Revolutions

 For a subject that concerns almost half of the world’s population, the notions of people about feminism are widely misunderstood, disrespected or not even expressed. May it be out of fear of controversial opinions, political and social rage, variety of opinions of people due to different economic and social status and a wide range of cultural backgrounds, but it happens nonetheless. This, however, does not make it less important, but only proves the rising need to address to it.

The concept of feminism can be traced back to the 19^th century, believed to have its roots in the western world, primarily Europe. The idea or the ‘first wave’ began with a simple and legal approach – a right to vote. It has to be noted that this movement lasted for about 72 years. After that, the set of ideologies emerged with a more structured format and more rights to fight for. From there, the movement travelled through ages and minds, various ethnicities and parts of the world where it evolved into what we call the modern interpretation of feminism. And that finally brings us to the date, about a century and a half later, where the struggles have nearly doubled.

                                    

The internet defines feminism as ‘the advocacy of women’s right on the grounds of equality of sexes.’ Now, in the 21^st century, where we are constitutionally starting to believe that every human has an equal fundamental status, you’d think that the idea of equality amongst genders is 100% rational and acceptable. Unfortunately, this is where the problem arises. There are still millions of people in this world who have a hard time accepting that every human should have an equal moral status regardless of his/her/their gender. In fact, there are a lot of people who think that women are not ‘oppressed enough’ to ‘make an issue out of it’. It’s a hard process, mentally, to accept that the years and years of traditions have constantly been uplifting a specific part of the society and lowering the other, because that’s how it has always been. The flaws are so deep rooted in our culture that they don’t even seem to be flaws anymore, but just a traditional way of living. What’s even more disturbing that the issues aren’t ‘good enough’ for us to spend time discussing about until something big happens. Like a rape of an infant, or depriving a woman of something as basic as her reproductive rights (abortion) by law. And by the time we reach the standards ‘good enough’ for our society to talk about it, the pillars of humanity and justice are shattered.

If we dig deeper into this, we find that a lot of flaws in the system actually exist because of what we assume feminism to be.  Many modern interpreters fail to understand the origin, the purpose and the thought that went into the initial idea of feminism. Feminism will never be a concept widely accepted, or an idea every human stands for until we learn to recognize what we really stand for. It’s often painful for people like me who are attempting to understand the values behind it to see such a revolutionary ideology being used very conveniently to assert dominance over the other genders. It is crucial to realize that feminism does not and never did promote the idea of revenge; neither does it give females the right to oppress anyone else because ‘we’ve been tormented enough, now we pay back.’  Revolutionary ideas are supposed to lead our society in the upward direction only, and if they don’t, we have plenty of examples where revolutions have ended in genocide and mass destruction. If we are seeking revenge, our society will inevitably collapse.

Yet another layer of complication can be added to the idea if we view our society on a larger scale, which somehow makes the entire process of treating every human equally much harder. (Don’t ask how, I’m still figuring it out.) Gender is not the only basis of oppression. Social groups with ‘queer’ sexual preferences, sexualities or different castes, religions and even complexion are as oppressed as women are, if not more. A simple question arises in my mind- if we can’t process the idea of treating someone who we believe is ‘normal’  equally and keep referring to females as the secondary sex, how are we ever going to grow up to a level of maturity where we accept what we have been calling ‘queer’ for the past couple centuries as human?

Darwin’s theory has convinced all of us to believe in the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ i.e. stronger animals assert dominance over weaker ones to live. Anyone who cannot defend himself won’t survive, and that’s how nature made us to be. We humans, as the incredibly intelligent creatures that we are, developed our own ideas of superiority even amongst ourselves. We have let this pseudo supremacy lead our lives for far too long and have led generations of humans-even children- to strongly believe in putting one social group above the other in a horrible, horrible hierarchy. Males above females, white above black, straight above gay, slaver above slave, all this while forgetting that this hierarchy has been nothing but a human above another human.

In this thunderstorm of double standards and social constructs, where each individual decides to stand strongly on his/her/their feet is very important. 

When I think of the imbalances caused in our society that deprive a certain social group of basic humanitarian rights and causes them to face struggle on every step of their lives, I never think of this as a battle between sexes. It is a battle between an oppressor and an oppressed, a battle between the weak and the strong, and most of all a human and another human. We shouldn’t be fighting for equal rights and opportunities for one gender as opposed to other, because we’ll never win. This fight can only be fought and won if we shape our coming generations to understand and respect another human being, not on account of his/her/their sex but for the fact that he/she/they are a human.

Egalitarianism is often hard to perceive and even harder to accept and apply in real life. Different forms of revolutions are just building blocks to this idea. And every person supporting any one of these movements is inevitably a part of the revolutionary journey towards egalitarianism for the entire mankind and hopefully, a better future for our species.

That leaves us with the ultimate question, in this thunderstorm of revolutions, where do you stand?

- Authoured by Soukhya Dalvi