I got a tremendous response from the following 'comments' to the Soraya Chemaly article in the Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/war-on-women-march-april-28_b_1457730.html
First of all, the concept of 'equality' in gender matters needs to be clarified. It is not a simple bean-bag calculation -- how many candies do you have that I don't -- type, though I believe even there the subject has complications. Equal pay for equal labor, for instance, is an ideal that still runs into vicious run-around before actualization.
The problem is patriarchy's hold over the power of defining the space for women's being in the society. By gender equality, are we then talking about an exchange of power, like who is in possession of the dominant narrative? No, though that scenario scares the sh** out of men!
It is about patriarchy's ability to include all sorts of lies in the name of complementarity. Most of these lies usually deal with demeaning a female's basic human dignity. Violence against women are on the rise even in Western developed nations because of man's fear of losing the dominant power of the narrative that assured absolute, unquestioned power of patriarchy -- that power of never having to look beyond women's usefulness as property of men.
That fear of 'women as real human beings' is what we are seeing in this election year's Republican politicians and their foot-licking women.
[I should proudly say that for inspiration I was constantly reminding myself of Begum Rokeya's writings. Isn't it amazing how relevant her words still are after a century?]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/war-on-women-march-april-28_b_1457730.html
First of all, the concept of 'equality' in gender matters needs to be clarified. It is not a simple bean-bag calculation -- how many candies do you have that I don't -- type, though I believe even there the subject has complications. Equal pay for equal labor, for instance, is an ideal that still runs into vicious run-around before actualization.
The problem is patriarchy's hold over the power of defining the space for women's being in the society. By gender equality, are we then talking about an exchange of power, like who is in possession of the dominant narrative? No, though that scenario scares the sh** out of men!
It is about patriarchy's ability to include all sorts of lies in the name of complementarity. Most of these lies usually deal with demeaning a female's basic human dignity. Violence against women are on the rise even in Western developed nations because of man's fear of losing the dominant power of the narrative that assured absolute, unquestioned power of patriarchy -- that power of never having to look beyond women's usefulness as property of men.
That fear of 'women as real human beings' is what we are seeing in this election year's Republican politicians and their foot-licking women.
[I should proudly say that for inspiration I was constantly reminding myself of Begum Rokeya's writings. Isn't it amazing how relevant her words still are after a century?]
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