Women, the other sex

The world is engrossed in Obamas, bomb blasts and high profile people whose modus operandi is to make news. In fact I too was, comfortable in my cocoon of imaginary comfort, until I happened to see some disturbing news in the media. Some years ago, I thought of feminism as a waste of time and feminists as people who had nothing better to do in their life, people who had enough to eat and had no idea of hard work. But now I agree for a need for some strong voices to be raised against what is happening to a seemingly small number of women in a small part of a large world who are being apportioned their just share, as some would like to say.
The Taliban, once rulers of Afghanistan for 6 years, and dethroned later by the Northern Alliance and NATO forces, have now resurfaced in Pakistan with new dictums. The parents are being directed to marry their daughters to the militants. If the girls refused, they would be forcibly married off to militants. The Taliban have also closed about 400 schools depriving over 40,000 girls of their right to education. Education is the least of all their worries in a place where it is a sin to be an intellectual individual. They are not allowed to even speak of the 'rights' to live a happy and free life which all of us in India take for granted. "If a daughter is born to a person and he brings her up, gives her good education and trains her in the arts of life, I shall myself stand between him and hell-fire." says Kanz al-Ummal, an 8-volume set of Islamic hadith collection. Whatever a religion teaches, I don't argue with it because a religion is always personal, but as human beings we all, irrespective of our sexes are free to live happily, and that is the ultimate intention of all religions.
I, like many girls of my age, girls of India who belong to all religions, cannot swallow any rule which hinders my freedom of expression and living. I cannot imagine living in a world where I am deprived of even something as seemingly insignificant as enjoying a quiet walk or feeling the cool breeze on my face. I cannot imagine a world where someone tells me not to read books or go out alone, to marry someone I have never seen, to come near to death because I cannot go to a hospital and get treated by male doctors, cannot get treated at all because there are no women doctors. Here, I am not thinking of all these as a religious practice to be condemned but just as a human being thinks of another who wishes to live, facing and crossing all odds, yet never gets a chance to live because someone dictates them not to.
Afghanistan is a trampled country, and now Pakistan is en route to become one. My concern is that one day India too may become one. "Do you have both girls?" is the question my mother answered, and is still answering with some despair. I would shut my mouth and go away before I retorted something disrespectful. British writer George Orwell once said that while all animals are equal, some are more equal than others. In my country, men and women are equal, and men are more equal. "Take a rickshaw and throw it in the river" - a doctor in Agra advised the media reporters who went in disguise to throw the dead girl foetus in Yamuna. In Dholpur, a town in Rajasthan, a female medic
said the fields were pitted with the unmarked graves of unborn girls. She told the undercover couple that if their foetus was too big to easily be disposed of, they should pay a street sweeper to get rid of the body. I will not speak of estimates and ratio of men to women in India. I am not bothered if men do not get enough women to marry and increase their pedigree. I am just concerned about women as individuals who can hurt just like us. And I am concerned even about men who too are helpless to prevent it.
But here we are seen not as people who can think or feel, just as objects for ogling, groping and sex. My friend was one day reading ‘The Second Sex,’ one of the best known works of French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist literature. The front cover of the book has the picture of a nude woman’s back. A person in the bus asked her for the book. She gave it to him and he eagerly started searching the book, presumably thinking it was a book on eroticism. When he could not find any such pictures or matter in the book after frantic searching for a few minutes, he reluctantly gave it back to her saying his young daughter had asked for that book. A young girl asking for a book on feminism acclaimed to be read by intellectuals. Such is the thinking of the men of my country. They see flesh, they think of sex. And what is the use of being a feminist in such a country, only to be the butt of ridicule.
My country also has a section of society where the top priorities of women include modeling in a fashion show where the dresses showcased are not wearable by 99% of women. And the 1% who wear them don't travel in crowded public buses, don't have to put in a 10-hour grind in office, don’t have to worry about EMIs or about money running out before the 15th of every month. Why blame men when women who can make a difference too don’t bother and are busy living their privileged life. But as voiceless, unseen women, how does one escape the honour killings now found in every religion, the unconnected crimes committed in the name of religion?
When we live in a 'global village,' any problem in any part of the village is our problem, because once it enters the village, it will enter our home too. And that is the problem we should now be worrying about. The Taliban may or may not come to India, but their practices sure will in the form of moral policing. Moral policing can be tolerated up to a limit if it does not take away the freedom of a section of society, the weaker section. After all, no one dares to police the wealthier and the powerful. I am saying this because I told a girl I know of the shocking treatment of women by the Taliban and her immediate response was that the women must have done something to deserve it. What have thousands of women done to ‘deserve’ the treatment? We need not be feminists to degrade it, we just have to be human.
---Shwetha