Feminism today has become a very mainstream topic to discuss on. But time and again, we are just too ignorant to take it seriously. Nowadays, it is so easy to dismiss the need for feminism because the ‘big issues’ have been dealt with, but there is still so much discrimination against women out there.
And when I say ‘out there’ I do not mean all the way over there, where it can’t get you and you don’t need to worry about it. I mean right outside that home, office or tube window. You may be telling yourself that this still doesn’t concern you because only a minority of women are affected and only a minority of men are committing these horrific acts.
And in the case of physical or sexual abuse you’re right, it is a minority, but encroaching upon the basic human rights of women comes in many forms.
Many things have changed for women in the past 50 years – but much has remained the same and so much still needs to be done. Desperate times call for feminist measures and we are currently in the middle of great change, challenge and activism. In the early 1900’s, women were not known to have high rank jobs or work full time at all.
They were the ones who did all the cleaning, cooking and the ones who took care of the children. With feminism and women’s rights issues coming to mind, these women who know they can’t speak up because of the way women were treated and how they were looked upon never speak up.
Women really didn’t start making stands for themselves and each other. The reluctance that many women feel in saying that they are feminists is understandable; they feel alienated from the label because they feel it puts them in some sort of a ghetto, that it defines them as an activist or a socialist or a lesbian or somebody who is humourless or dowdy or celibate. The lack of understanding of feminism is exemplified in the stereotypes attached to it.
Our concern about relatively recent social, economic and cultural shifts is combined with frustration that long-standing battlegrounds are still live, and galled disbelief that we have to make the same arguments over and over again – such as pointing out that a rape survivor is never responsible in any way for a man deciding to rape her.
We are concerned about the pornification of culture, the mainstreaming of the sexploitation industry, the sexualisation of girls, and the sharp increase in cosmetic surgery including labioplasty, the commonness of abusive relationships among the young and the normalisation of the abuse, coercion, violation and control of young women by their boyfriends or inhuman behaviour of fathers towards their daughters.
We are concerned about ‘honour’ killing, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, including child marriage, rape as a weapon of war and a perk of peace and the infinite rape myths, victim-blaming and perpetrator excusal, which have resulted in 90 per cent of rapes going unreported.We are concerned about trafficking – which involves kidnapping, deception, violent physical and mental brutalisation, traumatisation and constant rape – and about the wider assumption that it is OK for a man to pay a woman for sex, as though he’s ordering a drive-through meal or renting a DVD.
Women are not objects to be bought, sold, used and abused by men. We are concerned about the media vilification and sabotage of those few women in power, the reality and resilience of the glass ceiling and women’s many unpaid, expected and unacknowledged labours away from the office. Women in families take care of children and elders because the men in families do not.
Feminism is coloured the red of women’s rage, women’s despair, women’s power, women’s brilliance and women’s ability to survive. Today’s feminism teaches women to see themselves as victims and victims cannot exist without a villain, in this instance – men.
In order for this thesis to have any kind of logic, feminists have made sweeping, inaccurate judgments about an entire demographic, based on nothing more than their gender. The question of gender is not very complicated: treat women as you would be treated, because we are people, human beings with minds and names, ideas, talents, real lives.
If you would not like to be raped, harassed, ignored, patronised, treated as stupid, judged by your age and appearance or used only for the cheap, nasty and repetitive labour you can give, don’t do that to others. Gender equality requires co-operation on all sides.
It is about giving women the recognition they deserve, appreciating them as equal members of society and giving them a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. In order for feminism to be truly powerful it needs to be accessible and engaging, to everyone, and at the moment it’s just not, not yet.
-Tanvi Shah
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