I’m a woman and I get to choose

“Wars are fought over a woman’s body.”  That’s something our culture study professor explained to us sometime back. She was talking about gender issues, riots and war. The first casualty of man’s triumph in any combat is a woman’s body, she explained.

Last few months have brought to fore some disgusting realities of existence as a woman in my country. Protests, slogans, heated debates, lousy comments; all about what a woman can do and what she should not do. How it’s her fault that she gets groped, raped, molested. That a lot of these comments come from men, does not mean that some women are not agreeing with them.

Among the various casualties of these events, is the one that concerns the understanding of the ideology of feminism. The most common notion being that women who hate men are feminists, and men can never be feminists. Also that feminists are lesbians.

I’m a feminist. and I like to call myself an evolving feminist. I have a list of men I adore (father, brother, nephews, friends, and an extremely large list of celebrities). I confess, that I went through a phase where I hated men. I still do at times, but the only the ones who ill-treat or disrespect a woman. I’m still discovering feminism and it upsets me when men and women want to make it very clear that they are not ‘ feminists’ because of the misconceptions about this ideology.

My first lecture on feminism in undergrad is something I still remember very well. Our lecturer had informed us in advance about the classes on feminism. Excitement is an understatement for what I felt that week. I had been calling myself a feminist for quite some time. At that point it just meant disliking men.

But things were about to change and they did. My professor started the lecture by saying, “ Feminism is not about hating men.” Then she went on to explain the concept of gender and sex, society and biology, and finally patriarchy and stereotypes. This was followed by the waves and the different schools of feminism.

Over the years I’ve seen different kinds of people throw different brands of feminism at me. I’ve agreed, disagreed and dwelled over them. With all of these, every time I try to check my evolution with this philosophy I find that there is a strong constant.

Feminism to me stands for the right to have a choice. That empowerment comes from the fact that I have choice. The word choice here is so vast.

For centuries society has set certain norms for a woman. Dressing, behaviour, culture, future, expectations. Everything has a boundary. In my country being covered head-to-toe is the way a woman should dress. She should be submissive, meek, polite, tender and not opinionated. Her culture is that of bearing pain, suffering and silently. Her future is attached to marrying a man and providing at least one male heir. She is expected to listen and obey, put her family, her children and her husband before herself.

What feminism says is that a woman has a right  to choose. Decisions are not made for you, but you get to make them.

So when I bring in my feminist demands here, I say a woman can dress in anyway she wants to. Bare her shoulder, her back, reveal or not reveal anything. It’s her body and it’s her comfort. She has the choice of doing what she wants with it. She wants to be covered head-to-toe, great! She doesn’t want to be covered at all. It’s her decision.  

Behaviour and culture are the biggest stereotypes. I’ve personally had a lot of trouble with these two. I’ve been told on several occasions that I behave un-woman-like. Some have said it out of jest, some out of concern.

Keeping your hair short, or dressing in pants or jumping fences does not make you un-woman like. It’s your personality and you live it. Someday you’ll let your hair grow and decide you want to wear a dress instead of pants. And you could still jump fences.

The bit about suffering in silence is worrying as a lot of woman consider this to be a matter of pride. It all starts when you are a 13, experiencing excruciating cramps, bleeding for three days and you are not to ‘tell anyone’.

So we lie to our brothers and friends who are boys and our fathers (who know, but they act like they don’t). Let’s just say it, because that’s the only natural difference between men and women. There’s nothing to be ashamed about, it’s actually kind of cool. So take pride in it. If you have menstrual cramps say it, and the fact that you are continuing with regular life inspite of all that pain makes you a hero.

With this we teach ourselves not to suffer in silence. A man or woman strikes you, say it out aloud. They have no business of violating your space. You have the choice to say no to him or her. You can’t be claimed as mute property, because you have a choice.

Future. It’s such an important decision. Most women are told that it’s marriage and then children. Again she has a choice. She can study as much as she wants to. Fall in love and fall out of love as many times as her heart permits. She can work, earn and have an independent existence. She can marry whenever she wishes to, whoever she wishes to. Have children, stay at home our pursue a career. She has a choice.

There are no limits to her expectations. She does not have to confine herself to what’s considered right. She can go beyond all those boundaries and define her life or choose to stay within them.

This is what defines feminism and I see no shame in calling myself a feminist. Having the right to choose is a basic. That right should be respected. I’m not a victory claim, or a mute object serving the purpose of reproduction. I’m a human being with a choice and I refuse to let other humans fight wars over my body.

Dancing, For This and a Billion More Risings

“Good girls don’t dance in the middle of a road,” a wise elderly relative told me as I was pulled away from the tiny circle in which my cousins and I were dancing.

It was my brother’s wedding procession, called baraat. Bands, that specialise in music for this kind of a procession, were playing one peppy Bollywood favourite after another. I was the only girl dancing with the boys. My sister and other female cousins were conscious and a little concerned about their sarees. As for me, I had made my mother put extra pins in my saree so that I could dance freely.

The freedom was short lived. I had to fall in line with my sisters, bear disapproving looks from the elders and watch the boys have all the fun.

(Image via http://www.womenlobby.org)

My wise elderly relative would have had a shock of his life if he had been here yesterday (February 14, 2013). Right in the center of Bangalore city, where dancing is banned,  women were dancing, celebrating, rejoicing. They were rising, with a billion others all over the world, for a fearless future. There’s no way anyone was going  to pull me out this time.

Some of us there knew each other, some of us will never know each other. But we danced together. Thrusting, pouting, winking, encouraging, coordinating with each other, liberating each other.

There were men too. Some were rising and some were just curious bystanders. My friend came up with the brilliant idea of distributing pamphlets to the curious bystanders. We hope atleast some of them read why so many men and women were dancing, painting and singing, in this grand carnival against gender violence.

It was an inspiring moment. Irrespective of gender, people were out in the streets against rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, gender insensitivity, female infanticide and other such social evils.

The fearlessness was contagious. So was the feeling of liberation and empowerment. Each one of us were so different, yet we were there because we’ve all been ill-treated, disrespected or violated because some people think that’s the treatment a woman asks for every time she defies the boundaries imposed on her.

Why was I there?

When activism is your job, words like rising and people and movement start becoming redundant. Yet they are your dream. To see billions of people rising for one cause, starting a movement? Oh yes!

Not participating in one of  these weighs heavily on your conscious. If you have been calling yourself a feminist even before you understood what it meant, then not attending is not an option.

I enjoy certain privileges today because women fought for equality in the late 18 century. My pay is the same as my male colleagues. No one can stop me from casting a vote, or expressing an opinion on the basis of my gender. I live an independent life on my terms and take most of my decisions on my own.

Yet, society does not miss an opportunity to oppress me. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been touched or seen inappropriately. I have faced abuse. I’ve been judged for not following rules a woman should follow. And this is the story of so many women all over the world.

I don’t have children yet, but I have two adorable nieces and I want to give them the privilege of being fearless. I don’t want them to feel the need to carry a pepper spray or a weapon with them. They should not restrict their dreams because of a gender stereotype. They should have more choices than I have, more freedom than I have. That’s why I was rising.

I was rising for my mother and grandmother, for my nieces, my sister, for cousins and friends, women and girls I know and I don’t know. I was rising so that men and social systems that ill-treat women know that they are in minority. I was rising so that, next time a young girl wants to dance her heart out in the middle of a road, she can do so without being told it’s inappropriate.  

I will continue to rise till stigma that haunts women across the globe is wiped out. I will rise till the choice, opinion and rights of every woman has the strength of a billion. And I know, each time I rise I will have a billion rising with me.

What Happens When You Walk on Clouds

If there was some sort of a system of giving certain titles to the years of your life, I’d title my 26^th year as the Year of Awakening. It’s also because I began 26 in a not-so-sober-state. Post the drunken stupor everything is a rude shock.

A piece of advice before I elaborate the Awakening:

I know getting drunk on your birthday is really cool and all, but then it really isn’t. The person who got you into this world had to bear a lot of pain to push you out. She did not have the option of taking a tequila shot. She brought you in sober, and the doctor gave you one hard smack to make sure you were also sober. So being sober on the day you were born is a natural choice. Stick to it and you won’t have life smacking you back to sobriety. That’s the end of my advice.

When I think of my 26^th year so far, I see a caricatured version of myself with a crooked tiara on her head. Her eyes are shut because she is smiling ear to ear and she is walking on clouds. Below these clouds are people looking at her, clapping, holding their stomachs and laughing. They don’t see the clouds, they just see me with my eyes shut, smiling and walking on what I think are clouds. When I woke up I saw the same.

It’s tragic and comic. I woke up when the clouds decided that I was to heavy to walk on them. They didn’t tell me that they were going to give-away just like that. They did, and I fell with a thud on the marble floor of my house. That was the first why in the string of whys I have been asking since then.

"Why did the clouds give away, they could have told me I, I would have moved?" 

The now awakened part of me said, “Sweetheart, there were no clouds. You were high on something, it was this very marble floor maybe you got confused with the colours.”

"Why were all those people laughing at me? I knew some of them, they could have told me that I was not walking on clouds."

Awakened me said, “Honey, it’s rare to find an idiot who thinks she is walking on clouds. Everyone likes a good laugh, so they built more clouds for you and laughed even harder.”

“No one’s ever going to tell you the truth. They should, but they won’t, it’s for you to figure out. And you will once you fall flat on the marble floor. What you figure out is always going to be wrong according to someone else. You’ll be told that you were walking with your eyes shut. And that’s not entirely inaccurate. But now that your eyes are not shut anymore you can stop serving yourself up as entertainment to others.”

That was enough of a lecture to put an awake person to sleep, but it worked the other way round for me. So Awakened me and groggy me got together, we sighed and said the last ‘why’.

"Why me?" 

We could spend the rest of the 26^th year looking for an answer to this question. Or just say, F*** this S*** and figure out a way of building more reliable clouds to walk on. For starters, let’s lose some weight.

Awakened me nods, and votes for option two. So do aye!