three components:

First, feminists believe that men and women are inherently of equal worth.

Second, feminists seek to accommodate innate sexual difference (that is, biological differences between men and women) but to dismantle historically contingent, and thus inessential, differences of gender (defined as the meaning that society attaches to biological differences).

Third, feminists recognize that oppression based on gender is intertwined with other forms of oppression, such as those based on race or class.

Now can we answer if we are feminist or not?

Women in Politics

Position of women has always been compromised and they are still undergoing the same trauma. Even though the number of women in politics has steadily increased it is painstaking to see the ratio still being so flimsy. Even the history of politics provides no more solace. Most surprisingly the country which brags about women’s rights and gender equality had no President from the fairer sex. The condition is no better in many other developed countries.

The World Economic Forum has come forth with its latest Global Gender Gap Index. According to the results Norway comes in first place and Yemen comes in last, but there are some surprising results along the way. The Philippines ranks sixth, Sri Lanka 12th and Lesotho, Mozambique and Cuba roll in at 16th, 18th and 25th respectively–all ahead of the US, at 27th place, and Canada, at 31st. I am sure many were outraged. But the equality does not lie in providing amenities rather in the social status of women.

I personally believe US deserves its place on the 27th spot even though the US media may throw innumerable tantrum. Why? Simple reason: I do not believe in the bra burning feminism that US epitomizes. Yes, the one which said “I will not look pretty or behave properly”. Well this way women are creating the “other” which men are playing with.

Lets see what happens in other countries in Europe. Italy’s president was not happy to see “too pink” a cabinet. The Italian cabinet has four women. BBC posts the profiles of these new MPs of Italy.

 

The glamorous new Minister for Equal Opportunities, 32-year-old Mara Carfagna, is a former showgirl from one of Mr Berlusconi’s television networks. She also came sixth in the 1997 Miss Italy contest.

A comment has been posted by an Italian newspaper, La Repubblica regarding a female MP,Maria Stella Gelmini who is the Education Minister believes that she believes in “grey quota” rather than “pink quota” is as follows:

Now we shall have the opportunity to find out how much ‘grey matter’ she has.

On the other hand, Spain – who coined the term macho – are doing a lot to set forth gender equality. The cabinet has more female ministers than male and there is a new minister for gender equality. Hats off to the Spanish government. I hope their implementations match their strategies.

Gender equality for women is a long way to go. In politics, even more so for it is where men dominate.  I believe  women’s participation in politics mirrors the level of social development.

In conclusion I will will simply quote Virginia Woolf in her book Three Guineas :

…to help women to earn their livings in the professions is to help them to possess that weapon of independent opinion which is still their most powerful weapon. It is to help them to have a mind of their own and a will of their own with which to help you to prevent war.