It is the 21st century. All women have the right to vote and 47% of the
global workforce today constitutes women. This has led to a widespread
misconception that the fight against patriarchy has been won and the
world today should be taught about humanism rather than feminism.
While the aforementioned statistics are encouraging, they don’t indicate
in any way whatsoever that men and women are equal in society. The
reason why women today continue to be oppressed is the widespread
ignorance of men and women today, pressing issues like domestic
violence, birth control, gender pay gap and unnecessary sexualization of
young girls aren’t viewed as seriously as they should be. Men don’t
understand how badly these issues affect the physical and mental health
of a woman and women today have agreed to the preposterous ideals set
by a sexist society and continue to suffer in silence at the hands of male
predators. Careful scrutinization of today's society will make it obvious
that feminism is relevant and a necessary lens through which every man
and women should critique and observe the world at large.
The widespread perception of feminism as an ideology is that it’s a
woman’s issue, a fight that is only fought by placard holders and bra
burners – but what people tend to often forget or ignore is the fight to be
fought by the young children and the entirety of a new generation that is
being socialised into a patriarchal society. From their childhood, women
are forced into regressive ideologies. They are taught that their bodies
are sexual entities which must be hidden from the male gaze. This is
very obviously visible in the outright abhorrent sexualization of young
girls who are reprimanded and even sent home from school for showing
pre-pubescent shoulders and knee caps. Young boys aren’t taught to
respect women and avert their gaze, but young girls are taught to fear
that gaze and cover themselves. The cause for this issue can be mostly
attributed to mass media and the omnipresence of ideas relayed by it.
Girls as young as nine years old who are yet to finish primary school
strive to achieve what the media tells them is the definition of - ‘beauty’
and look at plastic surgery and reconstructive surgery as the possible
avenue to do so. These young and impressionable minds grow to believe
that their social standing is determined by the way they look and not by
their intellectual worth or hard work.
In a world where women feel the need to be physically beautiful
and believe that their worth is determined by this perception of what's
beautiful and what's not – we need feminism.
One of the main arguments presented by the anti-feminist community is
the hardships faced by men and the number of men who face the same
issues mentioned above. How today's law enforcement fails to
acknowledge the number of men facing domestic abuse and rape and
how these men are being snubbed and ignored by the international
community just because they are lower in number, but what these people
fail to understand is that these issues are a direct result of a patriarchal
society and upbringing. Sexist education and societies teach us from an
impressionable age that men must be strong and the assertive
breadwinners of any self-respecting household. This directly translates
to what people are talking about today. This definition of manhood or
masculinity means that the 1,19,000 who report abuse are told to put up
with it, which obviously makes the situation far more hazardous and
worse for these victims. When a man is in a relationship that is abusive,
he has very few avenues of refuge or escape from the situation he’s in.
This doesn’t mean that feminism has gone too far and we need to
empower men now, this means that this social structure needs to be
broken. We need to understand that men and women are equally capable
of being victimized and the only way to change such a deeply rooted
convention is through feministic ideals and anti-sexist upbringing.
Which is why the battle of feminists to dismantle the foundation holding
our society today isn’t just female issue, but an issue that affects
everyone irrespective of gender.
In a world where men are trapped by patriarchal ideals and
definitions of what being a man means, we need feminism.
The issue of gender pay gap is often overlooked by governments all over
the globe and people have started to accept this established convention
that a woman, in general, will be paid less than a man for doing the same
job with the same quality. It is contained within the Equal remuneration
act of 1976, as we supposedly live in an age where such quandaries are
unheard of. However, the pay gap is still a major issue in not only India
but the rest of the globe at large, as demonstrated by the popular Carrie
Gracie V/S BBC dispute where the network’s China editor threw her job
away to set a benchmark and protest unequal pay. This disparity
shouldn't be viewed as a mere monetary disparity, it is an outright
limitation on female freedom. Ladies who undeservingly earn less than
men are not only fighting to pay their bills, they are additionally
compelled to rely on someone else, normally a man, as their own salary
won't uphold them or their family and allow them to maintain the
standard of life their male counterparts enjoy. This issue can be directly
attributed to the number of female housewives we see today. The
dependency issues created by the vast gender pay gap forces a woman to
stay home and take care of the family when she would much rather be
working, as that's what the sexist employment structure and vast pay
disparity dictate.
In a world where the work done by a man is valued a rewarded
more than the work done by a woman, we need feminism.
The reproductive rights of women have been undermined since time
immemorial. Little or no emphasis is given to this issue all over the
globe and the so-called ‘first-world’ economically advanced countries
are no better, despite their resources. Contraceptives aren't included in
many healthcare programs all over the globe and the justification given
to this is that free and easy access to contraception would encourage pre-
marital sexual relationships. However, this is never the case. Quite the
contrary, the actual impact of revoking contraception would mean ladies
would have no limited or no access to smear and HIV tests, implying
that women would stand a 60% higher danger of being diagnosed with
cervical cancer (as per the Women's Health Magazine, 2016) and be at a
far more serious danger of contracting HIV and AIDS. Likewise, ladies
have very limited access to pre-birth care, which directly translates to a
31% increased danger of untimely and low-weight births, and an
increase in maternal deaths.
In a world where a predominantly elitist society is collectively
oppressing women and their basic reproductive rights, we need
feminism.
School is the place where a child first learns to meet people – makes
his/her first friends. Places like the school playground are the place
where a girl learns to socialize and interact with the opposite gender and
things that happen here carry a lifelong impact in every child’s life.
Despite this huge impact, we see our community joke about how a boy
pushes over or punches a girl when he has a crush on her. These
seemingly harmless acts are the very reason why women grow up to
accept male oppressors with open arms as if its convention. I am in no
way comparing these boys to sexual harassers or saying that this
playground banter is a sexual assault. But when we look at the bigger
picture, we are encouraging a culture where a woman is expected to
accept controlling behaviour and violence from a man and welcome
them as loving acts. They are taught to believe that’s how men display
their affection. It is this ‘boys will be boys’ attitude that forces millions
of women into abusive and vulnerable positions and the same men
walking away scot-free after doing so.
In a world where boys are allowed to behave violently and girls are
taught to submit to it – we need feminism.
The idea that woman's rights are only a women's issue, an issue for irate,
man-despising ladies should be annulled. Women's liberation is a battle
for the disturbed men and sexualised young ladies, a battle for ladies
constrained into dependence through unreasonable paychecks, a battle
for all. For the coloured, for LGBTQ+ and every other minority. In
today's world, where world-famous athletes are being sexually assaulted
under the pretence of receiving treatment, where the president of a state
dares to publicly say that it is okay to “grab [women] by the pussy”,
where rapists are shown mercy and reprimanded insufficiently to
supposedly keep their reputation intact - We still need feminism.
-Rohith Harikrishnan
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