Let me be all hush-hush while I use it. If someone hears me using it, who knows the next thing they do is hang me...
finally the much debated, hated, and contemplated a word appears in my blog...F E M I N I S M !
Watched Paromita Vohra's documentary "unlimited girls", good I would say for the issues that it raises.
Is feminism an ideology for ugly women?
Isn't being a woman reason enough to be a feminist?
Do we have to know the history and everything that went into getting FEMINISM the platform where it stands today?
Agreed one needs to know, but perhaps one cannot dismiss somebody just because s/he hasn't read the literature on feminism.
Whatever!
It's surprising how somebody in her interview said that she is afraid to have freedom, cause at the end of the day it leaves her tired of the social structure.
Isn't being a woman reason enough to be a feminist?
Do we have to know the history and everything that went into getting FEMINISM the platform where it stands today?
Agreed one needs to know, but perhaps one cannot dismiss somebody just because s/he hasn't read the literature on feminism.
Whatever!
It's surprising how somebody in her interview said that she is afraid to have freedom, cause at the end of the day it leaves her tired of the social structure.
Is it enough for women like me and anybody reading this that Feminism today functions perfectly well just in our lives?
Do not we need to push it further so that it reaches to lives of all women? Shall we happily wrap up our mouths and mumble things that only we can hear, and be happy and 'thankful' of the situation we are in today? Is it enough to say that it is necessary that women be emancipated and let others fight for the cause? And in the end of it all say something like
"these Feminists are here to create Chaos !"
Sigh! lastly do we accept any and everything in the name of a culture that teaches us to be filth and nothing more?
do we
do we
do we!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"these Feminists are here to create Chaos !"
Sigh! lastly do we accept any and everything in the name of a culture that teaches us to be filth and nothing more?
do we
do we
do we!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
20 comments:
I can see Rebel in you.
I really appreciate these thoughts.. Feeling good, women are thinking about all these.. But, do they actually get to live what they really want???
most times I get to do what I want...though that does not negate the fact I don't do lots of other stuff which I want to. But change is gradual
The big question is that what have those who have seemingly and wishfully realised the false non-filth 'label' have done once they have been able to 'break the mould', so to speak? The world in which these cries resonate and reverberate is the world where the space is. At the end of it all, every procreating being is fighting for an identity and that's where all these movements and isms stop. Smoking a cigarette does not make a woman in exactly the same way that not smoking one does. The relaxed laid back chats on the so called isms are just reiterations of worn out cliches and invocations of overpolished stereotypes of this so called movement.
@Anonymous - I think I can categorize you now after having read this comment on yours. You belong to one of those groups - who are scared to call themselves MCPs but are neither so liberal to be labeled feminists. I would for my sanity bracket you in the MCP ditch.
About cliches and stereotypes - I think in a way you are right...but then 'the movement' as you call it - is in a process to first identity these stereotypes and showing the facade of it all in the public eye before doing away with it altogether.
I think my comment came out equally convoluted as the Anonymous person's comments...I hope ppl get the intended message
I got your message Ms. Wasted... and just for the sake of pissing you off, I'm gonna say "I think these Feminists are ACTUALLY here to create Chaos!"
Ouccchh ! I just felt the red hot branding iron on my forehead ..... and it reads "MCP". :P
Well you just furthered my case by the 'categorizing' effort when, in fact, you were again so hopelessly illustrating your ignorance. Don't we all know the withered arrow in every so called 'feminist' that the term MCP is? You sum up all those who think they are awakened, or like to think they are enlightened, to the atrocities on the female when, in fact, it is no more than a empty rage that only fuels self-righteousness. You know those I-don't-know-anything-you-are-an-MCP types. That's all there is to this so called 'movement'. 'Categorise' and 'MCP', the golden weapon of every self-proclaimed awakened on. Women beaten up on TV but there is no leaving the coffee table discussions on how condemnable it was.
The Bright one, you are a little misguided my brother/sister. They are not here to create chaos. They are here to somehow explain their own inadequacies in improving anything and paint a self-righteous identity on their otherwise ignorant selves.
Isn't it a little ironic that those who are supposed to get the message are always impulsive? Hence the comment I suppose.
good lord save us from such angry and ready to point fingers at others men...Amen!
Keyexpressions to be noticed:
Lord
Save us
Angry (men)
Ready-to-point-fingers-at-others
Men
:) Well, to begin with, I don't remember mentioning me being a man or a woman. Please correct me if that's not the case. I think now your doubts of being unbiased, 'open-minded' etc. will go away. Ask yourself if these words are what serve your whole brand of feminism and frankly, my dear, if you are not ready to be pointed at you should consider retirement from this brand of yours.
Oh god save me again...you really are very boring. Get a life...please will you?
Sure. Save you? Where did all the fire go? Boring? I will say flustering. I am sure you will go far with your so very interesting, innovative, understanding, accomodating and 'OOTB' way of life. Hell, I wish I had saved it for a better person at discussing and debating.
Get a life? I would say just go through your kind of posts again. 25 random things is such a life. Very alive.
Now you can go back to the puny group of friends that you have and invite them to see how you were hounded by a biased, narrow-minded MCP who didn't have a point of view. MEN! Right!
Rejoice, Relax, Return to your dias.
Are you someone I know. Whoever, you be...let me give you something...talk about me and me only in your attacks don't bend so low in your desire to win an argument that you include my friends and call them names.
Mud slinging on my friends? that is some recourse you have taken really.
It is so mesmerising how you always see the point to something unmistakenly. Calling names? I don't see anything validating that. I think this interaction has been so unflattering and 'ode'istic to your thought that you have really lost it. I understand all everyone has ever done, on your blog, and I don't have to know you to see that, is sing praises. I understand, therefore, why you are so unsettled.
Relax, as I said. Comfort is just a comment away on someone's blog. You will be 'popular' again.
Non-'odeistic'. My bad.
hahah...
actually, you are right I am shying away from a real debate...though that has to do with more of my being really pre occupied with other things and also because truly the post you are so bent about discussing was written by me some two to three years back after a heated 'fight' with some of my colleagues and prof. and some of the passion with which I wrote some of the things there has been diluted.
Though about the real thought and idea about feminism i am really passionate still but little differently.
Also, I am still, after 5 years of trying to understand the various layers of the particular ism, only beginning to give a thought to coming up with a very apt argument to all those people like you who just Hate everyone who talks about isms and back your hatred with the very same argument "that all of those who talk about these isms just talk and do nothing." I do not know why is it so wrong to talk about it. A lot of these changes that many of us just take for granted in the society are partly (even if 1%) result of such talks and discussions. I do not overlook the fact that Action is necessary and more for these changes.
Sometimes, I am very sad to see that many like you argue (and I do not mean it in any derogatory sense)just because you do not believe in it equally passionately. May be I do it too for other things that I do not feel passionate about.
The crux of all your allegations against me and others of my kind, comes to -
1. that it is a little or rather completely ignorant an argument.
2. My argument is only applicable to the people of my class. So, the class politics.
3. It is all mere talk without really doing much for other women.
Those and others points which perhaps I am overlooking right now.
To tell you a fact, I have come across the exact same arguments, questioning, and anger every time I have discussed this topic with someone. And may be I do not have a satisfactory answer to that and I somewhat agree to the argument you make about class.
To all this and others who always have a huge bunch of angry words to the feministic arguments, I would only request as a very amateur believer of the same to just try and stop for a minute and see the very little and may be insignificant changes for you guys that have happened in India rural and urban. We cannot just deny the fact there has been change and it is because of the so called movement, how much ever banal you make the whole thing seem.
About doing stuff...I think and choose to believe in the goodness about humanity that each one of us who believes in something will do something big or small in her/his means to help the cause. I really do not see the point in asking everyone to give me a list of actionable things s/he has done really for the cause.
Won't world be the perfect place if we all were Gandhi's, Marx's., & Teresa's of the world? We all are trying to be something/someone on those lines...if we do not really believe this then the whole point of the belief in the humanitarian world goes down the drain.
May be I was incoherent, dis-satisfactory, and not laborious in my explanations, but just request you to read it in a relaxed and unbiased mind. If you are still not convinced please accept the offer of discussing it over chat.
I must say it is a welcome break from seeing all the golden words in your counter comments so far.
I think you can now realise everyone has the first tendency to be impulsive about any thing that comes his/her way. We, as humans, please ourselves in thinking that we are the only species capable of reason. The capacity for instincts and impulsive behaviour, however, has its roots so far in the evolution chain that we treat everything that we face with it. I would hope that if you ever come across someone who actually fits the bill of the 'oppressor', that includes me if you wish that, you will be more forthcoming and accomodating in facing him/her as his/her deep rooted beliefs of imbalance are overladen with generations of concrete. If you can get so unsettled defending a new found ideology whose convictions and directions are still questionable then sheer life and intensity of preference of gender, and things like religion and sexuality, for example, are more than enough for someone to defend them without actual reason and logic. My basic argument, too, stems from this tendency. This so called movement, too, is taking the same turns down the roads of its childhood and adolescence. It is, too, becoming an encashable product that is thrown around for personal gains. I am sure strayed examples like these are not scarce for you to find. One thing that is lacking everywhere is introspection. I see from your post that you were much greener when you wrote it and were brimming with too many thoughts poured into you. I also notice that you say it has diluted over the years. It would be really great if you took it a step further, see and question every single thing that you were fed upon. I am sure that's how you came to subscribe to what you defend today in the first place.
I don't know if I should term it as fortunate or unfortunate that you don't see what I am hinting at in my posts. One way to look it is that you still carry the innocence of what you came to believe in and haven't come to see the shallowness that hounds it. The other would be to say that in your busy life and company you didn't get the chance to question the very thing that taught you the skill of questioning and have merely replaced the practice of following a new 'faith' instead of the old one. You can see how difficult it is to question everything that we come to believe be it gender, religion or sexuality. It is the same with new ones or the old ones. The same crisis is haunting all of them the same; traditional views or the new found 'revolutionary' ones. I think everytime most of the prescription revolutionaries say they are supportive of, let's say, feminism or homosexuality, it is more of the fear of not being accepted otherwise; the fear of being called an 'MCP' or a 'homophobe', which doesn't allow smooth movement in the much wanted 'hep' circles. It is ironic how these promised equalisers have just taken the positions of earlier establishments. The arguments are fast taking the same colour, though with the ceremonial guise of liberal thought.
I don't have a problem with 'ism's as you judged. I do see a problem when one replaces the other and starts taking a similar shape that it once shunned. It is the same. The difference is that the erstwhile doses of a way of life came from within blood families and the new ones are coming from constructed ones. It is as difficult to enter the new ones with a different viewpoint as was to the old ones. The curses of yesteryears have been replaced with new ones. An MCP or a homophobe may not be so severe in all circles, in India as compared to the west, but they are fast extending on the roads of a 'faggot', for example.
Passion is a very dangerous phenomenon as, I hope, you can see around yourself. It just takes a minor deflection to send the traveller way around the goal instead of to it. It is blinded passion acquired over the ages that is holding what you are trying to fight here. I don't think one should rely on the passion alone and leave all to it.
It is not what has been done that is disconcerting. It is what some 'ism' begins to define itself by. It is like the products you put on your face and it is as, and more, farcical as thinking that those products are the person, only the farce of a misguided passion does not come off when you go to bed. It can make you kill in its name.
I don't know how to address your realisation of my 'allegations' 'against' you. I think you, if you can find time, can go back to reading what I wrote and we can talk about it again.
It really intrigues me as to what the feminist argument's really come to as the changes that I see are a bunch of women being beaten publically in a most urban of the settings and the whole support, right from the intellectual media house discussions to 'ground activists', has merely made a hot cake out of it. The same teams that speak of a change in a studio thought it better to film the 'story' rather than attempt to stop it. I wonder how it does not send shivers down the passion of a subscriber of the faith, how it does not make him/her realise that all the avenues of established ideology are actually farcical and no good on ground.
I think what you choose to believe, profess and devote your passion to defines your standing as much, if not more, as do your real actions on ground. It is not a question of testifying in front of someone too as when you lie in your bed at the end of the day all make up comes, or should come, off. It is your conscience that is the best judge and it is the unquestioned passion, for anything or anyone, that clouds it.
Let's see where it goes from here.
Of the whole thing...I will just comment of two of the points you make.
I agree to the fact you are trying to make in the second last para
"It really intrigues me as to what the feminist argument's really come to as the changes that I see are a bunch of women being beaten publically in a most urban of the settings and the whole support, right from the intellectual media house discussions to 'ground activists', has merely made a hot cake out of it. The same teams that speak of a change in a studio thought it better to film the 'story' rather than attempt to stop it. I wonder how it does not send shivers down the passion of a subscriber of the faith, how it does not make him/her realise that all the avenues of established ideology are actually farcical and no good on ground."
And would only say that yes, that part being true...does not mean that we stop beleiving in something. May be then I do not follow the movement the way it is shaping up. But I do inherently believe in certain basic concepts of the same. I have my own belief and the way it shapes my feminism for me and the world around me. Let me make it very clear, I am not here to make the world a better place perhaps, but to make it better for me...as you say so that I can sleep with a cleaner conscience every night. For this very selfish sake, I choose to believe in giving independence and more to women than snatching it away from them.
Second, I find your argument very immature and biased here - "I think everytime most of the prescription revolutionaries say they are supportive of, let's say, feminism or homosexuality, it is more of the fear of not being accepted otherwise; the fear of being called an 'MCP' or a 'homophobe', which doesn't allow smooth movement in the much wanted 'hep' circles. It is ironic how these promised equalisers have just taken the positions of earlier establishments. The arguments are fast taking the same colour, though with the ceremonial guise of liberal thought."
For me as a person, before coming to an assumption on the wrong, I prefer giving them a chance to prove them so. It is very clear now that you has assumed me to be one of the same types. I am offended. You might say no to that but it has been a very clear unter-tone of your messages. I am sure there are people in the same category but you should not assume this aabout anyone who claims to an ism.
By the way, I would be really interested in knowing more about you than the name Annonymous. I am sure with such clear and loud thoughts you do not need to mask to hide your identity
Yes. We do have to stop believing in something that is not yielding. We have to see what an honest personal commitment to a name or 'ism' is bringing about. We do have to redefine it and redirect it, not for anyone else but for ourselves. How can I believe in something that does not yield in the most horrible of situations? I have to stop and think because, possibly, the ground on which I stood my beliefs has moved from beneath me and it is not what was promised or preached, in voice or in action.
There is no such thing as my feminism or your feminism. The term is passed around based on the defining and deciding strata of the society. I would much rather not use that term for my beliefs unless I see it come in harmony with them, or until I am in a position to redefine the word myself.
Now you are saying that you believe in something to make yourself feel good about yourself. I don't know what to say to that. One thing would be to say that you are a false prophet as you do not believe. The other would be to say that as long as you, your voice and your actions are oriented towards bringing about a balance it should not matter why you chose it in the first place. You pick one.
One thing that I feel disappointed about in your counter comments is that you, more often than not, fail to separate points that are generic and those that are about you. The second paragraph that you brought up hasn't anything to mark what I think of you. Please! I tried bringing up a general phenomenon that is more than visible all around. I realise that this is your blog, but it is not about you all the time. I would definitely point out if, and when, I see a remark that shows you subscribing to one or the other of such phenomena. I try to make it clear when I see something in your comments and I hope you try not seeing yourself everywhere in my remarks. :) I hoped you would at least agree or disagree distinctly on the issue of acceptance and gained entries.
It is very funny that you say you want to know more 'about me' and then mention the name. What have I got to do with what I am called? I would say you know more about me, at least in the matters of what we are talking about here, than others. Let's just bring out our clouds and let it pour.
"What say you?"
"I say, yeah, that would be nice."
I don't know where they're from.
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