Back when I was younger, I used to come across very overt forms of sexism very frequently. Vulgar comments were often followed by more sexism with the number of bystanders to the issue simply growing. I was in school, and left utterly disgusted. As I fought against the rampant misogyny surrounding me at the tender age of fourteen, my stand on the issue only gave me the title of the “angry young woman,” one I wasn’t too keen about.
Quite often, when a boy bumped into me, he would turn around and say, “Forgive me. Please don’t file a case of sexual harassment against me.” Funny, much? Peals of laughter would follow and I would know not what to do with the anger inside except to go home and cry to my mother. Teachers would, on a daily basis tell me to control my anger, drink some water maybe. And the boys would come over and advise me to do meditation. “Deep breathing Aadya, you really need it.” I tell you, those were the worst days of my life - the very people whose behavior reeked of the patriarchal culture that had shaped their lives were getting the better of me, were always getting away while I was left behind not knowing what to do with my emotions that soon culminated into a very stressful period of anxiety.
And it felt wrong, because everybody else in the classroom would believe everything the boy I fought against was saying. Who was listening to me? Why was I made out to be the liar? The attention-seeker? The one with the anger issues? I hated being treated as an atomic bomb that could blow up at the slightest hint of misogyny or sexism. That was my trigger. That is what people used, to play with me. Except, I don’t remember having ever enjoyed such games.
The mockery of my inherent nature as an individual scarred me, the dig at my anger and stand on the issue, hidden by their apparent fear of me humiliated me further.
Though, you could say that I needn’t fret so much. It’s not like I’m the only one facing these “difficulties,” yes? We women have so much in common.
There have been many men coming out and saying that they are now afraid of even standing next to a woman. “I wonder what case she’ll suddenly file against me.” The whole, “we need to think twice about touching a woman now, what a pain,” sounds very wrong to me. Why would you not think twice about invading a random person’s personal space? Once again, this is merely a conditioned response, an aversion to change, contempt towards the unexpected. We have been living in a world that silences its women for too long that we cannot fathom the existence of a woman who can speak. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. This isn’t ok. This is a coward’s response to another person’s courage. And it needs to stop.
I agree that there are women who have abused the feminism tag by accusing men falsely and physically assaulting them for absolutely no reason at all. (Though it would be fair to say that physical assault is never, ever justified). However, to the men who get stung by a feminist not specifying, “not all men,” as if that is somehow an argument against the feminist agenda, I don’t understand why the generalization of such cases is okay. Some women claiming to be feminists and actually practicing misandry does not give you the right to brand all feminists as fake and raise false alarms.
“Feminism is mass hysteria” is a ridiculous “theory” that I came across a few days ago. My inability to communicate the factual incorrectness and sheer stupidity of that particular “argument” can be very well attributed to the fact that the person in question was unwilling to listen to me because I had already earned myself the title of a “somebody who doesn’t listen, and cannot be made to understand.” Not only that, some of them found my anger itself so amusing that they termed it an “eruption” and were simply waiting for me to “burst” so they could make fun of me. Forget a discussion on feminism, sometimes I can’t even get people to have a good conversation with me, which is highly disappointing.
Mass hysteria you see is a “phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats whether real or imaginary through rumors and fear.” And I am therefore flabbergasted that an individual associated feminism with a fight against something illusory and fake.
I have no words, but the sincere hope that we all find in feminism the true beauty in equality, rather than be judgemental of those in passionate pursuit of it.
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