Coming Out As A Feminist

 

2020 was undoubtedly a bad year, in fact the worst that we had hoped for. Yet it taught us some important life lessons. Personally, I am grateful that 2020 happened in my life. It finally made me come out as a feminist, strongly and without any apprehension.

It is not that I wasn’t a feminist, in fact I was one right from the beginning but like many other women and men, I was afraid to proclaim myself as one because of the regressive men and the toxic women existing in our society and social media- men and women who constantly gaslight and manipulate the feminist men and women online and offline. However, all this changed in 2020, when I saw misogyny live on my social media feed- the space that I had just begun to explore post boards, and the condition is horrible. There were rape apologists busy in justifying rape as ‘the poor man couldn’t control himself, after all, he too has urges’, people who glorified rape as something beautiful and lastly people who denied that rapes existed and blamed it all on ‘feminism which gives women the right to file fake rape cases.’ I also saw white instutionalised and internalized misogyny that wanted a restoration of the ‘good old patriarchy’ where men worked and women didn’t, and when seeing this misogyny became common, I let go of my fears and finally came out as the ‘feminist type’- a term that is used by many misogynistic and privileged individuals while taking digs at feminism. I am no longer apologetic. Feminism has given many women like me, the space to enjoy ‘male’ things like rap, action scenes, biking (which I really hope to learn some day) and still enjoy the beauty of being a female. For me, feminism means blurring the gender stereotypes which includes not feeling weird when a man cries or wears pink and not being disgusted when a woman comes across as assertive while sporting a cropped black top or even a lehenga. It taught me to look at cooking, cleaning and taking care of one’s family as something that everyone should do and not just women.

In a world where most of the words depicting individual and collective existence are named after men, such as huMAN, MANkind, MANpower, woMAN, feMALE, sHE; it feels liberating to associate with an ideology exclusively named after women while not excluding males.  The boy’s locker room and the girls’ locker room that soon followed the former, made me see the misogyny more clearly while the reactions made me realize how skewed the concept of equality actually was, even in 2020, even when women are gradually coming to occupy important positions socially and politically. A girl using a fake id and planning a rape against her own self, is horrible no doubt; but one fake rape comment does not negate the entire existence of the boys’ locker room nor does it diminish the gravity of the sexual comments that were made by a couple of male teenagers coming from privileged homes, against underage women. It does not justify the threats given by these young teens when they were exposed by a couple of women and a hacker who acted as the whistleblower for this case. A lot of support poured in for the ‘kids’ at that time and there were people who justified it by saying things like how everyone in their teens have behaved this way but they didn’t mean any harm and some even went on to say that feminism wished to destroy heterosexuality and that not every male who talks trash about women is a rapist or turns out to be one. It was the glorification of the already existing toxic rape culture. The girls’ locker room however drew only condemnation and disgust. Funnily, it got everyone talking and questioning why everyone was silent about it. What was surprising was that male harassment was used as a weapon to invalidate and trivialize female harassment, and in the social media system of likes and retweets, the truth got distorted to the extent of getting lost and once again the conversation around female harassment and the need for change was disrupted and derailed by trolls.

Yes, women do rape and harass and denying it is patriarchal because of the existing assumption that women are too ‘weak’ to rape and men are too ‘strong’ and ‘masculine’ to be raped. But using male rapes as a weapon to trivialize female rapes, is wrong and feminism enabled me to see sexual violence in a clear and balanced light. Unsurprisingly, none of the males who were objectified in the girls’ locker room were asked to be careful, shut down their social media or questioned about why they put such pictures up. In the other case, the teenage victims were rampantly slut-shamed and told that they deserved it. There were also questions about why should women be respected because respect should be earned and I wondered about the technique to earn respect from random strangers who catcall and eve-teased women. Then, I realized I was a feminist when I found myself getting angry over this differential treatment.

I have stopped being apologetic about being a feminist. I no longer say things like ‘I am also a feminist, but I believe in equality’, ‘I am a feminist but I don’t hate men’ etc. I have realized now that I can’t be held responsible for people being too ill-informed and being too privileged. I am a feminist and that’s it.

 Feminism is not faulty but the way we perceive equality for women in a male-dominated world does end up being faulty at times. After years of objectification, sexualization and dehumanization, it seems difficult to envisage what equal treatment and respecting women could actually look like and how much careful one should be while treading the line between equal treatment and the dangerous idea of benevolent sexism. Being born as a woman does not guarantee her existence as a feminist, women who look down and slut-shame other women at work-places or women who prefer male colleagues than their female counterparts or even mothers who are happier when a son is born to them and treat their sons better than their daughters, are not feminists.

Feminism taught me that it is okay to hate regressive women and men who go crazy when a woman is exercising autonomy over her body. I have stopped feeling apprehensive about the fact that I rightfully hate sexual violence and want women to have autonomy over their personal and professional lives and over their bodies. No woman deserves to be patronized just because she is a woman. I don’t find it shameful that I want a partner who will share household chores with me even if he is a millionaire because no matter how much he earns, the house will belong to both of us and will have to be taken care of by both. And yes, I like men who don't sexualize, objectify and treat women like pieces of meat; and I know that my wants are not utopic but something that should have been the norm before misogyny and patriarchy took over. I see myself as intelligent and as capable as a man and not just as some baby producing machine. I don’t believe that women only indulge in cat-fights, are all about make-up, are bad drivers and spend their time putting each other down. I know and I believe that strong women will uplift each other and respect their sisterhood while retaining their assertiveness because positive traits have no gender.

I do want misogynistic and dismissive men who feel that misandry and misogyny are problems of the same magnanimity to educate themselves. There is a lot of difference between something that has been going on for centuries and something that hasn't even developed into a problem (misandry). There is a difference between misogyny and a terrible woman, and people who can't understand the difference need to introspect about their own privileges. Unlike misandry, there is a whole culture across the world having misogyny in varied proportion and in some countries, it is the only culture that people swear by and glorify.

I am thankful to 2020 for making me a feminist officially. I am proud of this label and not apologetic for people being ill-informed and privileged. 2020 gave me a flavor of both white misogyny and Indian misogyny. Both of them are horrible and problematic just at different levels. Maybe it’s crazy, but I want equality even in heterosexual relationships. I want heterosexuality to exist without women being dehumanized as sex objects... I believe that men should have the choice of being house husbands and talking about their harassment and women should have the choice of continuing job post marriage. Traditional women shouldn’t be put on a pedestal and liberated women shouldn’t be shamed. It’s not compulsory for a man to be ‘masculine’ and as long as he does not cause harm to any woman or any other gender/human, he is free to exist the way he wants.

This is my equality and I am proud of it.

Hence a feminist signs off.