I am a feminist and intend to remain one as long as the need for feminism exists. My woman pride is pretty high and I wouldn’t let anyone dent it even a bit. But of late, one particular thought pattern bothers me. I am confused, to be honest. I am starting to feel that these extra celebrations and campaigns to establish what women do, what they sacrifice, what they go through etc is a bit over-hyped. I cannot say with certainty, that I feel the necessity for such recognition. I think this is all becoming too much of just brand and marketing strategy for many different products and concepts and too less of what it actually stands for.
When I ask people – both men and women, what makes them celebrate a day for women, I get varied answers none of which answers my questions. These are some of the reasons:
- To understand women
- To thank women
- To recognize the power of women
- To increase awareness on gender equality
- To eradicate crimes against women
- To show how much women mean to the world
and the list goes on… What hits me with each of these answers is why do we need to single out one day to do this? The same goes for any similar case too. Like a mother’s day, a father’s day.. Why single out one day for understanding and thanking someone, anyone for that matter, for what they do? And why do we need a day to create awareness on gender equality? Why do we need a day to think about how to prevent crimes against women? Aren’t these normal human traits that must be present already? The fact that we need a single day to make it an agenda and then execute means there is something fundamentally wrong with how we are today.
To look at the other side, I riddled myself this – What’s wrong in celebrating a day dedicated to some cause? That’s how celebrating birthdays and other festivals came into existence, right? That’s when I realized that it is not the WHAT that bothers me but the HOW. Like the hype around some and the lack of it around others. I honestly didn’t know there is an international men’s day to honor men. I am sure many others don’t know of the same. So why is women’s day so popular and men’s day hiding in a corner? There lies the answer. It is the campaigning, the product brands using such concepts to further their causes, it is what prevails more than the others in the race. Just like everything else on this planet. Survival of the fittest. The women’s day cause is probably more championed by brands and enterprises to reach out to that emotional quotient we are all helplessly plugged with and fueled by the rage that we experience with the so many crimes against women. Again, there are crimes happening against men, albeit lesser in number, but you gotta agree that they are also less known of or even worse, less discussed about.
I agree that this argument can go on either side, it’s a cat on the wall. It all boils down to one factor – conditioning. How we are sub-consciously conditioned in our genes over centuries, how we are conditioned to blame everything to genes instead of taking up responsibility, how we are taught what is right and wrong based on skewed opinions that might no longer be applicable. Right and Wrong are very subjective and are always prone to change. But we ignore the change factor and feed what is our right and what is our wrong to the next generation and that, so easily, becomes their baseline to judge right vs. wrong.
We hardly stop and think why we do a certain thing? If someone honestly ask me why I celebrate women’s day, I cannot give an answer. Because I don’t know why? Because the whole world does? Because I want to fit in? I don’t know. And this same behavior translates to lot many things in life. Going with the flow and doing things just because that’s how things have been done. I never stop and ask if I don’t feel good doing this charade, then why should I do it?
So from now on, I am going to celebrate my causes rather than the world’s causes. If I feel like appreciating the women in my life, I am gonna walk up to them and tell them that they are brilliant. If I feel that I am a wonderful wife, I am gonna take pride in being one. If I feel like I am good at managing work and home together, I am going to do it as long as it pleases me, no matter what anyone thinks of it. If I feel like I am not appreciated for what I do, I am going to voice it out. If that does not work, then I am going to take my work where it is appreciated. Because THIS is what we should do, every single day. Man or Woman, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t want others championing my cause. Neither do I want to champion someone else’s cause without connecting to it. I am me and I fight my own causes.
Until later 🙂
