feminist...am i one?

Probably I am a feminist afterall but of a different kind. I don't look like them... Maybe I just don't want to put myself in a slot. But I believe all women are feminists in some way. All of them, wherever they are, or whoever they are, aspire for equality and rights. It is just that culture and faith, in some cases, takes precedence. Or they are just conditioned. Freedom is every man or women’s dream.
I remember having an argument with a Muslim friend about the purdah system, about women wearing the hijab. I just could not get it at that time when he said what can one do if women want to don the hijab themselves. I sort of understand that now. First, it is conditioning and second, it is conditioning. I guess feminism goes far beyond bra-burning, lesbianism and equal rights or pay for women.
It is the hijacking of the feminist movement by the elite women that worries me. They are the pretty ones, the powerful ones, who don Gucci sunglasses and carry Louis Vuitton bags, they clamor for glamour and their moments in print or on television. It is not women’s liberation or it is not women’s rights that matters to them. The movement has become an exclusionist force, a force that has zero impact on millions of women living in poverty or shame.
What have they done for the sex workers, who still live in shanties and contract AIDS because their customers would not wear condoms? What about the women in rural areas, who have to walk miles to get a pitcher of water? What about child marriages? What about dowry deaths? What about female infanticide that has taken such proportions that it is now feared that women will disappear from some communities? What about rape? What about domestic violence, outside and inside of marriage? What about incest? What about child molestation?
The feminist movement started for all the right reasons, but has degenerated into a restrictive movement obsessed with making non-issues national stories. And they do become, lapped by an ever-biased media that sustains itself on sensationalism. I remember quite a few incidents. And I am strictly talking about India here, though from my own perceptions of the U.S. media, it fares no better. The Miss Universe pageant when it was held in Bangalore, India, invited the ire of these feminists, who then marched and rallied and spoke on television. They objected to the commodification of women, threatened to stage dharnas if the swim-wear round was not taken off from the show. Then came the controversial video where the singer’s g-strings are seen. They march again and disrupt a show saying that the singer was promoting nudity and it would lead to rapes and objectification of women. Now, these are events, not processes. And being in the media for a short time has taught me that events make the headlines and processes…well who cares for them.
AIDS is big, and even bigger is tuberculosis, but nobody frets after those. Because they are not action-oriented news. In fact these are not news. What’s topical about them? These are routine affairs.
When I watched the clips in class the other day, I was intrigued. Sexual liberation of women is good and desired but is that all? Voting rights are needed, but is that an end in itself?
During my research for a paper that I wrote on media’s coverage of domestic violence in India, I came across very interesting clips and women too. Well-known women journalists said they did not chose to write about women’s issues because they were afraid of being branded as feminists. These are powerful women, some are editors of national dailies, yet they would not take up these matters and they would fear the branding. Women’s issues have become non-issues and that’s where the danger comes from. And on top of it, the fear about being branded. Why is feminism looked down upon?
I tried thinking about the term itself. And the automatic associations took it to different dimensions. The word is now related with man-haters, lesbians and manly women, who wear loose clothes, wear their hair short and rant about men. Also, it has come to mean a profession of women, who have been rejected by men and are thus against all men and have taken up the cause of women out of bitterness, not out of love for womankind or passion for fighting for women’s rights.
When women are starving or dying slowly, still selling their bodies, they don’t have time to think about equal opportunities, or feminism. The feminist movement has to restructure itself to focus on core issues that affect women’s living status and not just their representation.
Women journalists must make an effort to address these issues. Most cases of domestic violence are relegated to briefs columns or in obscure city crime sections. The society and media have come to treat these as routine events and not social evils. A dowry death makes headlines but seldom do columns or analysis follow the publication. The media has failed the women.
I come from a traditional patriarchical society, a society that venerates male hegemony. And if we don’t fight, no one else will. We have to redefine feminism and give voice to the vloiceless. We have to reform the media by removing its obsession with TOPICAL and make it relevant to the society. We have a lot to do.