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BEYOND THE ALREADY SAID AND DONE An alternative look at the women’s agenda Where is it that we women are leading? Are we really experiencing some sort of emancipation in the wake of the 21st century or is it all a rhetoric that the mainstream loudly shouts to suppress the weaker subaltern? Are women, a homogeneous category so that we can say that women as a whole have progressed? Or do we not really need to raise questions like, what accounts for women’s development? Is being educated, employed or financially independent sole criteria of women’s development? Who is an awakened woman? Is she one who is necessarily an upper middle class, English speaking, sophisticated, urban ambitious workaholic, or can she also be a simple, non assuming nurturer who finds peace and contentment in serving her family and those around her? Is there not a need to question the very assumption that a woman has to leave behind her engagements with her home or her otherwise nurturing instincts to be equivalent to men, why do we stereotype progressive women into a fixed mould that is so rigid that we cannot visualize an open, liberated mind set in people who do not exactly fit into that mould. The idea here, is to be able to problematize the situation, and wonder whether we ourselves are limiting the potentialities of a woman and undermining what she may be capable of .The whole idea that a woman has to leave behind her natural self to be able to walk shoulder to shoulder with men is not only damaging but also restrictive and confining. Are we aiming at equality or are we aiming at uniformity? Without having asked this question, we seek to establish an unnecessary and in fact very damaging homogeneity between the male and the female. What happens then at a deeper level is that the male ego does necessarily get boosted, because the way that he is shaped or operates is seen as the ideal type, which the so called ‘weaker species’(female) must imbibe if she is to achieve anything meaningful in her life. It surprises me sometimes when I see that even most women do not find any apparent problems with the given logic, they feel that if men drink and smoke, if men abuse and violate rules, if men cheat on their spouses, if men make money out of wrong means , women have the equal right to do so and tragically it has been reaching now to the extent that women argue that only on doing what the men do can they achieve their true equality to men. I have a completely different notion to gender relationships and my perspective of looking at the whole issue is completely different to what is often spoken as a feminist outlook to gender equity. I feel that patriarchy is a social problem that men and women suffer alike, it is not that men are free from the ill effects of patriarchy as an institution. What I mean to say thereby is that if a woman crushes her dreams and forgets everything in domestic chores due to a male dominated social structure and repeatedly experiences unequal treatment just by virtue of being born as a female even the male suffers the consequences of patriarchy in different ways. Let us take a few examples, men who are emotional or have outbreaks are seen as weak and effeminate, men cannot easily take up career options like dance, teaching, painting because such works are considered soft and effeminate. Men too suffer the pressures of a system that otherwise seems to work in their favor, and this reveals to us that the whole agenda of a real feminist moment should be to fight patriarchy and not only the manifest agent through which patriarchy is practiced. Thus we must also speak against a middle class housewife who tortures and abuses her domestic help when she turns up late one morning, because here it is a woman who is the patriarch even in the absence of a visible man. No matter whether it is a male or a female, we must fight against everybody who oppresses the female and deprives her of opportunity simply because of her being female. Because ultimately, it is the disease that has to be killed and not the patient. So whenever we see patriarchal instincts in anybody, we must despite our feminist loyalties condemn it even if the oppressor happens to be a female. The second issue that I wish to address here is about an alternative vision of womanhood that has lost its place in the loud noise of dry, intellectual, distanced feminist theory propounded in the universities far away from real women, in the grassroots. The need therefore, is to be able to visualize an alternative ideal of a woman. Who is not insecure about her own feminine uniqueness and nor is she involved in any race to become like a male. She is somebody who takes pride in being a woman and it is by her womanly consciousness that she established her own space in the world. Here is a woman, who is comfortable of her being a woman and is in no way eager to prove that she is same as a man, because she understands that her strength is her difference from the man. She dreams, she aspires, she creates, she makes, she walks, she travels, she learns, she forgets-she lives her life on her own terms, she enjoys her essence of being a human. When her little child cries for her, she embraces him passionately, when she sees the stars in the night sky she walks on the forest path bathing in moonlight, when she feels she composes a story of her own life and when the need comes she drives the car and explores the world. And all this she does, this rhythmic life she leads not because she is proving a point to anyone but because she is fulfilling her truest essence. The relationship between a man and a woman can be fulfilling only when each has fulfilled his or her own self, it can not be a game of power where one depends upon the other and the other dictates the rules. Love happens between two kings, not between a king and a beggar. Arriving at such a discourse on the gender issue, seems unreal to many who see it as mere philosophizing but looked at deeply it is the essence of the bond that we have lost today. We have heard the noises of feminist rhetoric, but paid little attention to the soft melody of man and woman not merely as two antagonistic, opposed classes but essentially partners in a shared humanity. Unless we arrive at such maturity, we are bound to remain caught in perpetual dilemma and war.
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