INTRODUCTION

‘Oh! You are another feminist’. Yes, and?

These days, the word ‘feminism’ itself is getting equivalent to condescension. Feminists are looked down upon, or as a self-centred species.

In contemporary discourse, the term ‘feminism’ encounters misinterpretation and misrepresentation, leading to negative perceptions and unjustified disdain. Social media platforms serve as breeding grounds for trolling and propagation of stereotypes, contributing to the stigmatisation of feminists and their advocacy for gender equality. Additionally, the emergence of a twisted version of ‘chad/sigma males’ and the followers of Andrew Tate within online communities further complicates discussions surrounding feminism, as it introduces alternative perspectives on masculinity that may clash with feminist ideals.

Some of those misconceptions are:

• Feminism is a white woman's issue.
• All feminists are the same.
• Feminists hate traditional roles.
• Feminism only focuses on gender issues.
• Feminism is no longer necessary.
• Feminism is a western concept.
• Feminists hate femininity. and most importantly
• Feminism is ANTI-MEN.

So, to combat those misconceptions and advancing societal understanding of feminism, I present this minutely researched article to all.

DISCLAIMER

The information, views and opinions in this article expressed are not intended to demean, hurt or humiliate any community or individual. The content provided has been constructed from various available websites, blogs, applications, general knowledge, firsthand surveys, and few exclusively personal impressions, and are provided for general interest. Opinions may very definitely hugely vary, and I respect any disparate opinion that differs from my own. My personal distaste, varying credence would not be finding a corner here.

None of the contents below is concocted or owned by me. Copyright goes to their rightful owners, websites and writers.

I am well aware of this topic being a very sensitive one. In case of any dispute or inconvenience, or involuntary offence, kindly forgive me, because I'm still learning and honestly I know absolutely nothing yet, so please don't be harsh to me (I'm very sensitive), instead please educate me in a constructive manner.

TRIGGER WARNINGS

Mentions of r@pe, suic*de, murd*r, gore, violence, honour kill*ng, calamitous rituals, blood, blind beliefs, misogyny, oppression, injustice, societal controversies, racism, homophobia and several other disturbing descriptions. Reader's discretion advised.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This article comprises approximately 30K words, so might appear too long for some readers, mainly those who are impatient just like me. One can choose what they want to read about and scroll past, to the very topic they want to read about. When reading, it would be greatly appreciated if you do not take anything, including my subjective points of view by heart because dragging anyone down/humiliating/offending is NOT my intention.

FEMINISM: A TRILOGY OF LEARNING

‘Feminism has only one dimension’. One cannot be more wrong. If anything that would be cited as the most multidimensional, apart from the universe itself, it will probably be the vast concept of feminism, too vast.

But, before anything, what does the word ‘feminism’ mean and where are its roots?

ETYMOLOGY

“Feminism is a movement that seeks equality for people of any gender. It is founded on the belief that people should be able to pursue any opportunity and demonstrate any characteristics regardless of gender,” defines Dr. Susan Currie Sivek.

But what does the term itself then suggest its meaning to be?

‘Feminism’ is a direct anglicization of ‘féminisme’, its origins being in the Old French ‘feminin’, from the Latin ‘femina’. So, to deduce the term ‘feminism’ as a whole, we must consider the prefix ‘Femin’ comes from the Latin root word ‘femina’, meaning ‘woman’. ‘-ism’ is a suffix derived from the greek ‘ισμός’ or ‘ismós’ that turns the preceding noun into a verb, implying a belief, practice, worldview or doctrine.

FEMINISM IN THE DICTIONARY

“The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes; or organised activity on behalf of women's rights and interests,” Merriam-Webster, which named ‘feminism’ the Word of the Year for 2017, defines. It also notes that the first use of ‘feminism’ in English appeared in 1841.

In the same vein, Dictionary.com says that feminism is ‘the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.’

Withal, now the question arises is feminism as innocuous as the English word suggests with all its roots, definitions and origins? To corroborate, let us take a look at what exactly history puts forth, feminism as.

THE HISTORY OF ‘FEMINISM’

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one” - Simone de Beauvoir

In 1837, French philosopher and radical social utopian, Charles Fourier, used the French ‘féminisme’ while talking of empowering women, to mean women's advocacy. The word ‘feminism’ itself first showed up in English in 1841 as suggested prior, but it did not necessarily bear any political association, only noting that something was related to women.

But what exactly does feminism convey? The next obvious option is to look at what feminists themselves say of feminism.

For the most part, works of feminist theory unfurl that while feminism is hard to define, there are threads of continuity across time and belief. Feminism has continually conceptualised itself as separate from the mainstream culture, more often than not radical, rebellious and political in nature, intimately associated with marches and protests. Feminism is also academically concerned with theory that criticises dominant cultural beliefs, named misogyny.

Feminism has altered predominant perspectives in a wide range of areas within Western society, encompassing different facets, from culture to law.

‘Misogyny’, much older than the word ‘feminism’, comes directly from the word ‘misogunia’, literally translating to ‘the hatred of women’. It can be traced back to 150 BCE, but makes its first appearance in English in the 17th century. As a reaction thus, feminist activists have campaigned for women's legal rights, and for reproductive rights, including access to contraception and quality prenatal care; for protection of women and girls from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape, for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; against what is mentioned just above, misogyny, partaking in a bigger picture patriarchy, and other forms of gender-specific discriminations against women.

Factors leading to FEMINISM:

FACTOR A: PATRIARCHY

Patriarchy is not about men vs women, it is about what is considered superiority vs what is considered inferiority.

As early as 12000 years ago, was the origin of agriculture. Even relatively simple horticulture necessitated defending crops, and thus staying put. Settlement increased conflict within and between groups. For example, in Yanomamo horticulturists in Venezuela lived in heavily fortified group households, with violent raids on neighbouring groups and ‘bride capture’ being part of life.

Where cattle-keeping evolved, the local population had to defend herds of livestock from raiding, leading to high levels of warfare. As women weren't as successful as men in combat, given the physiological differences, this role fell increasingly to men, helping them gain the upper hand and leaving them in charge of the resources they were defending.

Reproduction is the currency of evolution. To maximise their own reproductive success, men have often tried to control women and their sexuality. Contrary to common beliefs, researches show that patriarchy is not ‘natural order of things’, it hasn't always been prevalent. Hunter-gatherer communities may have been relatively egalitarian, compared to some of the regimes that followed. Female leaders and matriarchal societies have always existed.

As farming and herding kept on flourishing, more intensive, material wealth, now mainly controlled by men, became ever more important. Rules of kinship and descent became more formalised to prevent conflict within families over wealth, and marriages became ‘contractual.’ The transmission of land or livestock down the generation allowed some families to gain substantial wealth. Wealth generated by farming and herding enabled polygyny, also known as men having multiple wives, much in contrast to women being involved in any extramarital affair. In contrast polyandry was unacceptable and rare. In most parts, young women were the resource in demand, because they had a closer capability of producing children and usually did more parental care.

Men used their wealth to attract young women to the resources on offer. Men competed by paying ‘bridewealth’ to the family of the bride, with the result that rich men could apparently end up with many wives. Therefore, males needed to compete for marriage partners, whereas females acquired resources needed to reproduce. As a result, parents, if they wanted to maximise the number of their grandchildren, they gave their wealth to their sons instead of daughters.

This led to wealth and property being descended through the male heirs. It also meant women often ended up living far away from home with their husband's family after marriage (a practice that is in practice and valid to this day and counting, as we all might have known at least one woman fitting into this description, notwithstanding the nation or background). Women began to lose agency. Land, livestock, and children were the property of men, and thus divorce was also impossible for women— after divorce, a woman would need to return to her natal home. But that would consequence in the bride price being returned, so the return of their own daughter would be unwelcome. The patriarchy was now getting a firm grip.

Some mathematical models suggest that female dispersal combined with a history of warfare favoured men being treated better than women.

Except for the exceptions, where women could have more autonomy in some farming areas, men quintessentially had the opportunity to compete for resources with unrelated men through warfare. In a stark contrast, women only competed with other women in the household. For both these reasons, the population reaped greater evolutionary benefits by being more altruistic towards men than towards women, leading to the emergence of ‘boys’ clubs.’ Essentially, women themselves were contributing to the gender bias against themselves.

But is just the ‘overt domestic violence’ and ‘gender-biased’ patriarchy the only kind of patriarchy pre-existing? No. In her 1989 article ‘Theorising Patriarchy’, Sylvia Wallaby argues that there are six structures of ‘Patriarchy’ [expanded statistics in the later segment].

1. Paid work

A partial paid employment, according to Walby, remains a key structure for disadvantaged women in Britain. Men continue to dominate the best paid jobs and the issue of pay gap persists, women are paid less than men, and do more part-time jobs. Many women choose not to work, or work part-time due to poor job opportunities.

2. Household Production

‘Cooking’ and ‘cleaning’, despite being basic survival/life skills, have always been, for the most part, associated with women. Individual men benefitted from women's unpaid labour. Women used to do the lion's share of the housework and childcare.

3. Culture

Walby believes that the culture of Western societies has consistently distinguished between men and women and expected different behaviours from them. Nonetheless, the anticipated behavioural patterns have altered.

4. Sexual desires

In our widespread society, women who are sexually active are condemned as slags and those who are not as drags. In lieu, males with many sexual conquests are admired for their intact ‘masculinity’.

Walby also argues that ‘heterosexuality constitutes a patriarchal structure’, there is more pressure for women today to be heterosexually active and to service males through marrying them.

5. Violence

Like many other feminists, Walby considers (and rightfully so) domestic violence against women as a form of male control of women and patriarchy. Now, one must note ‘patriarchy’ is not only caused by the male population, the female population is equally to be held accountable (for instance, as already mentioned, the participation in ‘boys’ clubs).

6. The State

To Walby, the state is still patriarchal, racist and capitalist. She suggests that there has been little to no attempt to improve women's positions in the public spheres and equal opportunities legislation is rarely enforced.

With Walby's structures being said, there are some characteristics to patriarchy that are not exclusive but could be applied as identifiers.

Characteristics of PATRIARCHY

1. ‘Naturalisation’: 

Relationships based on dominance are often accompanied by discourse that represents social inequalities as natural

"The masculine is hot and dry, associated with fire and a positive value; the feminine is cold and moist, associated with water and a negative value (...),” Aristotle proffers. He says it has to do with a different nature in their aptitude to cook blood: women's menstruation is the incomplete and imperfect stage of sperm, although its base is established in biology.

What do we observe from this instance? That a form of inequality codified in the social organisation of the Greek city-state is transcribed as being natural.

In Inuit society, the cold, the raw and nature are associated with men, whereas the hot, the cooked, and culture are associated with women. In Western society, men are associated with culture and women with nature.

The ultimate result is always a social hierarchical order between men and women, and whatever the ‘natural’ quality may be, women have long been uniformly deemed inferior. And these natural differences are exaggerated in a society, not just between different individuals but between social groups, which hints at a social relationship of inequality hidden behind the discourse of differences.

The aim of this discourse is to make people accept these inequalities as an inevitable destiny, they are of natural origins and that they cannot be changed. There is no denying that there are indeed physiological and biological differences between men and women, however this type of discourse tends to transform the individuals involved in social relationships into ‘species’ with definitive ‘qualities’. As these qualities have natural origins, they cannot be changed, which automatically justifies and legitimates the inequality in relationships of exploitation and oppression.

This discourse of ‘naturalisation’ is not specific to the gender-based gap. For example, some discourses have justified the various forms of exploitation and oppression of Blacks by referring to their congenital ‘laziness’. A similar assertion was made about workers in the 19th century, at that time, their inability to escape poverty was explained by the fact that they were ‘naturally’ to be drunkards, from father to son.

2. Internalisation: 

If there are no social struggles, discourses based on ‘naturalisation’ can be easily internalised by the oppressed and oppressing

In Mediterranean societies, men must obey the logic of honour and at any moment they must be ready to prove their ‘manliness’ or ‘manhood’, whereas women must adhere to being discrete and docile and dedicate their lives to serving others without questioning it.

Women have often psychologically, educationally and through the norms that permeate society, been prepared for the responsibility of bearing and giving birth to children, commonly holding the idea that they are naturally more ‘gifted’ for having the capability of rearing offspring. Even so, young women are often as unprepared as their spouses after a first child is born. This distribution of tasks concerning children is not at all ‘natural’; biologically, tale as old as time, if the concoction of a baby requires both male and female sexual organs, how can a child be the responsibility of only women? It is a question of social organisation, of a collective choice made by society, even if it is not explicitly formulated. The result, as one would neutrally expect, is heinous— men are deprived of a continuous contact with their young children, on the other hand it is mainly women who must do what they can do to reconcile professional work and family responsibilities, to the detriment of their health and professional situation.

3. Violence: 

Domination is always ushered by violence, which can be physical, moral, or in the realm of ideas

Among the Baruya, an ethnic group from New Guinea, where male domination is omnipresent, women's breast milk is not considered to be their own product but the transformation of male sperms. Ideas can be seeped in through more ways than one may expect. The representation of milk as being a by-product of sperm is another way of laying the idea of subordination of women in the representation of the body.

Physical violence may span across conjugal violence, rape, genital mutilation, honour killing, and homicide.

Moral or psychological violence could be uncensored or censored insults, humiliations, verbal abuses, deprivation of opportunities or confinement.

In the realm of ideas, violent acts are represented in various ways, such as myths, limited traditional norms, and various forms of discourse.

Withal, feminism is against ‘patriarchy’ and not against ‘men’ themselves. Why? Because patriarchy is a signifier, with the notion of ‘superiority of a particular herd of men’, which harms not only women, but men themselves as well. Let us see why.

How patriarchy affects men?

‘For all the benefits it bestows on men as a group, patriarchy harms individual men deeply, in many different ways’ (Veronika Ilich).

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, men die from suicide 3.88× more times than women. And in 2020, white men accounted for 69.68% of all suicides. In England, men make up only 36% of referrals for therapy in the NHS. 87% of insomniacs in England are men. The Sentencing Project estimates that 1 in 9 men in the US will end up in prison at some point, in comparison to 1 in 56 women. The rate of addiction in men is twice that of women. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that men have a 4× higher risk of dying from any cause at all. Men are more likely to die via homicide than women with the perpetrator plausibly another man. The questions remain, WHY? and HOW?

Is not it quite the contrary? How can a system designed to benefit men be harmful to men? There is one important caveat; the patriarchy only benefits a specific type of man.

In essence, patriarchy is a societal system where men are seen as the utmost leaders or decision makers. Typically, the men who are these leaders are straight, cis-gendered, stubborn, aggressive, racist, homophobic, sexist and misogynistic (more often than not).

I would present an excerpt a sociologist, life coach and content creator Michael Bejani below;

“Typically, the men who ‘lead’ patriarchal systems are white, straight, cis-gendered, educated, stubborn, aggressive, racist, homophobic, sexist and misogynistic (prejudiced against women). The more that men display these kinds of behaviours, the more likely they are to move up the social ladder of the patriarchy. Because the patriarchy knows that these traits help keep men in power and allow almost no one else in.

Self-preservation. So: If you’re a man but you don’t display the traits shown above, then the patriarchy isn’t working for you. It’s actively working against you. The patriarchy normalises these behaviours in men. And uses TM (Toxic Masculinity) to do so. If the patriarchy was a car: TM can be thought of as the ‘factory’ which produces the doors, tires, engine and seats.

In my work as a Sociologist, Life Coach and content creator, I (evidently) come across men in pain. Many men are exhausted and angry by how agonising their lives have become. And they want to know who to ‘blame’ for this. Some of the men I work with start by blaming feminism. They say that the huge disparities in the qualities of men’s lives compared to women are due to the feminist movement, ‘cancel culture’ and the #MeToo movement. They say that due to feminism, women have it easy and that no one cares about men. That men are ignored and pushed aside and just treated like human ATMs. I hear things like “feminism is a war on men”. “Feminism wants to hurt men”. “More men die in war than women do. More men go to prison than women do. More men die of suicide than women do. Feminism is bullshit”.

On my Instagram page, whenever I loudly and proudly say that I’m a feminist, I get comments or messages with the words ‘traitor’, ‘simp’, ‘unmanly’, ‘beta’, ‘moron’ peppered in. I tell them all the same thing: “what you are really angry at, is the patriarchy. And you should be”.

Because, below mentioned are the facets that patriarchy covers:

1. Narrow prescription of masculinity.

It is an endless pressure for men to conform to a narrow prescription of masculinity, or in other words ‘toxic masculinity’.

Patriarchy confirms the belief that ‘life is to ascertain superiority by hook or by crook, not to live’. It is what normalises men into not seeking help, be they condemned ‘weak’. Patriarchy is what mainstreams the inhumane idea of ‘bottling up feeling’ so much to preserve one's ‘manhood’, that as a last resort, men has to seek drugs, sex, suicide or a combination of these to numb the pain. Patriarchy harms men by disconnecting them from their emotions and frames emotional support as weakness. It leads men to compete with one another, and to prove their manhood by surrendering their individuality and denying their humanity. It's also the pressure to take risks, to ignore one's health, and to cope through substance use.

2. One of the single largest threats to men's physical and mental health.

In this era of social media, Instagram and Facebook, one must have inevitably come across one or more comments such as ‘We are men. Men used to go to war, not put on makeup’, ‘womp womp’, ‘cry about it’, ‘be a man’, ‘men don't cry’, ‘Moye moye’, et cetera. Because patriarchy encourages risk-taking behaviours (as is obvious from the glorification of wars), and discourages help-seeking or health-enhancing behaviours. Although social media does not represent the entire society, it is doubtlessly a mirror notwithstanding. Men are less likely to go to the doctor or seek counselling support for mental health issues. Additionally, men are more likely to stop taking medication for chronic or life-threatening illnesses than are women. They are also less likely to recognize symptoms of illnesses that disproportionately affect them, like heart ailments.

3. Ever-present threat of violence between men.

In Canada, the most violent hate crimes are typically men attacking other men who don't fit the rigid norms, who are beyond the ordinary perceptions. To name some of them, they queer folks, gender non-conforming men or trans folks, or are not partaking in heteronormativity. Patriarchy ruins men's chances at meaningful and healthy relationships with the others, by creating homophobia-ridden barriers against deep male friendships, or interdependence, further damaged by the ever-present threat of violence between men.

4. No recognition for male harassment.

“My uncle was giving me a bath when I was 7 years old, and that’s when it first happened. He forced me to give him a blow job and proceeded to have anal sex with me, multiple times. At that point, I didn’t know what was happening to me, whether it was ok, whether it was normal. I got so used to it, I would enter his house and lie down on the bed, just wanting it to get over as soon as possible. At 12, I began to get gang-raped by his friends, and I would bleed but keep quite…because what if I wasn’t considered ‘man enough’ to not bear pain? My childhood went by having two worlds where I would not remember the rape until something triggered it off and then I would cry endlessly. I would not enter a male washroom because I was scared that I would be raped again…I grew up having no self esteem.

It was when I was 17 or 18 that I began to understand that what had been happening to me for so many years was wrong–so one day when he came to jump on me, I kicked him and said no. For the first time in 11 years, I said no to being raped. When I told my mother, she was in shock–she asked me why I hadn’t told her. I told her I had given her signs, that I had tried but she never picked up on it. She said, ‘I never knew such things could happen with boys’ and that was the time I realised that boys and men are the forgotten gender. We get abused, but we have no right to voice it because we’re supposed to be the protectors. The victims of ‘masculinity’ are men themselves. I have been bullied for many years for my sexual orientation as well, but when I told my story the same classmates who laughed at me became my biggest strength and helped me to cope with my childhood. A part of me believed that I’m gay because of the abuse I went through and it devastated me, but I know now that that isn’t true.

We tried to get some legal help but we realised that there’s no law against child sexual abuse for boys in the country. By the time I was 18, no laws applied to my case — so there was no justice. That’s when I decided that I would make the motto of my life to protect other children from sexual abuse.

So I’ve been through 11 years of hell but I don’t think the world is a bad place. I thank my bullies, because they got me here — where I have the opportunity to touch other’s lives. I believe that hate only destroys the hater, not the hated — so I don’t think I hate my uncle. To me, he doesn’t exist. In fact, if I could, I would send a therapist to help him. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life waiting for him to suffer– I can never get those 11 years back, but I do have a lifetime ahead of me to protect the rights of children, women or the LGBT community and that’s the path I’ve proudly chosen.”

Firmly, planting the notion that dominance, protection, and aggression is what makes a man a man, patriarchy has destroyed empathy towards male victims of sexual violence. Males also are raped, abused, sodomised, assaulted and brushed aside and forgotten.

The aforementioned anecdote was a bold disclosure by a male rape victim. But such cases are not just a handful, but many, but are never brought to our notice because these are mostly underreported by both police and the media.

I would now like to draw attention to some of the cases that bear the blemishes of patriarchy.

a. In India

India, having a stereotypical view towards gender issues, putting men in the forefront ahead of everything, also, peculiarly, has no place for the victims who belong to the ‘dominating’ sex. In Section 375 of Indian Penal Code does not include rape in which males could be the victims. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, is the only section that criminalises all acts of non-consensual carnal intercourse, including male on male rape. The whole definition is considering the rape of only women and there's no clause for the rape of male. Only section 377 of IPC, as mentioned above, is modelled on Buggery Act, 1533, where unnatural sex is an ‘Act against God’. Though there is POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) for the sexual assault of male child, such provisions does not exist for an adult male.

In the survey of Insia Dariawala which surveyed 1500 male of which 71% of men surveyed said that they were abused, 84.9% said that they had not told anyone about the abuse and the primary reasons for these were shame (55.6%), confusion (50.9%), fear (43.5%), and guilt (28.7%). In India (and in other countries), there are a number of taboos related. The worst of them immediately is the ‘loss of masculinity’. The disgusting questions arise, ‘how can a protector fall prey?’, ‘how can a man be raped?’, ‘Was he a gay?’, ‘Was he not man enough to fight back?’, ‘Was he a twink?’, ‘He asked for it’, ‘He must have been closeted’. Whether the words are disparate, be it a woman or a man, the accusatory finger of repercussions is always pointed at the victims. Burdened with such stigma of being labelled ‘non-male’ and ‘non-masculine’, many survivors prefer being silent which further impacts their psychological health.

Since the interpretation of rape in India is only restricted to insertion of penis or object in the vagina, the case of rape and sexual assault of male has been rising continuously but because of the paucity of law, no step was taken. As a result, these mishaps occurred:

1. The Ghaziabad Case:

On 16th of June, in the year 2018, five men in Ghaziabad sexually assaulted a 20-year old boy. A foreign object was inserted into the latter's rectum. But the case was registered under section 377 of IPC, since our law does not account for such an offence. [Despite intensively trying to find in-depth details related to this case, I could not find any, which again reaffirms the topic being discussed here].

2. Jalandhar Male Rape:

After spraying some chemicals in the man's eyes, four women, all of whom appeared to be in their early twenties, had abducted him in a car. Later, they drugged him and sexually abused him inside a forest area. It is being further added that he was dumped by the four women later at a secluded spot, late in the night. The man alleged that the kidnapping was done with an ulterior sexual motive. He was a labourer in a leather factory, married and with kids. On his way home, a white car stopped near him on the Kapurthala road in which four girls were sitting. The girl at the steering wheel asked for an address jotted on a slip, which she gave him.

As soon as he started looking at the slip, the girl allegedly sprayed something in his eyes, after which he could not see anything and eventually fainted. Next, as he gained consciousness, he was sitting with them in the car, blindfolded with hands tied behind his back. After this the girls took him to an unknown place where they allegedly drugged him. He claimed that they were drinking alcohol and forced him to drink too. After this, all the four of them took turns to rape him. Later, at around 3 AM, the girls left from there leaving him blindfolded and with hands tied…

Albeit, this case has not been reported to the authorities but the victim himself has come forward to narrate his ordeal to the local media.

To corroborate, men aren't the only wilful participants towards patriarchy, this is an arch example— according to the victim, his wife asked him not to file a complaint since he came back alive and that was what mattered to the family.

Possibly, the predators never were brought to justice (I'm unsure about this fact, so if anyone is interested in educating me, please feel free to do so).

3. Ghatkopar rape case over argument over fare:

“After an hour, the passenger finally got down from the rickshaw. When the driver asked him to pay ₹ 250 in fare, the passenger handed him over a ₹ 100 note, following which an argument ensued. In a fit of rage, the driver forcefully took the man with him to an isolated place in a garden and forcefully performed unnatural sex with him,” the official said.

The incident occurred on Saturday night after the male passenger, who was 31, was heavily drunk and boarded an auto rickshaw in Ghatkopar, eastern Mumbai. He made the auto rickshaw driver go from one place to another as he was barely in his senses and couldn't pinpoint the location of his destination. Subsequently, the twenty-five year old auto rickshaw driver got into a fiasco over the fare and later performed sexual violation on the drunk passenger. The driver also took away the ATM card and the mobile phone of the victim.

Later, the driver forced the victim to accompany him to an ATM kiosk and made him withdraw ₹ 200. He took away the victim's mobile phone and ATM card before allowing him to go, the official said, quoting the FIR.

Naturally falling prey to the suffocating clutches of patriarchy, the victim took to the police but only to ask for his phone back, because he was feeling ‘embarrassed’ over the incident.

A competent police, however, registered a FIR under relevant sections of the IPC including 377 (unnatural sex), 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery) and arrested the driver.

b. In foreign

In an article in the ‘Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine’, Roy J. Levin and Wily Van Berlo wrote that slight genital stimulation or stress can create erections “even though no specific sexual stimulation is present”. An erection does not mean that a man consents to sex, erections do not equal consent.

In the case of the Syrian Civil War, armed conflict that began in 2011 with an uprising against the regime of the Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad and is ongoing, male violation crimes have been most horrific with male detainees forced to sit on broken glass bottles, their genitals tied to a heavy bag of water, or forced to watch the rape of another detainee by the officials.

In his research paper ‘Male Rape: The ‘Invisible’ Male’, Alizara Javaid has quoted the view of Sue Lees on this.

“Male victims quite often don’t report their case to the police due to stigma and fear that the police may think they are homosexual and not ‘real men’ for not fighting the offender off,” Lees argues.

The UK-sponsored UN Security Council Resolution 2106, adopted in 2013, was the first to explicitly mention men and boys as victim of sexual violence in conflict, but fell far short of a call to action, providing only a tentative acknowledgement to men and boys.

Resolution 2106 is one of eight resolutions in the UN's Women, Peace and Security agenda, which provides the framework for addressing conflict-related sexual violence. And herein lies the problem. While the framework for addressing such violence lies within the Women, Peace and Security agenda, men will continue to be structurally discriminated against as victims.

For example, in UN field missions, the appointed lead for Women, Peace and Security matters, including sexual violence, is the women'sprotection adviser. This not only excludes men from responses to sexual violence, but also perpetuates the idea that sexual violence is only a woman's issue, reinforcing the ‘protector-protected’ stereotype.

Let us elaborate.

• United Kingdom

Previously, English law did not include rape of males as a criminal offense and was recorded as non-consensual buggery. A convicted rapist of a female could serve in prison for life, while buggery only carried 10 years as a sentence, stated the chairman of Survivors’ Organization, Henry Leak. The ‘Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994’ was the first to lead this development and recognize male victim rape; and the ‘Sexual Offences Act 2003’ states that the penetration of the ‘mouth, anus or vagina with [the defendant's] penis’ is sufficient for rape. Under the ‘Sexual Offences Act 2009 (Scotland)’ and ‘Sexual Offences Order 2008 (Northern Ireland)’, men can both be perpetrators and victims. In all parts of UK, female cannot be legally charged with ‘rape’ in itself, instead with other offenses such as sexual assault, assault by penetration, or causing sexual activity without consent.

• China

Until November 1, 2015, sexual offences against males above the age of 14 could not be prosecuted unless they also included physical assault. The guidelines of China on child protection strengthen the punishments for sexual offences against underage girls, but at the same time don't offer equal protection to underage boys. In September of 2013, 27 NGOs called for the law to give equal protection to boys below 18 years old in cases of sexual offences.

Before 2015 although, article 236 of the revised Criminal Law of China specified that the hideous crime of rape can be committed only against women. In 2011, the first conviction for sexual assault on a man occurred with a Beijing security guard as the perpetrator, but he was convicted on the grounds of ‘intentional injury’ and not ‘rape’, sentenced to one year in prison and to pay 20,000 yuan as compensation. A convicted rapist would be imprisoned in the least for no less than three years.

• Indonesia

Based on Indonesia's Penal Code, ‘Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Pidana’, males simply cannot be the victims of rape. Rape is defined as a sexual violence against a female, having a sentence of imprisonment for a maximum of 12 years, in paragraph 285. In paragraph 289, the victim of ‘vulgar actions’ is not defined particularly male or female, and the punishment is a maximum of 9 years imprisonment.

• Philippines

Article 266-A of the law defines rape by ‘an act of sexual assault’ by any person either by ‘inserting his penis into another person's mouth or anal orifice’ or inserting ‘any instrument or object, into the genital or anal orifice of another person’. Prior to the 1997 amendment of Revised Penal Code of 1930, male victims of rape were not acknowledged in Philippines law. The 1997 amendment allowed the legal recognition of rape of males, both by males or females, but with different penalties for the offense towards females versus males. Whereas rape against males is considered by law as rape by sexual assault which carries a lesser penalty of 6 to 12 years of imprisonment, while rape against girls are sentenced to life imprisonment.

• New Zealand

The term ‘rape’ can only be used in the instance where only females are penetrated by a male, in New Zealand.

In one of the data being presented by ‘The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention’, found that one of the seventeenth men reported being made to penetrate forcefully at some point in their lives. There were 13.5% female perpetrators.

Nevertheless, there are countries that have taken a step towards acknowledgement. Therefore,

The countries which attempted to head towards a change are:

• INDIA

By the recommendation of the 172nd law commission of India in March 2000, it favoured that rape laws should be gender neutral. In 2012, Indian Government initiated to change the definition of rape as ‘forcible penetration’ to include male victims and in that accordance made Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013. The word ‘rape’ was replaced by ‘sexual assault’. But this initiative faced a backlash since it was seen as a (wrongful) threat to the interests of female rape victims and the government was forced to withdraw its decision and reinsert the term ‘rape’. Due to this, there are still no provisions that can provide security to an adult man in the society.

• USA

By the FBI's ‘Uniform Crime Report’ in USA, the laws redefined rape by including forcible anal or oral penetration, unlike the older definition which was restricted only to females. The changes of inclusion of men as victims and not just women, were made after the statistics were provided by governmental institutions such as the U.S. Department of Justice and CDC. A study conducted by the CDC figured that 1 in 71 men had been raped or had been the target of an attempt to rape, this study involved oral and anal penetration in its definition.

• China

Prior to the year 2015, the ‘Criminal Law of China’ was made gender-neutral through Article 237, which criminalises ‘forcible indecency’. Offences that constitute rape of males may be tried under this article, with offenders facing a maximum of five years in prison.

Scotland, Northern Ireland, Indonesia and Singapore are few more of the countries relevant that fall under this category. I would, however, refrain from delving into the details since this is not the primary topic of my discussion. But it becomes inexorable to avoid the horrors per vantage ground when barbaric issues are persistent. And to expunge these bones of contention, we have to absolutely get rid of two horrendous roots— patriarchy and pseudo-feminism (more about it later).

In the meantime, moving forward to FACTOR B, contributing to the emergence of ‘feminism’.

FACTOR B: CAPITALISM

When children were asked in school questionnaires what their parents did for a living, the contributions or the efforts put into housekeeping, household chores were diminished. They were told to leave a blank for their mothers if they were housewives. There could be no better emblem than the ‘blank’ for the invisibility of women's works in the domestic sphere in capitalist societies before the revival of feminism in the late ‘Sixties.

The UNDP, in its 1995 report, evaluated women's invisible contribution at an estimated 11000 billion dollars. This figure was seen in relation to that of world productivity, estimated at that time to be around 23000 billion dollars. To these 11000 billion dollars should be added to women's contributions to the economy on a monetary basis, in the form of paid employment. Lastly, it should be taken into consideration that in general women are paid less than men for the equivalent work.

1. The oppression of women is useful to the capitalist system

Analysis of capitalist methods show that the capitalist system feeds on a pre-existing system of oppression, patriarchy and it compounds many of its defining characteristics. The oppression of women is a tool which enables capitalists to manage the entire workforce to their own profits. When the capitalists need extra labour, they call upon women's assistance to whom they could pay less than men. It enables them to justify their policies when they find it more profitable to shift the responsibility for social welfare from the State and collective institutions to the ‘privacy’ of the family.

But how exactly is a woman's oppression beneficial to capitalism? In times of economic expansion, women were massively called upon as ‘cheap labour’ in a number of manufacturing industries such as electronics, and as wage-earners in the service industry. In contrast, in times of economic recession, employers and the State unrelentingly suggest that women should withdraw from the labour market in exchange for their ‘natural’ labour pain, or also known as their ‘natural’ vocation as mothers.

In addition, men are always supposed to be the main economic purveyors, the sole ‘breadwinner’, and women must take on all the tasks related to maintaining and reproducing the workforce and family in the name of ‘maternal’ functions, consecutively disallowing women to work longer times since they had to devote half of their times towards their ‘stereotypical roles’ determined by the society, and in the name of the so-called complementary roles, underpayment of women on a discriminatory ground was justified.

If women were not perceived as those who are in charge of those chores within the family, a substantial reduction of working time for all and a significant development of social facilities would have to be introduced.

2. ‘Equality at work’: a misconception? Do we need equality or equity?

‘Equality at work’ has had the negative effect of introducing more night-work for women. With these so-called egalitarian measures, life for women on the line in night shifts was put at stake and became intolerably hard, where women are not spared the domestic responsibilities. In that case, in a clear thinking feminist term, establishing male-female equality would be to eliminate night work for men, or reduce working hours for women as well as men.

To manage this very impediment, capitalism utilises patriarchy as its leverage to obtain its objectives, while at the same time reinforcing it. By drawing attention to the relegation of women by patriarchy to domestic tasks, capitalists vindicate their overexploitation and underpayment of women, arguing that their work is less productive than that of men. They invoke weakness, menstruation, absenteeism for pregnancy and maternity leave, and owing to other attributes. This is where women's salary is denigrated as being ‘for extras’. However, there are no calculations on an individual's capability and output which may (or may not) in some cases, prove a woman is providing labour or service that exceeds her prowess, whereas a man might be gatekeeping his out-and-out aptitude as compared to his productivity [this is just a hypothesis].

3. The oppression of women preceded capitalism but the latter has profoundly modified it.

What if I say capitalism is inseparable from patriarchy?

The ‘women belong to kitchen’ or ‘go back to kitchen’ kind of narrow mindedness, in its crude form, came into being with capitalism. By largely replacing small-scale commercial production in the domains of agriculture and the crafts with big industry, capitalism made the division between the sites of production (the workplace) and of reproduction (the family) increasingly distinct, assigning to women the role of responsibility for the home. Started by the bourgeoisie, this new ideology bred disdain for the women who ‘worked outside’ without a husband supporting her. This ideology contaminated the emerging workers’ movement. Contrary to popular belief, women in lower classes never stopped working.

With the delocalisation of traditional or cutting-edge industries, in North Africa, Latin America or Asia, in search of new profits, employers began recruiting young women into the labour market and the call for women's labour underwent new developments in the early ‘Sixties.

But these two are not the only factors demonstrating the requirements for feminism. The last, but not the least factor accounts for in fact the most pertinent of factors, ‘The Background’.

FACTOR C: BACKGROUND

According to works by anthropologists and historians, in the primitive groups there was mobility between men and women, with free adhesion and no discrimination. With the passage of time, where hunting became predominant in the social organisation, abduction of female individuals came into practice to ensure the necessary reproduction of men.

1. Cooperative organisation of labour

As opposed to this date, the division between men and women did not lie in oppression of women or exclusion of women from the public arena and their durance to the domestic circle. Social gender equality and collective property of resources and means of production were the rules, with land, too, a collective property for common use.

Women, on one hand, partook in productive activities. On the other hand, they played a part in the social organisation:

• They were members of the village council.
• Some societies were matrilineal.
• In some societies, the education of children was a collective responsibility.

The ‘circulation of women’ however had to be regulated so as to avoid the disappearance of some groups, either violently, through abduction, or non violently through ‘exchanges’ or trades. And in some of these societies, men could be traced taking over power to maintain control on reproduction and thus keep up the number of producers.

2. Social surplus production and the ancient emergence of social classes

Now the position of women in society has altered radically. There was no longer a cooperative organisation of labour. The family remained a production unit. Rich owners (typically male) acquired public responsibilities and political functions, with the exclusion of women as verified by the lack of voting rights for women.

Around 3500 BC, in Antiquity, there was the development of slavery— first of prisoners from conquered territories and people, later also because of unpaid debts and of the State. The function of the State was to guarantee that the ruling classes could maintain their ownership of social surplus through institutions that excluded other members of the community from political functions; power belonged lonely to hereditary kings, lords or noblemen. They set up an army, a civil service, a judiciary power, and producers of ideologies like teachers or scholars, who ensured that the domination of those who appropriated wealth was accepted by all.

• Generalised patrilineality

The new notion of inheritance and the transmission of property specifically through the male line led to the importance of having male offsprings whose lineage was beyond contest. Women became merely pieces of property themselves or means to accumulate property.

• Institution of marriage = source of wealth

The bride price, that in matrilineal societies consisted of a gift, became cattle or land.

In every case, women were subjected to do the household chores and were also assigned the role of reproducing the labour force, so that men could be extricated from any domestic chores to assume their responsibilities outside and freed from the responsibility of educating children to ensure the transmission of property.

This was how the notion of women as responsible home makers, being enclosed within the family, having to prioritise her role as a housewife, a daughter-in-law and a mother began and hasn't evaporated since.

3. The period of commercial capitalism and factory development

With the growth of manufacturing, workers/producers were separated from their means of production; craftsmen rented out their labour yet no longer rented out their own tools. Commercial capitalism, through this process, took shape, followed by mechanisation, and the situation of women further deteriorated. This process began with ‘home-based industry’. Another consequence of manufacturing growth was that the family was transformed into a consumption unit from a production unit. Once the products which were once produced within families started getting produced outside the homes, domestic labour got completely devalued, no longer recognised as socially necessary.

Later on, this ‘devaluation’, would impact all the professions linked to tasks seen as women's work within families, to mention two of them are cleaning and caregiving.

The bourgeoisie plunged into action to turn this ‘devaluation’ to their favour, by using women as supplementary labour, less well paid, to put pressure on male wage-earners, and dividing the future working class, whether in the home-based industries or in factories. Once female contributions at home had been devalued over this transitional period, from the 18th century, ‘focusing on the family’ played an important role in the development of the bourgeoisie society. In order to ensure acceptance of making the female workforce as a reserve workforce, it was beneficial to clearly assign family duties to women as their main task (there is nothing ‘wrong’ about taking care of your family or your home, but if a family is the combination of multiple, diverse people, why must it be the responsibility of only women? Smell the true, self-preserving essence in it from a particular group of people?).

4. The industrial revolution and proletarianisation of women

The bourgeoisie advocated the bourgeoisie family model for the working class:

• Nuclear family with just the parents and their children.
• Women still had to ensure the reproduction of the labour force. The men must be well rested and ready to ensure production, and children had to be prepared for their turn to go down the mines.

At the time of 19th century industrial expansion, everyone was mobilised to work in mines or the textile industry, including women and children. Family became, as already briefed, a consumption unit, and it played an educational role based on reproduction of the dominant ideology's standards: respect for the established order and for private property. These plans clashed with the reality of the industrial revolution and women came forth to be proletarians too.

All these constituted a series of warnings for the bourgeoisie who were no longer in control of the situation. So, they implemented moral improvements as a strategy of regaining control:

Hypocritically, the bourgeoisie promoted the housewife's image as a ‘moral guardian’. This, by no means, was not as innocuous or noble as it appears to be. This ideology defended that all women, whether or not they were part of the labour force, had to view home life as their main responsibility.

This implies that:

• Women's works were seen as a ‘second job’, their main responsibility not being production but reproduction meant that their wage was an extra weight on top of the male breadwinners’. The notion of a supplementary workforce implied that women were hired or laid-off according to economic needs and convenience.
• Work carried out by women would remain underpaid as it was considered the extension of non-productive activities, and be concentrated in ‘women's jobs’. And the idea pertained that women’ prime duty belonged within the four walls.

Women took a step forward, entering factories which could have led to their emancipation. To hamper this emancipatory procedure, the bourgeoisie not only resorted to ‘confining’ women to her family with emotional attachments, but women's underpaid labour would also be used to divide workers. For instance, dismissing men in order to make women and children work night shifts, in the worst of conditions.

5. World War I & II

‘Women belong in the kitchen. Men belong to the battlefield’. It is easy to lounge on a cosy couch and type a baseless comment on Meta. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Here's why.

“The women worked as ammunition testers, switchboard operators, stock takers. They went into every kind of factory devoted to the production of war materials, from the most dangerous posts in munition plants to the delicate sewing in aeroplane factories,” said Alice Dunbar Nelson, American Poet and Civil Rights Activist, on African American women’s efforts during the war, 1918.

A. World War I

1. Women soldiers

Though it would be many years before many other countries allowed access to female soldiers, in Russia, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, women served as combat troops.

• Maria Leontievna Bochkareva

The founder of the Russian ‘women'sBattalion of Death’, was the first woman to lead a Russian military unit; Bochkareva went as far as to petition the Czar for permission to enlist in the Imperial Russian army in 1914 and was granted permission to join. Initially, she was harassed and ostracised, but she persisted and became a decorated soldier and commander.

Her all-female battalion of shock troops, the 1st Russian ‘women'sBattalion of Death’, was formated in 1917 to shame men into continuing the fight. The battalion was sent to the Russian western front to participate in the Kerensky Offensive in July of 1917. The first Petrograd women'sBattalion helped defend the Winter Palace in the October Revolution. Ultimately, Russia ended their involvement in WWI with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918.

• Dorothy Lawrence

“I'll see what an ordinary English girl, without credentials or money can accomplish,” journalist Dorothy Lawrence went as far as to secretly pose as a man to perform as a soldier during World War I.

In 1915, she travelled to France and volunteered on her own free will as a civilian employee of the Voluntary Aid Detachment, though was rejected. Discontent with being rebuffed, Lawrence entered the war zone via the French sector as a freelance war correspondent. She was, however, arrested by the French police just short of the frontline and ordered to leave.

Lawrence befriended two British Army soldiers, persuaded them to smuggle her, when the men had their uniform washed. She persuaded two Scottish military policemen to cut her hair and she darkened her skin with disinfectant, and tanned herself with shoe polish. Lawrence asked her soldier peers to teach her how to drill and march to adapt to proper etiquettes. Finally, to reach the frontlines, she obtained forged identity papers of an officer. She set out by bicycle instead of taking an army convoy. On her way, she met Tom Dunn, a member of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). He offered to assist in her ploy, finding Lawrence an abandoned cottage where she could stay at night upon returning from the front line.

On the frontline, Lawrence worked as a sapper with the 179 Tunnelling Company, a specialist in mine-laying that operated within 400 yards of the frontline. Lawrence here helped to dig tunnels and worked with the trenches. This exertion led her to suffering from constant chills, rheumatism, and fits of fainting. After ten days of servicing, she informed her commanding sergeant who in turn put her under military arrest.

When Lawrence was taken back to the BEF headquarters, they mistook her to be a spy, then declared her a prisoner of war. A while later, she was taken to Third Army headquarters in Calais, where she was interrogated by six generals and apparently twenty other officers. From there, Dorothy Lawrence went to Saint-Omer for further interrogation. The army was concerned instead about the word getting spread that a woman had managed to infiltrate their ranks.

Lawrence remained in France until after the Battle of Loos. She was later sent back to London. She wanted there to write about her experiences, but was obstructed by the War Office. In 1919, she wrote her book Sapper Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier, though it was still heavily censored by the War Office. Her success as a journalist included articles published in ‘The Times’, and after the outbreak of the war, she wrote a number of articles for ‘Fleet Street newspapers’.

• Milunka Savić

Recognised as the most decorated female combatant in the history of warfare, Milunka Savić fought in the Balkan Wars and in World War I, and was wounded nine times during her service.

Parallels could be drawn to Savić and Lawrence's behavioural patterns since Savić, too, cut her hair, donned men's clothings and joined the Serbian Army.

Quickly after finding herself in battle, Milunka received her first medal and promotion to corporal in the Battle of Bregalnica. No later than she was injured in battle, and was recovering in hospital, was her gender truly revealed. The Serbians found themselves in a predicament, neither did they want to chastise or punish her, nor did they deem it suitable for young women to be in combat. They proposed a transfer to the medical division, but Savić refused the proposal. She wanted to fight for her country as a combatant. After pondering over it for around an hour, her commanding office agreed to send her back to the infantry.

During 1914, while World War I was in its infant stages, Savić was ordered her first Karadorde Star with Swords after the Battle of Kolubara. She then received her second Karadorde Star (featuring Swords) after the

two month long battle between the Bulgarian and the Entente armies, the Battle of the Crna Bend in 1916; Savić had single handedly captured 23 Bulgarian soldiers.

Her other military honours include the French Légion d’Honneur (Legion of Honour) twice, Russian Cross of St. George, British Medal of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael, Serbian Miloš Obilić medal. She also became the only female recipient of the French Croix de Guerre 1914-1918 with a gold palm attribute for service in World War I.

2. Female Yeoman

Women were able to join the ranks as Yeomen, non-commissioned officers. Around 12000 women enlisted in the Navy under the title, ‘Yeoman (F)’.

Most women Yeomen served stateside on naval bases, replacing men who had deployed to Europe. The duties of females had a wide variety of range. Many female recruits performed clerical duties, some worked as truck drivers, mechanics, radio operators, telephone operators, translators, camouflage artists and munition workers. They had the same responsibilities as their male counterparts, and received the same pay of $25.75 per month.

3. Doctors, Nurses and Ambulance Drivers

The Salvation Army, the Red Cross and numerous other organisations depended on thousands of female volunteers. Thousands of women served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and the Navy Nurse Corps. While the American Expeditionary Forces were preparing to go overseas, U.S. Army nurses were sent ahead and assigned to the British Expeditionary Force. By June 1918, there were more than 3000 American nurses in over 750 in British-run hospitals in France.

“I had just given this poor boy anaesthesia when a bomb hit. We were supposed to hit the floor, but he was out and didn’t know what was going on. I took a tray and put it over our heads. It wasn’t because I was brave. I was just scared,” noted Medical Corps anaesthetist Sophie Gran. Gran was one of the first woman anaesthetists with the A.E.F. in France and the only woman anaesthetist with Mobile Hospital Unit #1. She went on to become the first president of California Association of Nurse Anesthetists in 1931.

The Medical Women's National Association raised money to send their own doctors overseas to work in hospitals run by the American Red Cross.

During the last Allied offensive in the summer and fall of 1918, many women doctors, nurses and aides provided medical care for soldiers injured in the combat.

Women, who knew how to drive, also volunteered to go overseas to serve as ambulance and truck drivers or mechanics. They delivered medical supplies, transported patients to hospitals and drove through artillery fire to retrieve the wounded. Many of the women drivers of the Red Cross Motor Service and other ambulance service groups used their own cars, including Marie Curie. Curie invented a mobile X-ray unit, radiological cars nicknamed ‘Little Curies’, and ultimately trained 150 women to be X-ray operators on the battlefront, an act she believed contributed to her later death from radiation exposure.

There were also contributions of the ‘Hello Girls’ where the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operations Unit recruited women who were bilingual in French and English to serve as telephone switchboard operators on the Western Front and ‘Women on the Homefront’ suggested the last known surviving veteran of World War I was Florence Green of the RAF (Royal Air Force), who died in 2012.

B. World War II

1. On the Homefront

During the war, women joined volunteer organisations to support the needs of the homefront and troops. The United Services Organisation (USO), the American Red Cross, the American women'sVoluntary Service (AWVS), and the United States Citizens Defense Corps volunteered their efforts in the war. The AWVS's volunteers , which numbered approximately 325000 women, engaged in a range of activities that included working in canteens, selling war bonds, taking photographs, and driving ambulances. The AWVS was modelled on the British model of women'sVoluntary Service, was formed in January 1940 and was an interracial organisation.

2. In the Military

In May, 1941, Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, introduced a bill to create a women's auxiliary army. It took Congress a whole year to approve the bill. The bill gave women the option to volunteer for women's units attached to the military. But the real goal of including women in the military was to fill non combat roles, which would free up men for combat. Women worked in a wide variety of jobs including cooks, secretaries, and mechanics.

3. Defense Industry

America's entry into World War II brought with it a boom to the defence industry. The nation needed to produce the planes, tanks, trucks, guns, and ammunition to fight the Axis powers. Millions of women were involved in the wartime workforce, many of them in the defence industry. A large number of women shifted from their pre-war employment positions, moving from secretarial or service related jobs to the production line. Some women joined defence plants due to patriotism, others because they wished to support the troops through employment. Many took jobs in manufacturing because they needed the money. Often these jobs paid women higher wages.

With the end of World War II drawing near, with both the aid of men and women, women began to bloom through the murk. Since 1945 (also the year when WWII came to a conclusion), more and more women have worked on a lifelong basis. By the mid-twentieth century, the mass entries of women to factories and later offices, created the preconditions for emancipation. women's struggle for emancipation developed, which brought about a number of changes:

• Women achieved legal equality. They acquired the right to vote in 1948 in Belgium.
• In 1966, the women's strike at the National Arms Factory (NAF) in Herstal (city in Belgium) was the first step towards equal pay, which remains to be accomplished.
• Since 1968, contraception, abortion, and decriminalisation has been enabled. With them were also enabled the provision of public facilities, access to higher education, access to the professions.
• Women finally began to have a voice of their own. They spoke out against the double working day.

Given the amelioration of women caused by twentieth century kinesis, it is not strange to question why feminism was still required despite the progress during that era? To understand, we have to scrutinise two elaborate theories.

UNDERSTANDING THE NECESSITY OF FEMINISM: GLASS CEILINGS & ‘THE SECOND SEX’

Glass ceilings remain rock solid: then, now, and forever!

In the simplest and truest of words, ‘glass ceiling’ is a metaphor for barricades, preventing women and marginalised people from reaching higher levels of success. First used in 1978 (almost towards the end of the 20th century) by writer and consultant Marilyn Loden at a panellist discussion at women'sExposition in New York, about women in the workplace. Loden was invited to discuss how women were to blame for the barriers preventing them from their careers.

Loden, instead, challenged the cultural differences (or a more fitting term would be biases) women face when their careers stagnate at middle-management roles, preventing them from attending higher leadership roles or executive positions. The phrase is commonly used to discuss the difficulties faced by women and minorities when trying to move to higher roles in a male dominated corporate hierarchy. A prime example of this would be, though swept under the carpet, that women made up 46.9% of the labour force in the U.S. but held only 30.6% of chief executive positions and that too in the year 2023.

The effects of glass ceiling are:

1. Receiving less payment than colleagues of a different gender who do the same job.
2. Experiencing microaggressions diurnally.
3. Isolation or abandonment.
4. Being treated with condescension for perceived incompetence.
5. Being constantly passed over for promotions or other important career opportunities.
6. Getting rejected from a job.

In the decades, since the term was first coined, women have truthfully made substantial gains in the workforce. The number of employed U.S. women rose to 74 million in the very recent year, 2022, compared to less than 54 million in 1990.

This concept was later popularised in a 1986 ‘Wall Street Journal’ article discussing the corporate hierarchy and invisible barriers. In 2015, quoting Gay Bryant (the former editor of Working Woman magazine), the publication reported that the concept goes back to the 1970s and may have originated with two women at Hewlett-Packard (hp), I recommend reading the book The Big Lie by Anthony Bianco, to get an insight into the incident at Hewlett-Packard. To shorten it, in September 2006, Newsweek reported that HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn had authorised a team of security experts to get to the bottom of who, from the company's board had leaked a story about an HP strategy meeting to CNET. This investigation allegedly spied on board members and journalists, under the guise of ‘pretext’ which is illegal, meaning obtaining personal information under false pretences. Dunn resigned from her position and others involved faced legal consequences. This occured in the year 2006. Another incident that took place in 2002 was that of the CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina. Fiorina was instrumental in the controversial merger between HP and Compaq between 2002, which faced significant opposition but ultimately went through. She was eventually ousted by the board of directors in 2005 amid dissatisfaction with the company's performance and strategic direction.

Tom Perkins, known for being incredibly vindictive and increasingly erratic, refused to see Patricia Dunn (or Patty Dunn) as a chairwoman, and found being subordinated to her an abomination. And so Perkins became the guy who blew the whistle on HP's spy scandal.

• History of the glass ceiling

When Hilary Clinton ran for president in 2008 and 2016, her oath of shattering the ‘highest, hardest, glass ceiling’ reverberated. Vice President Kamala Harris shattered the second-highest glass ceiling in the U.S. when she became the first female and the first Black and South Asian Vice President on 20th of January, 2021. She was the first Black Woman to be elected district attorney of San Francisco and first woman and first Black and South Asian attorney general of California.

With that being said, let us excavate the pillars of ‘glass ceiling’ theory. The U.S. The Department of Labour launched the Glass Ceiling Commission in 1991, in response to the growing concern over barriers preventing women and minorities from reaching heights of opportunities. It was charged with identifying the barriers that prevailed and policies that companies adopted to swell diversity at managerial and executive levels. The commission found that the qualified women and minorities, filled with potential, were being denied the opportunity to compete for or win decision-making positions, falling prey to the deep-seated stereotypes that both employers and employees held against women and minorities in a negative light.

Now, regarding examples of retaining glass ceilings and whether they genuinely haven't completely disappeared yet, will be expanded in the ‘Do we still need feminism today? If yes, why?’ Column afterwards.

Ensuing, is The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir.

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

In itself it could be an apt topic for a well researched paper. But, this is not possible now for me to expand in details on the elaborate expansion of its nuances. But I would try my best to communicate the message it has to convey in a very concise manner, with as meagre words as possible.

Adopted and revised as the ‘Bible’ of feminism, The Second Sex, is one of the most integral works in feminist and queer studies per its gender-sex distinction. Published in 1949, it came to be a treatise on feminism. There are two volumes to this work, the first one dealing with ‘Facts and Myths’ and the second one with ‘Lived Experience’.

• Women as the ‘Other’

‘What is a woman?’ Beauvoir asks. The distinction between a ‘man’ and a ‘woman’, she argues, is primarily biological. And that distinction had always been attributed to the biological difference to ‘inferiority’, and not exactly ‘individuality’. This induced a collective comfort in the social and economic dependence on the so called ‘dominant sex’. Akin to Nietzsche's ressentiment, from childhood women are taught to internalise the social idea of womanhood, leading them to wallow in the lack of their personhood. A man remains the one who doesn't need to justify his position in society as the default.

She takes up in ‘The Psychoanalytic Point of View’, breaking Freud's misogynistic approach towards defining sexual development. For Freud, any kind of sexual drive, irrespective of its gender, is inherently masculine. Further, it was noted that women involved in literature, art or politics would be less ‘virile’ (Freud used virile to describe potency in both the genders). Beauvoir goes as far as saying that defloration is rape in this patriarchal framework where the act of performing sex is taught to women.

• Economic Liberation

In ‘The Point of View of Historical Materialism’, Beauvoir infers that the identity of a woman is determined by her economic values. By depriving women of the resources and access to meaningful work, the woman is yet again reduced to a state of contingency on the man. Beauvoir goes on to use the inherent capacity of women to reproduce to justify the submissive position women have in society. With the advent of private property, women started getting treated as if they were the ‘property’ of men. This prescribed incredible value to fidelity and loyalty in marriages because otherwise it would hamper the man's capacity to continue his lineage.

Beauvoir also posits that women have to economically liberate themselves, instead of only hooping through that of a father's daughter to a husband's wife, to save themselves the risk of being defaced by taking to ‘low professions’ like prostitution, which again revolves around the idea of chastity and fidelity.

By deliberately creating structures that oust women from the ‘human order’, which is masculine by default, women appear as ‘temptations’ no matter whatever they wear, wherever they go, or whatever they do. The prospect of subjection appeals to a man because it maintains the status quo as his superiority.

The development of liberalism, however, represents a nudge in a positive direction for Beauvoir as it fostered individualism across both sexes.

• Mystification and Representation

Beauvoir draws some similarities between Nature and women, both of whom seem to instinctively resist the advances of the opposite sex. After having established women as the ‘other’ (alien), men or the patriarchy (of which men and women both could be a part of) need to impose themselves on the world constantly to force their superiority and their worth.

• The making of a woman

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one” (Beauvoir, 283)

I have often wondered why this excerpt is so frequent? Because as the most quoted phrase of Beauvoir, it establishes womanhood as a continuous of ‘femininity’. In Volume II, Beauvoir analyses how girls are noticeably treated differently from boys into becoming a woman (even though not too prominent a difference is exhibited, consider reading The Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where Pura Vicario raises her sons to be men, and her daughters to be wives). Several pieces of research show girls and boys maintaining typical characteristics until the age of 12 are treated differently around the time they hit puberty. Beauvoir asserts that from a very tender age, boys are pushed to be independent and ‘strong’ which induces pain, while girls are overly kept under protection and observation. This leads to the disparity between the youths, introducing the boy's own identity while the girl is reared into submission.

The genitals and sexuality of both girls and boys integrally constitute their identities but manifest in different ways. Since the boy is taught to wield his identity, his genital and his sexual potency is encouraged (one must have heard about ‘manhood’). Contrary to this, women even accidentally letting the word ‘sex’ slip through her tongue is a taboo, her sexuality and expressions are repressed and discouraged (in fact something as simple and as scientific as menstruation).

When growing up, girls are taught to be emotionally compliant. There is a proverb in Bengali that says “Tui meye hoye jonmechis, koshto to toke sojjo kortei hobe” (you were born a woman, suffering is your destiny), and I can't begin to explain how wrong and infuriating that statement is, and has always been! Girls are taught to be ashamed of their sexual desires, and are subjected to more restrictions and responsibilities than boys. Girls then grow up to be alienated from their own bodily pleasures.

Strict beauty standards are imposed on a woman as soon as she is barely an adult, and are taught to be more passive and to desire marriage. This, according to Beauvoir, leads to the internalisation of their grievances with themselves, often causing great pain.

• Faces of the Woman

‘A woman is everything except a woman’

This quote is purely a product of my own. In every women'sDay, I see paragraphs where a woman is being commemorated because she was a spectacular mother, a selfless wife, a resilient sister, and a forbearing daughter. I ask why? We have always learned the purest form of love is what we know as ‘unconditional love’, then why does a woman need to be a mother, a sister, a friend, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a wife, or anything that brings with it good and chattel conditions?

Beauvoir, in the Second Part of Volume II, dissects the roles a woman takes on in the course of her life. The author condemns every role as they are purported by the society that has ingrained patriarchy and capitalism.

The wife, the ultimate role society assigned to a woman even before she had been born for ages now. Beauvoir noted that the prospect of women's employment economically indeed liberated them, but could not rid women of the social obligations of being a ‘wife’. And even being a secure, stable ‘wife’, comes with its fair share of drawbacks— a ‘wife’ is not a ‘good wife’ if she dares to prioritise herself or her own happiness ever. She is not a ‘good wife’ if she rightfully talks back or raises her voice. And she is not a ‘good wife’ if she scrapes her husband's flaws and exposes them.

Beauvoir doesn't expose the fact that women marry to save whatever social identity and reputation they have, in addition to seeking financial security.

The mother. In a circumstance where women have no rights to her own body, where abortion laws are made by men per their political and religious inclinations, women often suffer. This ruins not just the mother's life but also the baby's. Anti-abortion laws seek to force the woman into becoming a mother (whether it is applicable to female foeticide is another debate completely), without any follow-ups to ensure the mother's well-being. If the mother conceived by intercourse accident or by sexual harassment, or if she is not mentally prepared, she becomes aware of the narrowing down of her life. This results in the mother dumping her unresolved trauma, and her emotions on her impressionable children.

The Prostitute, according to Beauvoir, was initially an occupation created by men to compensate for sexual dissatisfaction in their marital lives. While many women engage in prostitution of their own volition, there is a number of women who turn to it because they have barely any other avenues for sustenance. From now on, before holding any prostitute accountable for their profession, I request everyone to watch the movie GANGUBAI KATHIYAWADI once, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

The Old Lady is a free but fearful woman who has been deprived of opportunities and resources all her life and can no longer do anything because she had already spent all her life satisfying others and sacrificing herself. Beauvoir infers women often fear ageing because of the immense value prescribed to a woman's beauty and her physical attributes, as if a woman is only a pretty face, skin and bones and tantalising flesh, and not heart and soul. And by the time realisation kicks in, the only beacon of hope in their lives remains tied to the lives of their children.

• Obstruction to Liberation

Narcissism, according to Beauvoir, is the process of objectification of oneself. As for the most part of their lives women are misunderstood, they begin yearning for their childhood days when they were not ‘gendered’ yet. This fixation on the self keeps them from developing genuine connections, as they are incapable of understanding the existence of other persons. The author attributes narcissism not to an inflated sense of self but to the unreasonable dependence on validation by others. In the concluding chapters of The Second Sex, Beauvoir narrates about how women respond to their oppression in a way that deprives them of their chances at liberation.

With so many inconveniences still intact, how did the women pave their own way to be where they are today? It is a very well known answer, through the multiple waves of ‘feminism’. We will now take a stroll along the shore of the coast named ‘feminism’ where each wave will break against lengths in utmost precision.

THE WAVES OF FEMINISM

To simply put, “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people,” suggestive through a quippy definition from Marie Shear.

Simone de Beauvoir wrote that ‘the first time we see a woman take up her pen in defence of her sex’ was Christine de Pizan who wrote Epitre au Dieu d'Amour (Epistle to the God of Love) in the 15th century. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Modesta di Pozzo di Forzi worked in the 16th century. Marie Le Jars de Gournay, Anne Bradstreet and François Poullain de la Barre wrote during the 17th.

Feminists and scholars, therefore have divided the movement's history into four ‘waves’. The metaphor of ‘waves’ representing the various surges of feminism began in 1968, when Martha Weinman Lear published an article in the New York Times called The Second Feminist Wave. Lear's article connected the suffrage movement of the 19th century with the women's movements during the 1960s. This terminology spread like wildfire, becoming the widely accepted way to define feminism

Although this metaphor of ‘feminist waves’ is helpful for people to distinguish between different eras of women's activism, it is impossible to accurately pinpoint specific dates that started or ended each wave. Each historical era/wave was inspired by a long tradition of activism that transcended generational lines.

Having said that, let us explore how the chronology has been put forth.

THE FIRST WAVE OF FEMINISM

The French Revolution

“The French Revolution marked the beginnings of the organised participation of women in politics,” said historian R.B. Rose in ‘Feminism, Women and the French Revolution.’

In 1789, French women were largely confined to the private sphere. Domestic duty and family obligations dictated their behaviour, and public life was a man's domain. Women, during the French Revolution figured prominently their activism and bravery brought about tangible changes which were reflected in the social and political organisation of the First Republic. Unfortunately, many of those advancements were swiftly retracted by Napoleon after the Revolutionary Era came to an end. The French Revolution was born out of the ideas of the ‘Enlightenment’, a philosophical movement of the 18th century marked by a rejection of traditional, social, religious, and political ideas and an emphasis on rationalism. Eighteenth-century philosophers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire challenged the thinking of French society.

On October 5, 1789, thousands of armed French women marched from markets in Paris to the Palace of Versailles. They demanded that the king address their economic concerns and the drastic food shortages happening across France. Their fight was far from over.

A few months prior, reformers were able to persuade the French National Constituent Assembly to adopt the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’, allowing rights to various members of the population. As a recurrent happening, women and other minority groups were excluded from citizenship. When this document became the preamble to the French Constitution in 1791, many women shifted their focus to gaining equal rights.

Playwright Olympes de Gouges declared “Women are born free and are man's equal in law. Social distinctions can be founded solely on common utility,” in 1791 in ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen.’

Timeline of the first wave feminism

The first wave of feminism coincided and often overlapped with the abolitionist movement in the US when activists fought for the abolition of slavery. Some conservative suffragette adopted a segregationist stance that prioritised the voting rights of White women over Black men and Black women. Although it is quite impossible to assign the exact dates of initiation for anything at all, here is a brief overview of first wave feminism in the US.

i. 1840: Abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London and were denied seats in the room purely because they were women. They watched the demonstration from a separate gallery, where they could indirectly listen, and could not directly participate. Stanton was strongly influenced by Mary Wollstoncraft's first feminist treatise, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ (1972).

ii. 1848: The first women'sRights Convention was organised by the pioneer Cady Stanton in the US in 1848. Hundreds of attendees convened at the Seneca Falls Convention to discuss the various political, social, and religious issues that affected women in the United States. This again corroborates the idea that ‘feminism’ is not ‘anti-men’, with the direct participation of men to bring the changes. It took six sessions over two days to determine the most crucial issues the women'sRights Movement faced, leading to the Declaration of Sentiments. This document reiterated the need for equality and outlined sixteen other grievances regarding suffrage, government representation, marriage, divorce laws and employment. Here is how men were the direct participants— out of 100 people who had signed the document, thirty two were men, and the remaining sixty eight were women.

iii. 1866: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the AERA (America Equal Rights Association) during the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, which focused on women's voting rights.

iv. 1867: in 1867, sojourner Truth spoke at AERA, emphasising the importance of pushing for Black women's rights as the momentum for civil rights had begun. It was put off until the second wave.

v. 1869: largely opposed to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, that guaranteed the right to vote for all people exclusive of race of colour, but discarded gender, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and fellow suffragist Susan B. Anthony left AERA, and formed a new organisation namely National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The remaining conservative feminists of AERA, including Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone constructed their own organisation, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).

vi. 1872: Police arrested Susan B. Anthony and dozens of other women for illegally voting in the presidential election.

vii. 1890: The NWSA and AWSA combined to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). They opted to get states to pass enough amendments towards gender equality to force Congress to create a federal amendment guaranteeing nationwide equality. NAWSA attempted to recruit college educated and privileged members to help spread the word, but the plan failed.

viii. 1914: dissatisfied with the ‘state-by-state’ reformation, Alice Paul split from NAWSA, forming the National women'sParty. Over the next few years, Alice organised picketing and protests, mainly outside the White House in Washington DC.

ix. 1916: Margaret Sanger inaugurated the first birth control clinic, as a form of protest against the New York State law banning contraception distribution. In that same year, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman to be elected to the House of Representatives.

x. 1918: With Woodrow Wilson's announcement of his support for the suffrage in 1918, leading to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, historians view this year as the end of the first wave of feminism.

The Temperance Movement

“The temperance movement, in fact, gave women the opportunity to be engaged in public political life for the first time,” voiced Tara Isabella Burton in ‘The Feminist History of Prohibition’.

In an effort to fight against immorality, the Temperance Movement developed in the 1820s to limit and prohibit the consumption of liquor. Many middle class white women who were deemed the ‘moral authorities of their households’, drinking was considered a threat to the stability of their homes. These women, alongside male supporters of temperance began to create cartoons, songs and speeches about the harms of alcohol usage.

First wave feminists were influenced by the widespread activism of women during the temperance movement.

Abolitionist Movement

“If not all female abolitionists became women’s rights activists, pioneering feminists owed their public careers to abolition.” - Historian Manisha Sinha in The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition

On the 12th of February, 1821, two hundred working class African American women established the Daughters of Africa Society in Philadelphia. This society provided support to their members and a weekly allowance of $1.50 when they were sick.

The Colored Female Free Produce Society was formed in 1831 to boycott the exploitation of enslaved labour by only selling items produced by free African Americans.

African American women also went on extensive lecture tours across the country, published letters, poems, and slave narratives to fight for the abolition of slavery. Maria Stewart, Jarena Lee, Sarah Louise Forten and Sarah Mapps Douglas all openly spoke against slavery while advocating for women's education and citizenship rights.

Criticism

The major criticism of first wave feminism is that it primarily focused on only the plight of White women, ignoring that of the enslaved Black women and Asian women who were barred from obtaining citizenship and voting rights in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In 1917, white women in New York attained the right to vote, but many Chinese women did not.

Other criticisms focus on its racial bias and encouragement of segregationism. Some suffragettes didn't support the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.

End of the first wave of feminism

Militant suffragist and National Womans’ Party founder Alice Paul believed that the 19th Amendment was not enough to give women full equality. She proffered the Equal Rights Amendment to congress to solidify women's constitutional rights. Due to this amendment putting the women's labour protection at risk, it faced opposition from other feminists. These ideological differences created a farther rift between feminists as this chapter came to a close. The next sustained large scale feminist surge would not be until the ‘second wave of feminism’ in the 1960s. Let us now delve deeper.

THE SECOND WAVE OF FEMINISM

Ten whole years after The Second Sex was published in the US, American feminist writer Betty Friedan kindled the second feminist wave with her book The Feminine Mystique, built on the foundation of Simone de Beauvoir's book, and released in 1963.

In the mid-1950s, Friedan found herself as a stay-at-home housewife after a long career as a writer, activist and journalist. After she got married and had children, Friedan left her career and moved to the suburbs with her family. Even though she freelanced, she came to the realisation that she was not content with just being a housewife. She was pressured to find satisfaction as a mother and a homemaker, no matter if she was unhappy or mentally hampered thoroughly. In 1957, at her 15-year Smith College reunion, Friedan surveyed her classmates and found that their conditions were twinning Friedan's own.

For the next five years, Friedan conducted interviews with white middle class women, who were grappling with their roles as housewives. Ultimately, she published her findings as The Feminine Mystique. This book sold over 3 million copies within the first years, and quickly fueled a resurgence of the feminist movement. In her book, Friedan criticised the separate ‘sphere’ of motherhood and homemaking that women were relegated to. In comparison, men were granted to flourish in the ‘male sphere’ of work, politics and especially power. This book encouraged women to step outside of that ‘sphere’ and fight gender oppression, which she called ‘the problem that has no name’.

In the same year, that is in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into law. The new legislation stipulated that women could no longer be paid less than men for doing ‘comparable work’ at the same job. This Act was the result of a group of women in the White House, led by labour activist Esther Peterson.

Following suit of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, two more legal victories propelled the fight for women's rights forwards. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prevented employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, religion, sex or natural origin, and the Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court ruling of 1965 which obstructed anyone from limiting a woman's access to contraception or other methods of birth control.

Even so, these were not the only problems the feminists were struggling with.

Six other key issues of the second wave of feminism

i. Unacknowledged at home: this might sound a little too familiar even now, since this legacy of not acknowledging women and their ventures at home still continues. With the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the first major legislative victory of the second wave victory barreled in. According to an amendment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law made wage discrimination on the ground of gender, illegal. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as mentioned already, was another milestone in prohibiting workplace discrimination and including sexual harassment. But what about home? The discrimination at home? The inequality at home? The injustice at home? Second wave feminists were critical of how women's household works as mothers, cooks, cleaners and assistants remained rigidly traditional, kept unappreciated, uncompensated and in fact overlooked. women's labours, at or outside home had frequently been taken for granted due to assigned ‘gender roles’ (just as men's duties as the earning member have been).

By seeking better opportunities in the workplace, securing affordable childcare, and raising awareness of women and men alike, second wave feminists helped expand the opportunities for women across society.

ii. Reproductive Rights: most probably, released (to some degree) from the ‘sexual taboos’, second wave of feminism was when one of the most emphasised priorities became immensely prominent, leading upto affordable, safe access to sexual health-care, with contraception, abortion and pregnancy support for young women. The FDA approved the first oral contraceptive known as ‘the pill’ in 1960, giving many women more control over their reproductive system.

iii. Equal opportunities at education: In Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, educational institutions with federal funding were forbidden from discriminating based on gender identity and pregnancy. This led to the integration of many schools, especially in higher education.

iv. Class: The second wave of feminism was heavily plagued by radical feminism and the intellectual ferment of the women'sLiberation Movement, which was critical of the contributions that capitalist class systems played in sustaining unequal power relations between men and women. Because the effects of sexism were more severe at the low end of the income scale, many organisers advocated for broad social benefits that would help make women financially independent of men.

v. Race: When we say ‘feminism is not just for women’, we mean it. Another very grave issue of second wave feminism was race. The overlapping concerns of the Civil Rights Movement led to contention over priorities and strategies. The struggles of White, middle-class women were different from those of Black women and other women of colour. This led to an emphasis on intersectionality, or the notion that oppression works in complicated, mutually reinforcing ways.

vi. Organisations for women: Many women found empowerment and solidarity by joining grassroots feminist organisations with explicit political goals. One of the most prominent, the National Organisation for Women (NOW), once led by Betty Friedan continues to be a powerful lobbying force of the US.

The Women's Liberation Movement

In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) proposed by Alice Paul in 1923 finally passed in Congress. In the same year, Steinem teamed up with Betty Friedan and other activists such as Congresswoman Bella Abzug and Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm to form the National Women's Political Caucus. This caucus was to establish support for gender equality, and ensure proper women's representation in political office.

Early in the second wave, feminist writer Gloria Steinem gained national attention by going undercover as Playboy Bunny. Her exposé called ‘A Bunny's Tale’ highlighted the sexism and low wages that women faced in these clubs. Steinem went on to become one of the most recognizable leaders of the second wave. She co-founded both the ‘Ms’ and the ‘New York’ magazines and covered political demons, beginning from abortion to the legalisation of rape. Steinem first spoke publicly in 1969 at an event to legalise abortion in New York State.

The Civil Rights Movement

“we are committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression…”

By the Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses, African men and women were still restricted from voting.

In 1969, Frances M. Beal published ‘Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female’ detailing the experiences of African American women during the feminist movement. Her essay specifically noted the exploitation of Black women in the society and the different struggles between White and ‘non-White’ feminists.

By the 1970s, Black women were gathering as separate feminist organisations starting with the National Black Feminist Organisation (NBFO) in 1973. The Combahee River Collective formed in 1974 for similar purposes, only adding to it the subject of sexuality that was often left out.

Bra Burning Women

No bras were originally burned but the essence of empowerment was proved through the ‘bra-burning’ protest of 1968. On September 7, 1968, a few hundred women interrupted the live broadcast of the Miss America Pageant protest in Atlantic City, New Jersey to protest beauty standards and the objectification of women. These women threw bras, high heels, ‘Playboy’ magazines and other things symbolic of ‘feminine products’ into a ‘Freedom Trash Can’. This action was compared to the actions of Vietnam war protesters who would burn their draft-cards. This idea of bra-burning feminists contributed to the stereotypes of feminists as ‘man-hating’.

The end of the second wave of feminism

As multiple sub-groups created new organisations for themselves, by the late 1970s, debates within feminism grew. One of the key debates was over pornography and sexual activity. Many feminists could not decide between being ‘anti-porn’ feminists or ‘sex-positive feminists’. This debate accelerated. The second wave came to a close and a large-scale feminist movement would not return for another decade.

THE THIRD WAVE OF FEMINISM

Third wave feminism, in many ways, was a hybrid creation. It was influenced by the second wave of feminism, Black feminism, transnational feminism, Global south feminism and queer feminism. The beginning of this wave of feminism is generally marked by Anita Hill Senate hearings in 1991. Hill testified that the then-nominee for the US Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, had sexually harassed her. The prominence of the hearings in the culture marked a new era of activism and ferment that sought to dismantle gender exploitation and prejudice. Daughter of writer and activist Alice Walker, Rebecca Walker wrote the 1992 article ‘Becoming the Third Wave’ in response to the Hill hearings. This article is credited for coining the term ‘third wave’.

Third wave feminism sought to reclaim femininity and female sexuality. The Riot Grrrl punk movement played a very pivotal role, which will be discussed in this very article later on.

Forwarding, what were the main issues of the third in the waves of feminism?

Five key issues of the third wave of feminism

i. Intersectionality: Women of colour, non-heterosexual (lesbian or bisexual), non-binary women, and others sought justice keeping their focus adhered to the adverse effects of class and racial discrimination. The feminists who grew up in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, learned that the world they grew up in did not need social movements because equal rights for racial minorities, sexual minorities and women have been guaranteed by law in most countries. Nonetheless the gap between law and reality, between the abstract proclamations of states and concrete lived experiences, revealed the necessity of both old and new forms of activism.

According to the Institute of women'sPolicy Research in 2016, 75.3% of what White men earned, were paid to White women, for the same labour. Police violence in Black communities still occurred at much higher rates than in other communities. 58% of transgender people surveyed experienced mistreatment from police officers, where 40% of homeless youth organisations’ clientele were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (Durso and Gates 2012), where people of colour on average made less income and had considerably lower amounts of wealth than White people and the military was the most funded institution by the government.

Feminists increasingly urged the requirement for a coalition government that organised with other groups based on their shared experiences of oppression rather than their specific identity.

Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake argued that a crucial goal for the third wave is ‘the development of modes of thinking that can come to terms with the multiple, constantly shifting bases of oppression in relation to the multiple, interpenetrating axes of identity, and the creation of a coalitional politics based on these understandings’ (Heywood and Drake 1997: 3).

In the 1980s and 1990s, third wave feminists took ‘feminism’ to new heights, taking up activism in a number of shapes. In the mid 1980s, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) began organising to press an unwilling US government and medical establishments to develop affordable drugs for people with HIV/AIDS. And when we talk about HIV/AIDS, the topic of reproductive rights is undeniable.

ii. Reproductive Rights: Like second wave feminists, feminists of third wave prioritised above everything else, women's ability to access safe, legal and affordable abortions, contraceptives, pregnancy care and child support urgently, thanks to the political reactions against previous feminist victories, many of which were being dismantled at the state level.

iii. Individual empowerment: From the punk rock scene, in which young women circulated zines and bootleg records, to the rise of the internet, allowing a universe in the grasp of one's fist, a prosperous exchange of ideas and styles flourished. Third wave feminism tended to celebrate the expression of femininity, diversity, and the unity in diversity.

iv. Sexual liberation of women: Eve Ensler's prevalent and influential play, ‘The Vagina Monologues’ which premiered in New York in 1966, was an example of the trend of third-wave feminists and activists seeking to use their sexuality as a means of empowerment and expression, in place of treating those as taboos or something illegal.

v. Violence against women: as in every other feminist wave, the violences against women was emphasised by third wave feminists. Seeking effective social and legal redress, activists, in unison with writers, highlighted the persistence of rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment.

It is not yet cent percent known, or could be said is much rather controversial whether or not third-wave feminism continues or has been succeeded by a fourth wave. There is no confirmation of the third wave of feminism's conclusion.

As of now, remember the Riot Grrrl punk movement noted? That was not the only feminist movement, howsoever. There are a couple more of them.

FEMINIST MOVEMENTS

Departing from the already mentioned movements linked to feminism, there are movements that are not as talked about as the rest. Some of them are discussed below.

[Note: I would present these as a mere overview, not minutely describing everything. If anyone is interested in reading a fulfilling article on this subject, please comment or you could also email me on dreamerbeliever004@gmail.com]

1. The Riot Grrrl Movement

“We are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak.”

The Riot Grrrl Movement believed in girls actively engaging in cultural productions, creating their own music and fanzines rather than following existing materials. Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy created songs with excessively personal lyrics that dealt with sensitive topics as rape, incest and eating disorders.

In the same year the riot grrrl manifesto emerged, 1991, the independent label K Records organised a punk festival in Olympia, dubbed the International Pop Underground Convention. The first night of the six day festival featured an all-women line up. The night was billed as Love Rock Revolution Girl Style Now and the takeover went down in history as ‘girls’ night’.

This movement arose in the early 1990s, when a group of women in Olympia, Washington, held a meeting to discuss how to address sexism in the punk scene. The women wanted to launch a ‘girl riot’ against a male chauvinistic society. These bands used their music to express feminist and anti-racist perspectives.

‘Girl power’, a slogan that began in the pages of Riot Grrrl zines by the late ‘Nineties started being appropriated by pop sensations like ‘Spice Girls’. Few people claim that this movement never was terminated and that bands like ‘Pussy Riot’ are still carrying the torch today.

2. The Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement

Carolyn Bronstein, in the book Battling Pornography, locates the origins of anti-pornography sentiment in the turbulent social and cultural history of the late 1960s and 70s, expanding the gradual emergence of a controversial anti-pornography movement.

The anti-pornography movement in the US has existed since before the 1969 Supreme Court decision of Stanley v. Georgia, which held that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes by establishing an implied ‘right to privacy’ in US law. This led President Lyndon B. Johnson to study pornography, after appointing a commission with the backing of Congress. The anti-pornography movement seeks to maintain or restore restrictions and to increase or create restrictions on the production, sale or distribution of pornography.

3. Sex-Positive Movement

Sex positive feminism, also known as pro-sex, feminism, sex-radical feminism or sexually liberal feminism, is a movement that began in the early 1980s. Some became involved in the sex positive feminist movement, in response to efforts by anti-pornography feminists, such as Catherine MacKinnon and Dorchen Leidholt to put pornography at the centre of women's oppression. Andrea Dworkin and Robin Morgan held the belief that the degradation and objectification of women'sbodies fostered ideas of assault and sexual violence. This period of debate and acrimony between sex-positive and anti-pornography feminists during the early 1980s, is often referred to as ‘Feminist Sex Wars’.

Sex positive feminism affirms that the discourse on women'ssexual pleasure is silenced and marginalised in today's world. Suppressing their sexual desires with the supposed purpose of protecting women will only make them appear as the weaker sex. Over time, women have always been declared as the one to ‘submit’ to men's desires, or in the present day what we call ‘bottoming’.

Sex educator and feminist Shere Hite challenged these misconceptions, and supported feminine sexual liberation, as demonstrated in her work The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality in 1976, countering Freudian beliefs asserting that women were capable of experiencing sexual pleasure independently, without the need for any intercourse. Hite also faced antifeminist backlash due to her statistical methods of collecting data, demonstrating bias, and the book again became controversial.

CEDAW

This is more of a policy than a movement but I would detail it here as I would not be making a separate gallery for women's policies.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for Youth is an international legal instrument that demands countries to eliminate discrimination against women and girls in all areas. The main aim of CEDAW is to promote equality everywhere. It was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, and is often described as an international bill of rights for women. Consisting of a Preamble and 30 articles, it defines what constitutes discrimination against women:

“...any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.”

By accepting the Convention, States commit themselves to undertake a series of measures to end discrimination on gender bias:

• To incorporate the principle of equality of men and women in their legal system, abolish all discriminatory laws and adopt appropriate ones, prohibiting discrimination against women.
• To establish tribunals, and other public institutions to ensure the effective protection of discrimination against women.
• To ensure elimination of all acts of discrimination by persons, organisations or enterprises.

The three principles of CEDAW are:

• Equality/Non-discrimination.
• Substantive equality and
• State obligation.

There are several pros and cons to each of the movements, but if I began listing all the nuances, this piece would be everlasting. So I would repeat, please leave a comment or email me if anyone is interested in a full fledged article on this topic. Because believe me, ‘feminism’ is so vast that this is not even a quarter of the entire article. As proof, let us take a look at the multiple dimensions related to feminism— immediately, I would like to present the relationship of feminism to a broader (tentatively political) context.

FEMINISM AND ITS RELATIONS TO A BROADER CONTEXT

[Due to political and/or legal reasons, I would not put a picture here]

1. Socialist feminism

‘Socialism is a political and economic doctrine which states that the community should own or regulate the means of production’ (StudySmarter).

The term ‘socialist feminism’ was first used when the Chicago women'sLiberation Union published an essay called ‘Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the women'sMovement’. According to feminist historian, Linda Gordon, Socialist feminism is different because it considers both gender and class and is intersectional at its foundation. ‘Intersectionality’ was first used by Kimberlé Crenshaw. This kind of feminists believe that pre-existing political, economic and cultural structures must be challenged to attain a fair and equal society. The concentration of socialist feminism is on highlighting how capitalism exacerbates the detrimental impacts of patriarchal structure and how patriarchy fuels the negative gender consequences of capitalism, therefore wanting to dismantle capitalism with a socialist economic system put in its place, and a complete restructure and redefining, to release women and other gender variant individuals from oppression.

Socialist feminists claim gendered division of labour is unnatural. But, it is crucial to notice, as have been narrated time and again, socialist feminism, like all other dimensions of feminism, opposes patriarchy, and does not oppose men. According to socialist feminists, toxic masculinity is harmful to individuals across society regardless of their gender identity, forcing them into traditional roles, no matter if they prefer it or not (by now, I believe everyone has got the drift of patriarchy as nothing but a ugly structure of an amalgamation of capitalism and dictatorship). The Dual System theory combines features of marxism and radical feminism into one idea. Socialist feminism is based on Karl Marx's ideas to assert that class oppression made women second-class citizens, but it went even more profound, saying that gender oppression is not due to being part of an oppressed class but rather The Dual System theory.

Some of the remarkable works would be A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) by Mary Wollstoncraft, The Personal is Political (1969) by Carol Hanisch and ‘Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the women'sMovement’ (1972).

A few of the noted socialist feminism groups are Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses), Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.

2. Feminism and Science

Feminist perspectives encompass questions about methodology, epistemology, and ontology of scientific inquiry. They have detailed the historically gendered participation in the practice of science, the usual marginalisation or exclusion of women from the profession and the disappearance of their contributions when they have contributed. Feminists have also noted how science has been slow to study women's lives, bodies and experiences. Feminists have also scrutinised explicit ways that scientific research has been affected by sexist and gendered presuppositions about the subject matter and the method appropriate to the sciences.

So far, there is no mention of hating ‘men’ as of that, or feminism acting as a propaganda against men. I would now unfurl the pieces that would cause one to think otherwise, and yet I would stress on the fact ‘feminism is not anti-men’ as would be proven in the points themselves.

THE UGLY SIDE OF FEMINISM? YES OR NO?

PRO FEMINISM = NO FEMINISM?

To simply put, pro feminism refers to support of the cause of feminism without implying that the member/s is/are supporter/s of the feminist movement by any means. This term is most often used in reference to men. Although this inclusion of men's voices as a ‘feminist’ is where the controversy presented itself, the problem came to the surface.

For half of the population, ‘feminism’ was a word reserved just for women. In response to this objection, various groups coined and defended other terms like ‘anti-sexism’ and ‘pro-feminism’. Some feminists, although I would like to call them misandrists or pseudo-feminists (elaborated further), believed that it was inappropriate for men to identify themselves as ‘feminists’ and that, that did not mean real feminism at all. Those who claim that the word ‘feminism’ or ‘feminist’ can apply equally to both men and women, often point out that arguments in the favour of advocates of ‘pro-feminism’ were based on notions of ‘biological determinism’ and ‘essentialism’, which were contrary to the feminist principles.

For understanding the differences in the initiative of pro-feminism and the backlash received, we have to scan what were the objectives of pro-feminism. The objectives are laid out below:

Objectives

1. A sympathy for feminism revolving around a simple acceptance that men and women are equal and should thus be treated equally, gaining access to potential jobs and areas of public life as men do.
2. They believed and wanted to change that women suffered inequalities and injustices in society while men received various forms of powers and privilege.
3. They also believed that the dominant model of manhood or masculinity is not only oppressive to women, but men themselves as well. And they believed that men should take responsibility for their own behaviours and attitudes and work to change those of men in general.
4. Pro-feminists usually campaigned violence against women, sexism, inequalities in pay and promotion at work, sex trafficking, and women's rights to birth control. And here is to back my point that feminism is not ‘anti-men’ and not just ‘for women’, not at all!
5. Pro-feminist men were/are involved in men'shealth, men'sstudies, anti-violence work with boys and with young men in schools offering sexual harassment workshops in workplaces, running community education campaigns, counseling male perpetrators of violence, the development of gender equity curricula in schools and many other areas.

This should have been it, right? With no obstacles and no opposition? Instead, praiseworthy for its diversity? Wrong. Some so-called ‘feminists’ (what we would designate pseudo-feminism today) prioritised women-centred approaches to activism and advocacy because pro-feminists advocated for a more inclusive and intersectional motive that addressed the needs of all genders. Exactly what some of the pro-feminist men believed, happened. The latter dreaded that within this men's movement, there was a plausibility of the movement to turn towards the defence of what they saw as male privilege and position.

Another possible reason for tension against pro-feminism was the perpetuation of stereotypes and misconceptions about the movement. Some critics argued that pro-feminism seeks to diminish or undermine the experiences of men, portraying it as a zero-sum game where gains for women come at the expense of men.

Despite these challenges, pro-feminism continues to push forward, buoyed by the resilience and determination of activists around the globe.

With everything into efficacy, what is the need for this article at all? Why am I fighting tooth and nail to prove that feminism is all-inclusive and not anti-men? Precisely, because there are enough purposes for me to do so. The next two points concern both clarifications of why feminism is considered ‘anti-men’ and why it is not that.

ANTI-FEMINISM

What brought the anti-feminists together was a fiercely different discourse regarding the sexes, whose hierarchical and complimentary social functions were prescribed by nature and/or divine will. Any change was perceived and interpreted as a danger for the social order or ‘unnatural’. An intense pessimism sustained the declinist form of thought. The de-virilization of the white women castrated by the gynecocracy is one of its central themes. Too hard to grip the concept? Okay, then let's not complicate it further than it already is. I would simply put the instigating forces behind why anti-feminists think what they think, word by word, collected from Reddit and Quora users (I would refrain from putting their account names, to ensure privacy. In case, the reader is one of the commenters and wants his/her/their account be mentioned, or content be removed/modified from my article, please comment).

Why do anti-feminists hate feminists?

i. “...Many men have been led to believe feminism seeks to make men obsolete or turn women away from men. Men who dislike feminism are usually men who misunderstand it in a broad sense, in my experience. Feminism is extremely nuanced and there are many many subcategories that don't always agree with each other. This makes it easy for anti-feminists to latch on to the most extreme people who consider themselves feminists and use them as examples of why the entire concept of feminism is 'evil'.

As with lots of things in life, nuance is lost on a lot of people and they think in terms of black and white, good and evil. It's simpler for some men to believe 'feminist bad' than to believe that they may actually agree with some aspects of feminism but disagree with others.”

ii. “...Inflammatory social media posts do not represent feminism as a movement. It is possible to dislike posts saying stuff like "Men are trash" and still support feminist goals like ending rape culture, ending sexual harassment, giving women more political power, better education (especially for women living in poverty), better payment for jobs, better healthcare etc.”

iii. “Man here.

A lot of the behaviour that feminism is calling out is part of the "boys will be boys" set of behaviours that a LOT of men either participate in or tacitly condone. Not out of malice or hate for women but simply because that's the kind of behaviour that's modelled to us from a young age and even encouraged in our society.

So now things are changing. Cat calling, making sexist jokes, being "persistent" are things that are being rightly called out.

But since this behaviour is so normalised, a lot of men feel targeted and lash out instead of dealing with the uncomfortable truth that they might have participated in behaviour that is harmful and need to change and do better.

It's always easier to pretend that any criticism is an unwarranted personal attack than to make meaningful strides to change.”

iv. “People often cling to the idea that they are good by their very nature. So when they are criticised it can feel like that idea is called into question. The same dynamic happens when white people are called out on racism.

It's also hard to get people to accept being good is a result of the actions you take day to day. Once you do that you can adjust your behaviour as you learn the actions that are harmful and the actions that are helpful. But that requires both the effort of self-reflection and then actually following through. And that's hard.”

v. “I think it's a defence mechanism. It's a way for misogynists to make men and their feelings the focus of the conversation rather than men's choices and behaviours, it's a distraction and an attempt to reify gender roles.

I think buried in there is the belief that women are responsible for men's feelings, that making men feel good is our purpose in life. Telling feminists (aka women in their minds) that they're feeling hated by them is meant to elicit a sort of duty of care in any woman to reverse that feeling for them. They seem to expect validation and comfort for any woman at any time, and believe that they can trigger that behaviour by expressing the belief that they're hated by us. As if it's the cry of a baby, where a mother will jump to soothe. It's interesting, you can see them get mad when women don't console them, and then they start telling us how we're turning them into monsters who will stop supporting feminism if we're not nicer to them. Our culture frames women as manipulating men, as temptresses attracting men and driving them mad, but in reality they demand to be "manipulated" (aka serviced, consoled, soothed) by women and throw tantrums when they don't get the validation they want. It's insidious”.

vi. “They have since the day women asked for the vote. They're taught that they're the benevolent providers and protectors and women should be grateful. We also don't have any meaningful education about the horrible abuse women suffered historically. So they feel like all women were always super super happy with their situation and then one night the feminists attacked and pushed the world into darkness.

They also obsess over feminist saying stuff about men that most other women also say - like women talking about being scared of walking at night or joking about men being sensitive (trust me, the worst insults I've heard against men came from old ladies in their 80s and 90s who were also very patriarchal) because a) feminists actually have an agenda (one that might result in losing their guarantee to free labour and sex and reproduction) AND now they can divide women in good and evil again: The good average woman who wants to be a wife vs the evil ugly feminist that is tricking her into doing things she thinks she really wants. To them, feminists are especially evil because they're not just joking but saying "hey, actually this is an issue and we should resolve it!"

Basically, it's not so different from a colonial mindset of "Oh, I used my god-given superiority to help these people by telling them what to do and just taking a bit of things I wanted in return. And now suddenly they hate me????? Wow, this is reverse-bigotry!”

vii. “Strawman argument. Because it's too inconvenient to fight against equality. So they distort the opposing position to make it easier to attack. Recall that during the Civil War, the South portrayed abolition as an attempt to enslave the white race rather than what it obviously was, simply freedom for all.”

viii. “Many modern women (who are not necessarily feminists themselves) like to cherry-pick between equality and traditionalism…”

ix. “Because of their rhetoric, their verbal abuse, and gaslighting of young boys in school. Their constant aggressive stance against any male that dares to be attracted to them. Their discrimination against males when they are in hiring positions in H.R. departments. Their compulsion to see every detail of life as a ‘toxic patriarchal institution’ which ‘needs to be smashed’.”

x. Outrageous misandrists.

"The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men." - Sharon Stone

"The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race." - Sally Gearhart

"I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." - Robin Morgan

“I ask people to imagine—now I’m using this word imagine, and I’m underlining it three times—a scenario in which we kill a certain number of men every week. How many men must we kill until the patriarchy sits across the table from us and says, ‘Ok, stop.” - Mona Eltahawy

"We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess." - Elizabeth Stanton 

"I love the power women have. I think women rule the world because they rule men. Manipulating men - that's our job. That's what we're on the planet for." - Isla Lang Fisher

Now the urge to probe lies, are these the genuine flavours of feminism? Each to their own, but feminism and misandry are so close to each other that observing the dissimilarities is like trying to figure the subtle moles that sets a twin apart from an identical twin. The hiccups of ‘men-hating’ or ‘utmost women superiority’ is not feminism in itself, but misandry and/or pseudo-feminism. Before we wander into the arena of ‘pseudo-feminism’ and why is it unequal to the ripe ‘feminism’, we need to forage further into whether the Quora and Reddit comments about peoples’ views on ‘feminists’ hating men, and objections against those viewpoints with justifications are verily reliable. This is a misconception that only men are anti-feminists, I myself have been in direct contact with anti-feminist women. But since men are the ones held accountable for the same cause, I would like to provide the reaction of people as a whole towards feminism and if they are misinterpreting ‘pseudo-feminism’ or ‘misandry’ as feminism?

REACTION TOWARDS THE IDEA OF FEMINISM

‘Until you're not the victim, you'll never know the victim.’

Not only men, millions of people inwardly or outwardly oppose the ideas that there should be equal rights and opportunities for women as men. We have progressed, yes! But look back at the story of Kadambini Ganguly, the first MBBS doctor of India and the struggles of both her and her husband (in my opinion, the social reformist and proponent of women's rights in pre-independent Bengal, Dwarkanath Ganguly was a true gentlemen in its truest sense). There are people who believe that feminism is unnecessary now, as we are not in a dire need of equality anymore (the META comments under every posts/reels would confirm), there are thousands who believe in equal rights but finds ‘feminism’ a word and a movement that doesn't align with their personal beliefs or values. Specific views on these issues are rooted deeply in personal experiences rather than any data, research or science.

Apart from these, there are major five critical reasons behind the hate against feminism:

i. Society could never bear ‘aggressive’ or ‘forceful’ women. Submission, timidity, and passivity have always been injected into women. A perfect instance of this would be the ‘rest-cure’ introduced by American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell where women's neurasthenia were treated with a strictly enforced regime of six to eight weeks of uncompromising bed rest and isolation without any creative or intellectual propeller, activity or stimulation. It was accompanied by massage, electrotherapy, as well as a fatty diet rich in milk and meat. The short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a masterpiece delivering this message. A new study by Joseph Grenny and David Maxfield revealed that gender bias in the workplace is real, finding out that women's perceived competency drops by 35%, and their worth falls by $15,088 when they are judged to be ‘forceful’. Men's competency on becoming ‘assertive’ drops by 22% and their worth falls by $6,547.

Directly proportional to this was feminism, feminism has been associated with strong, angry, forceful women.

ii. Many people fear that feminism will mean that men will eventually lose power, influence, impact, authority, economic opportunities and most importantly, control and that feminists want to rise ahead of everyone and everything, want to control the world and put men down.

iii. There is also swarms of perturbation that feminism will overturn time-honoured traditions (which were in fact dangerous superstitions, please refer to my article on myths vs beliefs vs superstitions for clearer understanding), religious beliefs and established gender roles, which ‘felt’ wrong and sinful.

In regards to so many hazards, I cannot argue that someone may definitely (and rightfully so) think feminism does more harm to men than good. What if I say there is not a grain of truth to that sentence? Of course that would be an unsolicited claim lacking foundation, but what if facts, truths and history say otherwise? Take a look.

FEMINISM IS FOR MEN TOO

‘Real men don't cry.’

‘L.’

‘Gay.’

‘Weak.’

‘Man up.’

‘Womp womp.’

‘Cry about it.’

‘Fatherless behaviour.’

‘Men used to go to war.’ (before glorifying war the next time, please read George Bernard Shaw's Arms & the Man)

Stop it. This is not only just harmful any more, but demonic at this point. These are boomerangs that would certainly retreat to where it had been plunged from.

Masculinity, just like femininity, is a set of rules and standards that keep gender roles intact. They are artificial benchmarks, manmade to keep the gears of a society turning. This may come as a shock to many because of how obvious and yet so unrealized it is— women aren't the only ones sexualised. Men are subject to the same pressures. In cologne advertisements, in undergarments advertisements, men are ‘objectified’ as pleasurable vessels for women. The difference lies only where women are openly allowed to now embrace their insecurities, and men are to hide beneath a facade of ‘macho’-ness (please watch the webseries Romil and Jugal, neutral and unbiased). In the fall of 2013, 1,086,627 high school-aged boys played football. Of those participants, 67000 were diagnosed with concussions, yet studies have shown that 80% or more of concussion go unreported in high school football. In that study, players cite fear of being thought of letting others down, downplaying their brain injuries and putting their health in danger.

Ten million males in the US will suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder in their lifetimes. About 10% to 15% of cases of anorexia and bulimia are found in males.

At least 33 of 100 men have been a part of attempted or completed rape.

Men are under just as much pressure to be good-looking/unrealistically or unreasonably handsome, the breadwinner and hypersexual. According to the National Association for Anorexia Nervosa, males are less likely to come forward about eating disorders because they are seen as ‘women's diseases’. Insecurity has been dubbed a feminine emotion. This, goes without saying, is unsettling for women. However, ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘pseudo-feminism’ has led to believe that it is embarrassing and emasculating for a man to admit to sexual assault in a world where he is seen as the problem.

In all these, ‘feminism’ is not the puppeteer. It has always been in favour of men preserving the ‘human’ in them, the ‘human’ with emotions, struggles, pains. But how?

HOW DOES FEMINISM HELP MEN?

Feminists hold the notion that we live in a world where gender binary is irrelevant. Feminism benefits men as it ensures a level thought process and broad outlook rather than a straight laced Tory male (an advocate of conservative principles; one opposed to reform or radicalism) outlook which has for far too long been the staple idea of masculinity. These are how feminism helps men:

i. Gender parity: Feminism strives for gender parity. And by achieving gender parity, men would be allowed to be true to themselves, and allows men a greater depth of feeling, and ultimately greater freedom of expression.

ii. Co-existence: Feminism helps men to understand what they exactly need to do to live in a better world. It instils in men (and women) the nuances of co-existing, pros and cons alike, and teaches every individual to learn to co-exist, to learn to live, for both themselves and others.

iii. Modelling healthy masculinity: Many feminist groups such as MenEngage and Promundo focus on changing social norms of male behaviour, and supporting men's mental health to help advance gender equality

iv. Safe spaces: Since many men do not bring their emotional lives into male dominated spaces, the next step is to provide a safe space for expression. Creating spaces of learning and sharing is a strategy first developed by radical feminists in the 1960s. Through a community practice called consciousness-raising, feminists collectively worked to uncover the impacts of patriarchy. Participants of consciousness-raising groups shared their personal experiences and identified similar patterns in them. Today, gender equality organisations continue to use this consciousness-raising as a tactic to create physical and emotional spaces for men to discuss the harms they experience under patriarchy. At Boys to Men Mentoring (B2M), group facilitators in Spring Valley, California hold discussion sessions with teenage boys that incorporate the basic components of consciousness raising.

v. Centering joy and community: For organisers who work with teenage boys, centering joy is basically a plus. In addition to hosting B2M discussion circles, Reed takes the boys in his group on surfing and fishing trips. To Reed, leisure events show the boys that practising healthy masculinity can be fulfilling and offer another outlet for boys to cultivate positive relational skills. The boys developed healthy friendships with each other while learning from positive role models.

Now, if feminism was to be ‘anti-men’, feminists definitely wouldn't relay beneficiaries for men, and would have stuck to outshining the opposite gender. This is proof enough that feminism is not ‘anti-men’, never has been. To further underscore this averment, there are male allies of feminism. Why would male involve themselves in something against themselves, right?

FEMINIST MALE ALLIES

A lot of history goes unrecorded, and we might never know how many exact men were allies and feminists themselves. But men's involvement in feminism pre-dates Next-Gen Men community by more than a hundred years. Here are some examples.

i. Raja Rammohan Roy: 

A feminist ahead of his time, Raja Rammohan Roy sowed the roots of empowerment in India.

“One needn't be a woman to practise feminism,” said singer Soumita Saha. “Feminism is all about equality and I must say that Raja ji was the first ever feminist from India,” she added.

Raja ji or Raja Rammohan Roy was an eminent educationist. He is now known as a national hero for achieving and protecting the rights of Indian women.

Raja Rammohan Roy as a witness had watched his sister-in-law forced into the heinous act of ‘sati daha’ or jumping and burned into the dead husband's pyre. He vowed to stop such atrocities against women. Sati was defined as a woman who was ‘true to her ideals’. Raja Rammohan Roy was the first Indian man to protest against this custom. In 1830, Rammohan Roy travelled to the United Kingdom to ensure that Lord William Bentinck's Sati Regulation Act of 1892, banning the practice of Sati, was not overturned. Rammohan Roy also condemned the subjugation of women and opposed the prevailing idea that women were inferior to men in intellect or in a moral sense. He was a champion of women's rights. He also attacked polygamy, caste rigidity and child marriage.

ii. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar: 

Once again, long before the term ‘feminism’ was conceived, Vidyasagar launched a powerful opposition against the practice of marrying off young girls aged 10 or younger, pointing to social, ethical and hygienic issues and rejecting the validity of the Dharma Shastras that advocated it, in a paper written in 1850. In 1855, he wrote his two famous tracts on the ‘Marriage of Hindu Widows’ showing that there was no mention of prohibitions on widows remarrying in the entire body of ‘Smriti’ Literature (the Sutras and the Shastras). On July 16, 1856, The Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act, known as Act XV, was passed. Alongside the campaign for widow remarriage, Vidyasagar also campaigned against polygamy. In 1857, a petition for the prohibition of polygamy among Kulin Brahmins was presented to the government with 25000 signatures, but the revolt of sepoys resulted in postponement of this action. In 1866, Vidyasagar inspired another petition, this time with 21000 signatures.

He was an ardent advocate for women's education as well. He opened 35 schools for women throughout Bengal and was successful in enrolling 1300 students. He initiated Nari Shiksha Bhandar, a fund to lend support for the cause. He maintained his support to John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune to establish the first permanent girls’ school in India, the Bethune School, on May 7, 1849.

iii. Matt McGorry: 

In 2015, Matt publicly outed himself as a feminist. Since then he has been an outspoken ally and activist. He spoke to other straight, White men about race and feminism. His four tweets on Twitter were about a book about Black women's bodies and fat-shaming, a repost of the tweet of Ashlee Marie Pretson's tweet honouring trans lives, a link to the platform of a grassroots immigrants rights organisation, and a Black Lives Matter protest he was participating in. He was simply modelling for other men how to use privilege for good and how to be an ideal intersectional feminist.

iv. President Barack Obama: 

In August of 2016, President Obama penned his famous ‘This is What A Feminist Looks Like’ where he stressed that ‘it is absolutely men's responsibility to fight sexism too’ and reminded the ‘enormous pressure that girls are under to look and behave and even think a certain way’. Obama, on the reasons why men should be feminists too, laid out pretty clearly talking about his two daughters. “Yes, it's important that their dad is a feminist because now that's what they expect of all men.”

v. Terry Crews: 

The pro footballer turned comedian/actor turned activist is a regular commentator on healthy masculinity. At the same time when he called out gender based discrimination in the #MeToo Movement, he alluded to the Second Shift in a tweet @ing his wife. “Do what you LOVE With the one you LOVE and all you’ll have is LOVE (I’ll do the dishes when I get home @rebeccakcrews!) #PCAs” setting an example of why men taking their fair share of household works is a key to healthy living (healthy in an emotional sense).

Then, with everything put into place, bearing witness to feminist male allies, and the feminist contributions towards male uplifting, feminism overpowering sexism and fighting for intersectional equality, why does the question of feminism as anti-men even arise? Is this ‘anti-men-feminism’ the fourth wave or the latest wave of feminism, as many would call it? No, it is not. There is a stark gap between the ‘fourth wave of feminism’ and ‘pseudo-feminism’.

THE FOURTH WAVE OF FEMINISM: WHAT IS IT?

There are arguments over if the third wave ever truly ended, and for many scholars and historians, feminism consists of only three waves, the fourth one is non-existent. Activists recognised that the 21st century has ushered a new type of feminism. As feminists moved out of the third wave, they continued to believe that they should have reproductive freedom and the option to have an abortion if they chose to have one. While women progressed in politics, social networking, and media platforms also began to grow exponentially. During this period of technological growth and expansion, activists now had more tools at their disposal to promote their causes. Several advocacy groups developed campaigns using hashtags (#) to raise awareness and gain community support.

One of the most prominent hashtag was the #MeToo which went viral on social media.

The #MeToo Movement

“ ‘Me too’ was just two words; it's two magic words that galvanised the world,” said the founder of #metoo movement, Tarana Burke.

In 1966, Tarana Burke, the director of an youth camp had an encounter with a young woman who disclosed to Burke that she was a victim of sexual abuse. And Burke immediately identified with her and all she wanted to say was “me too”. This encounter became the foundation for the ‘me too’ campaign she created a decade later. By 2007, Burke had launched ‘me too’ as a way for young women of colour to share their stories. To start, she began using the phrase ‘me too’ specifically to promote the idea of ‘empowerment through empathy’. For the next 10 years, Burke developed ‘me too’. In 2017, Burke's hashtag #Metoo went viral after Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was exposed for using his power to sexually harass and exploit women in the entertainment industry for over thirty years.

Shortly after the scandal broke, actress Alyssa Milano helped popularise the #metoo movement by tweeting “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem”. In less than 24 hours, 4.7 million people engaged in the ‘Me too’ conversation, with more than 12 million posts, comments and reactions on Facebook. The public outcry grew as women and men internationally translated ‘me too’ into their various languages, and aligned with the movement. These allegations spurred a global ‘reckoning’ against sexual assault and harassment that became known as the ‘Weinstein effect’.

Time's Up

A month after the scandal broke, a group of 700,000 Latina farm workers from across the country wrote an open letter to the Silence Breakers in Hollywood who came forward and voiced against Weinstein. Two days after the letter was released, hundreds of women in Los Angeles marched to protest sexual harassment. The Me Too Survivors March took place on 12th of November, 2017 in downtown Los Angeles. In response to the letter of support from 700,000 women farmworkers, TIME'S UP publicly launched on January 1, 2018 with their own open letter signed by over 300 women in the entertainment industry. TIME'S UP also launched several initiatives to ensure gender parity and workplace safety in various industries. The TIME'S UP Legal Defence Fund was established to help survivors.

The March

In January of 2017, the Women's March in Washington attracted an estimated 1,500,000 protesters after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. This march became the largest single day protest in U.S. history, with Women's Marches happening simultaneously across countries. In total there were 3.3 and 4.6 million protestors advocating for women's rights and various social justice issues.

Believe Women

The popular dating app ‘Bumble’ known for its women-centric approach to matching partners, decided to take out a full-page ad in the ‘New York Times’ with just two words printed: ‘Believe Women’. Their campaign phrase was a call to believe women such as Ford, Ramirez and Swetnick, who spoke up about sexual assault. Bumble also donated $25,000 to the Rape, Assault and Incest National Network (RAINN) to support victims of sexual violence.

So, basically fourth wave is mainly about demanding sexual and physical autonomy, acknowledgement of rape and similar sexual misconducts, all while fighting for other political, economic, and domestic justice. In all these, there is no mention of hating on just any men, not at least without a valid reason. Then why are there cases narrating ‘false/fake accusations against men’? Are they side effects of ‘feminism’? No. They are not. They are prey of ‘pseudo-feminism’. But what exactly is pseudo-feminism and what are its differences from raw feminism?

PSEUDO-FEMINISM

A superiority complex combined with misandry or ‘hate for men’ is what pseudo-feminism is.

‘Pseudo’ means false, or shammed. Pseudo-feminism means, in the simplest manner, fake feminism. I would keep this idea short. Principles of pseudo-feminism, as opposed to the principles of feminism itself, supports the advancement of women ahead of any and every gender. That is never ‘feminism’, feminism supports equality and more importantly equity, for all (the intersectionality is not a hoax afterall). Pseudo-feminists actively target males to right the wrongs of the past. Feminism is about freedom, not judgement.

“Pseudo-feminism implies that females deserve more respect than people of other genders due to past injustices. Pseudo-feminism wants to create a world where females hold all senior and leadership positions,” said Jaya Chaudhary.

To make it easier to understand, pseudo-feminism is just the reverse misogyny, where again one gender is seen as superior to all other genders. And this kind of feminism (although I personally feel there should be a more distinguished term for this practice with no association with the word ‘feminism’ itself) contradicts the real work of feminism and negatively impacts feminism and its core values and that’s precisely why feminism do not give rise to grave mishaps, and pseudo-feminism do.

Mishaps occurred by pseudo-feminism

i. Bois Locker Room Case: This case refers to the controversy that erupted in India in 2020. It involved a private Instagram group chat where teenage boys allegedly shared explicit and disturbing pictures of underage girls without their consent, alongside lewd commentaries. More than 24 students connected to the case were interrogated by the police. However, after the probe of The Cyber Cell of Delhi Police, revealed that the juvenile girl who initially outed the group, has had her old conversations leaked where she created a fake Snapchat profile, assuming the identity of a teenage boy ‘Siddharth’ and discussed ‘sexual assault’ on a girl with another minor boy. According to what reports said, the girl discussed her own sexual assault to ‘test the character of the male’. The leaked conversations also showed her sexualising men, mocking the differently abled and making homophobic and misogynistic remarks.

ii. The Zomato delivery boy case: In March of 2021, a Bengaluru woman Hitesha Chandranee, the Bengaluru-based makeup artist/beauty influencer, blamed a Zomato delivery executive named Kamraj who had assaulted and hit her over a delayed food delivery. She posted a video on social media showing her with a bleeding nose. Zomato stated that they would cover Kamraj's legal expenses but later suspended their decision, waiting for the investigation to conclude. Hitesha Chandranee charged that the delivery boy punched her nose. To which the delivery boy reacted, “When Hitesha was attempting to drive my hand away, she incidentally hit herself with her finger ring on the button, which prompted the dying”. Her abrasion suggested that it was harmed with a ring and not with a punch as one could see the ring cut imprints, or it could be a direct imprint from her fingernails. Whatever caused the wound was something immensely sharp as one observed, and not something as blunt as a punch.

Besides, answering in a video meet with NDTV, Hitesha said “She wears a ring whose edges are obtuse and it can't do any harm”. But during the episode which took place on 9th of March, she had taken off one of the two rings she wore.

iii. Rahul suicide case: Rahul, an athlete from Khatauli, Muzaffarnagar, took his own life after leaving a suicide note detailing how a false rape case ended everything including his life for him. A girl filed a fake rape case on Rahul and then demanded money. He spent 19 months in jail and was later bailed out. But with his dreams shattered, he apologised to his parents and took the ultimate step.

Notice the variants in ‘feminism’ and ‘pseudo-feminism? I know saying something in defence of feminists during a tragedy involving men, is insensible and the equivalent to ‘not all men’ under the tragedy of a female— but we do need to be educated on why is ‘pseudo-feminism is not feminism’ and why ‘not all men’, nevertheless, not in all the wrong places.

As of now, what makes pseudo-feminism in any way discrete than feminism?

Feminism vs Pseudo-feminism...

FEMINISM PSEUDO-FEMINISM

1. Toils to attend gender equality and women's rights that lead to women's liberation. Superficial advocacy that often excludes certain groups or focuses on personal gains.
2. eminism achieved gender equality and dismantled patriarchy. Often focuses on promoting women's superiority.
3. Addresses various forms of discrimination and is intersectional in nature. Overlooks intersectionality, and focuses solely on gender issues.
4. Inclusive of all genders, sexes, races, castes, sexual orientations and backgrounds. Excludes certain groups and perpetuates stereotypes about a group of genders or sexes.
5. Engages in activism, education and privacy policy. Engages in performative activism or superficial actions without meaningful impact.
6. Collaborates with other social justice movements. Alienates and dismisses other social justice movements.
7. Addresses domestic violence, promoting equal partnerships, and shared responsibilities in a household. Only addresses women's issues, completely snubbing out men and their sacrifices. Usually applies the ‘victim card’ in any situation to garner sympathy, whether founded on a ground or unfounded.
8. Focuses on empowering individuals to make choices that align with their goals and values. Promotes a narrow definition of empowerment based on material success and conformity to societal norms.
9. Encourages critical analysis of systems of oppression and encourages questioning of absurd societal layouts. Discourages questioning of so-and-so feminist ideologies or promotes rigid dogma.
10. Recognises men as allies in the pursuit of gender equality and advocates for dismantling toxic masculinity. Demonises men and promotes antagonistic attitudes towards them, perpetuating gender stereotypes. Absolutely cannot accept ‘men can be feminists too’.

Anything obstructing the adjectives of ‘feminism’ as a hurdle, is what is claimed to be ‘patriarchy’ or ‘misogyny’ or ‘oppression’.

Along with fake feminism, there are also subsets of it. I wouldn't go into the details, but here is the list of the subsets:

• Opportunistic feminism.
• Exploitative feminism.
• Misguided feminism.

As known by keyboard warriors, these feminists are called ‘feminazis’. But they really have nothing to do with the ‘feminists’ as we understand, feminist chauvinism is not what feminism stands for. A feminist chauvinist is a female who patronises, degenerates or otherwise denigrates males in the belief that they are inferior to females and thus are deserving of less than equal treatments, benefits or privileges.

Then, if women are using a noble cause to their personal advantages, and disadvantage men and other groups, should feminism still retain? Should it continue because men are now either apparently or genuinely equally threatened in their lives? And women have now reached the ‘freedom’ and objectives they fought and are still fighting for, do we still need it? Actually, yes, we still do need feminism as much. But why?

DO WE STILL NEED FEMINISM? IF YES, WHY?

Because:

1. Glass ceilings remain rock solid

In the decades since the term was coined (refer back to this corner of the very article about ‘glass ceilings’) women have surely brought about a number of changes, have made notable gains. But at the same time women are still encouraged to pursue jobs that leave them vulnerable to economic downturns. On an international scale, 86 countries place women under job restrictions while 95 countries don't guarantee equal pay. Despite women's career aspirations, women still continue to shoulder the brunt of household chores (or else she is not the ‘perfect wife’ or ‘perfect mother’) and this multiplies women's pressure as they attempt to rise the corporate ranks, competing for jobs with men who don't face the same expectations.

The 2017 Pew Research Study revealed that 42% of women still faced gender-based discrimination at their workplace, compared to just 22% of men (I'm not putting those 22% of men down, of course discrimination in any form is heinous, but I'm emphasising on why feminism is still a need, whether for women or for men). The picture becomes bleaker for women of colour, with 51% reporting experiences of racism and discrimination.

According to Lean In's ‘Women in the Workplace’ study, women leaders are two times more likely than their male counterparts to be mistaken for more junior workers. These biases make it harder for women to reach and thrive in positions of power.

Between 2018 and 2021, women filed 78% of the 27,291 sexual harassment charges to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In a double-blind study, science faculties rated job applications for a job manager role without knowing the applicant's gender. They found male names to be more ‘competent’ and ‘deserving’ of mentorship, offering them higher starting salaries, $30,000 for men and $26,000 for women, even though the applications with female names were alike.

As recently as last year, 2023, the World Economic Forum reported that a gender pay gap still exists. Women earn only 63 cents for every dollar men earn, even to this day, impacting their financial security, retirement savings and overall economic empowerment.

2. Microaggressions

According to Momentous Institute, ‘Gender microaggressions are small, seemingly innocuous comments that can pile up over time and affect a person’s sense of self and identity. These microaggressions can become so commonplace that we don’t even notice them’. People tend to describe men as a ‘leader’, and like to describe women as ‘bossy’ or ‘unruly’. A man is ‘smart and logical’ but a woman is ‘overly emotional and hysterical’.

Myself as someone who has grown up in West Bengal, India, I have firsthand seen too many examples of microaggressions against women— in more than a half of mega serials aired, women are painted as a portrait of clueless, dumb people who sacrifice their lives and any facets of life for the sake of a men, usually the protagonist (and yes, including villains) no matter even if the protagonist is according to today's standards ‘a red flag’ and a ‘manchild’. On different social networking sites, when men approached me, many of them wrote similar things like ‘you're a girl, I will feed you. You don't have to earn’, ‘Why would you earn for yourself? There's no need’, ‘no no girls should not earn, they are meant to serve, and we men would feed them’. And then these are the kinds of people who would fall apart when they carry the entire responsibility of sustaining his own family. [I mean it for no one in particular, but if the shoe fits, wear it!]. I have also experienced firsthand my friend's mother constantly dissolving herself to make others happy, and in return only getting insults and in fact ‘an attempt to murder by setting her on fire’. Her child faced the same aggression. And in my school, two male classmates of mine directed these words directly at me, in unfiltered condescension:

“Aww you're a female! You're not meant to have your own plate when you eat, you're supposed to eat our (males’) leftovers.”

If possible, please watch the movie THAPPAD, directed by Anubhav Sinha.

3. Stereotype Threat

In one study, when participants were informed that a maths test showed gender differences, women did worse than men. However, researchers informed women that no difference existed, they scored the same as men. This phenomenon known as ‘Stereotype Threat’ contributes to ongoing gender gaps in academic performance. I have encountered both male and female classmates and when I asked them each at different times what their plan would be after graduating college, my male peers would say ‘to go for higher studies’, ‘support their family financially’, and the females (obviously not all of them) usually said ‘maybe get married’, ‘I have a fiancé now’, ‘my family is discussing my marriage soon’, ‘we are set to marry now’. As per news, there are few women who leaps into risky business to support her devastated, helpless or poor families, most of them are forced/convinced into marriage, and men lift that responsibility, as evident from my own conversations from the toto drivers I meet everyday at my way to college, unfortunately I cannot give away their personal information so there is no ‘grounded statistics’ to say such, but standing today, I hope someday I would be able enough to conduct a survey myself and bring the world to the rest of the world.

4. Female infanticide

Approximately 1.58 crore girls have gone missing from India's population since 1990 as a result of female foeticide and prenatal sex selection. In 2005, the number of female foeticides peaked with about 6.77 lakh girls missing at birth that year. As of 2014, the Ministry of Finance estimates 63 million women in India have gone missing due to both differential female survival and sex selection.

This trend is not restricted to India, though. Studies using data from other Asian countries such as China, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have found that where the sex ratio is low, women are more likely to have been raped or to have experienced violence from their partners.

Female foeticide not only eliminates daughters, but also contributes to worsening violence against women. A study by Rob Stephenson and colleagues using NFHS data on rural women in Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu found that women were subjected to experience sexual violence after resorting to an induced abortion.

There are many instances which are probably unrecorded and yet the practice goes on.

5. Androcentric language

Feminists have argued that androcentric or a male-centric language makes women invisible. It is not about the language itself but the notion/idea/belief that buds in a mind, for example: when God is always referred to as ‘He’ it waters the view that the ones in power usually are men. Some feminists say that English is quite literally, in some general sense, male— by encoding male worldview, by helping to subordinate women, or to render them invisible, and by taking males as the norm.

“Words for women assume[s] negative connotations even where it designated the same state or condition as it did for men” (Spender 1985: 17).

As with ‘spinster’ and ‘bachelor’ where women are far more sexualised more frequently and seen as a failure.

When we hear a doctor, or driver, or pilot, or cop or business tycoon, or actor (even though now it is gender neutral), or footballer r, typically our minds think they would be a male, this is how deep rooted androcentrism is in us.

There is good psycholinguistic evidence that those who come across sentences with ‘he’ and ‘man’ think more readily of males than females.

This practice is planted in the Bengali language too, and as a Bengali woman myself, I have grown up accustomed to such, and I questioned not until my puberty when some things just did not feel right to me: ‘Baaper bari (a woman's parental home is titled as her ‘father's house’ and father's house only), ‘mamar bari’ (after the woman has an offspring, he/she/they addresses the mother's parental house as his/her/their maternal uncle's house), poitrik sompotti (a father's property, no matter how many members were there and how many members looked after the property).

My professor always says, ‘language is not as innocent as it always seems’, and these are proofs. Pen is mightier than a sword is said for nothing after all. Language carries a weight, these do not only act as a signifier, but diminishes everyone else apart from the men.

6. Marital rape is decriminalized

‘My body, my permission, my choice,’ is it that hard to understand?

Out of 185 countries, 77 countries have laws that criminalise marital rape, but there are still 34 countries that explicitly decriminalize marital rape and in essence, make men immune who perpetrate rape against their own wives.

As an Indian, this wrenches my heart to know that India falls under those 34 countries. Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code defines the acts that constitutes rape by a man. The provision, however, lays down two exceptions:

• Apart from decriminalizing marital rape, it mentions that medical procedures or interventions does not constitute rape.
• Exception 2 of Section 375 of IPC states that “sexual intercourse by a man with his wife, and if the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape”.

In 2015, petitions to criminalise marital rape was filed in Delhi High Court. In January 2022, two judges of the Delhi HC started to hear petitions filed by individuals and civil society organisations challenging the exemptions. By May 2022, they arrived at a controversial split verdict. One of the judges was in favour of criminalising marital rape, as it violated a woman's right to consent, but the other was against it, saying marriage ‘necessarily’ implied consent. The matter was then pushed to the Supreme Court. The need to remove the marital rape exception was rejected by the Law Commission of India in 2000, while considering several proposals to reform India's law on sexual violence.

The central government initially defended the rape exception and later changed its stand and told the court that it was reviewing the law and that ‘wider deliberations are required on the issue’. The Delhi government argued in favour of retaining the marital rape exception, the government's argument spanned from protecting men from possible misuse of the law by wives, to protecting ‘the institution of marriage’.

7. Trolls/ ‘Dank’ memers

Of course trolls aren't only women's worry. But the ‘so-called sigmas’ and some ‘pick-mes’ (once again directed at particularly no one), still dismisses women with simple words with ‘go back to the kitchen’, ‘wash the dishes’, devaluing both the chores and anyone who does it. I personally believe cooking is an art, cleaning or washing are basic life skills, so I don’t really get it, how comments like those are considered derogatory, dank or insulting at all. When someone once said those things to me, I responded with ‘Yes, I do them. Those are basic life skills,’ and I believe it with all my soul. But in return, the person said ‘do you consider that as an achievement? Keep doing that, it suits women’. I didn’t understand exactly why it only ‘suited’ women, or how condescending a mentality the person had to be to literally satire basic life skills as achievements.

However, I knew my dad and dad's colleagues and also my classmates cooking and cleaning for themselves because they lived/live in hostels and they just had/have to do it with no escape. Be it a man, or a woman, nobody can spend their entire life being a wax statue and depending on others; the same trolls who probably comment on these things are the ones whose parents spoonfeed everything available to them and they spend their guardians’ efforts into hating and demeaning others.

Apart from these, women are still given points on how good of a housewife or a mother they are, they are still forced to put off their hunger until everyone at the house has eaten, women are still expected to preserve the worst piece of the food for herself and let all the others relish even if she was the cook herself, women are still demanded to ‘compromise’ and ‘adjust’ and not show any attachments towards her prenatal home where she spent her childhood and half of her lifetime, women are still anticipated to ‘sacrifice’ just for the sake of being a woman, woman are still entitled to leave her own home and take care of her husband's parents (even if her in-laws are abusive) when her own parents are left unattended and looked down upon, women are still blamed for grown men's choices, often reproached for ‘brainwashing her husband’, ‘manipulating her husband into leaving his parents’, women are still seen as a companion to ‘serve’ her in-laws because the man's ‘mother’ is now tired after servicing for all these years, despite the man being a perfectly able-bodied and competent individual (yes, working women too!), and yet most of the husbands wouldn't lend a helping hand to her.

Because women are still slutshamed for their professions, and blamed of ‘asking for it’, of ‘wearing provocative clothes’, of ‘working late shifts’, of ‘being drunk’, of having a ‘boyfriend’, of ‘choosing the wrong one’ after she had countered the blizzards of rape. Because streets are still unsafe to walk, because people still decide what women should wear, because when a woman doesn't put makeup she becomes a ‘pick-me’ and when she does she becomes an ‘attention-seeker’, because a man is a simp when he cares for his wife and a woman is an example when she cares for her husband, because women who doesn't want a kid is running away from responsibilities despite the body being her own, because women who don't want to get into a relationship are cowards, because when a woman marries a man of standard she is a gold digger, and because this world has reduced women to simply ‘women ☕’ without a second thought.

And because this planet is still patriarchal. When I attended a seminar on Women's Day, all the board directors and chairperson were men, but in contrast, male attendants were not allowed, only females were allowed.

‘These are just a few to name. This collection is a never-ending one. With passage of time, this might keep on swelling and extending. (You can add your own in the comments).

Do remember this was not to defame men as the villains, but the society or the system that is messed up from the very beginning, and the ones who always fear society, forgetting that they are the ones forming this society. I think these are reasons enough to know why exactly we still need feminism for all of us.

In the meantime, feminism sparks a very pivotal question. If feminism is about equality/equity and inclusiveness, why is it called ‘feminism’ and not something more inclusive like ‘humanism’ or ‘equalism’ or ‘egalitarianism’?

WHY FEMINISM AND NOT HUMANISM?

Feminism is not called Humanism or Egalitarianism because all the three of them are three distinct theories.

Humanism is a branch of philosophy, and ethics that advocates for equality, tolerance and secularism. Humanism is the theory of practicality, it theorised that humans are allowed to use logic to decide what is ethical in place of divine intervention or judgments according to spirituality. It recognises that human beings do not require religion to behave morally.

Egalitarianism is a form of political philosophy that advocates all human beings are fundamentally equal and therefore entitled to equal resources. Yet, it has some distinct limits in applied resources.

These two practices surely did help shape feminism. But feminism is the only movement actively demanding for gender equality, not just for women, but men too, as had been relayed. The movement operates on the tenant that gender is not an acceptable basis for discrimination, oppression and/or eradication. It's called feminism because the gender being denied personhood and is oppressed is primarily females and because it began as a sociopolitical movement to achieve gender equality for females. But its own rhetoric became a movement to achieve equality for all persons.

To choose to use the expressions ‘humanism’ or ‘egalitarianism’ is to deny the particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. Although feminism is for everyone, the word ‘feminism’ commemorates the origin of its history and the branches.

CONCLUSION

A female student (suppose student X) encountered gender based discrimination when denied access to a library at her school due to her gender, prompting her decision to transfer to another educational institution.

Student X experiencing lingering effects from the discrimination she had faced erstwhile, advocated for the exclusion of male students from the library, citing their perceived disruptive behaviour.

Conversely, in her previous school female faculty members endeavoured to enact policies facilitating equal access for all genders.

I would now leave it to the readers to recognize which among these situations fit the definitions of ‘patriarchy’, ‘empowerment’, ‘feminism’ and ‘pseudo-feminism’.

So before dismissing feminism as just a monolithic movement or ‘women ☕’, I just want to tell that in this article of 30K words even, I did not at all cover French feminism, Anarcha feminism, Radical feminism, Postcolonial and third world feminism, Libertarian feminism, Liberal feminism, post cultural and postmodern feminism, ecofeminism, theology and feminism, architecture and feminism, religion and feminism, and feminist influence on heterosexuality in details.

Feminists do not want mangoes or menstruation to be renamed womangoes or womenstruation, but they want the association of power and institutions with ‘He’ to be reconsidered.

Feminists do not want men to be able to get pregnant, or suffer from the unbearable abdominal cramps, but feminists want to rest when they are tired and the household chores be taken care of.

Feminists do not ever mean an empowered woman is not to cook or clean, but they want the husbands to do the cooking when the wife is cooking or vice versa, because a ‘home’ cannot be made just by one.

Feminists do not want to their daughters to be manipulative, but they want their daughters to be independent. They don't teach their daughters to abort if it is a male infant, but teaches them not to abort solely because it is a female infant, and also teaches them to gain the freedom to abort when conceiving is inconvenient because at the end of the day, it is her body, and miscreants like rapists exist.

Feminists do not want their sons to be the servants of their wives, but a shoulder to cry on, a companion who can be trusted, to be a man for whom feminists can say ‘Yes. Not all men.’

Feminists want not to achieve privileges, but equity.

‘Feminist’ is not an insult, it is a compliment.

.    .    .

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