Feminism- An Altered Reality?
Written on June 23rd , 2020 by {"login"=>"jcbitshyd", "email"=>"journal@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"", "last_name"=>""}Over the years, the Feminist movement has undergone a lot of changes, and the meaning and ideologies surrounding the movement have slowly evolved and expanded with time. This has often led to a lot of conflict between people due to the misrepresentation of terms and ideologies. This conflict has further been highlighted by the recent furor over certain incidents online and on the campus Facebook groups. We’ll attempt to take a deeper dive into the meaning of Feminism, along with taking a closer look at the term “pseudo-feminism”.
The movement evolved in 3 waves. The First Wave began with the women’s right to vote in England and America. Once this movement was able to achieve a degree of success, it further evolved into the Second Wave, also known as the Radical Feminist Movement. This aimed to take back further rights for women, including the Right to Life. They aimed to achieve this by recognizing the fact that women are inherently different and hence deserve certain privileges, also stating that men benefit from Patriarchy by keeping women in their control.
The Third Wave is the Intersectional Feminist movement which has its primary focus on the nuances of daily life while expanding the definitions of male and female beyond gender. While feminism was always about equality, there was a special focus on women in the previous waves. With the third wave, this expanded to include the struggles of homosexuals, transsexuals, people of color, and the disabled into the movement.
In the modern world, we are experiencing Radical Feminism and its slow transition into Intersectional Feminism. Both approaches can be seen as being used by authorities and governments to tackle everyday issues. An example of Radical Feminism seen in today’s world is the different kinds of reservations and being provided to women in educational, work sectors, and public transport. This is to provide equity to marginalized classes due to the belief that the concept of equality only benefits certain dominant classes and does not provide growth to marginalized classes. At the same time, we can observe Intersectional Feminist policies being referenced in addressing incidences such as the “Bois Locker Room” scandal and the recent mishap regarding Facebook comments during Vidya Balan’s interview with TedX.
Over the past few months, a lot of questions have been raised online about the definitions and principles of feminism. Our campus has also seen its fair share of debate with differences arising over Bon Voyage awards to complaints being registered against people for sexual harassment. The feminist movement has always been along the lines of equality and opportunity. Equality and opportunity for both men and women.
The focus here is more on women because for long women have been treated as second class citizens and the movement focuses on bringing equal rights and opportunities to the feminine class. Regarding “boislockerroom”, both liberal and radical feminism are inadequate, but they are the most common approaches. Hence all the confusion and debate within Indian feminism.
Liberal feminism supports free speech and says that the boys didn’t do anything wrong because they didn’t actually commit rape, and they are allowed to fantasize and express themselves freely in a democracy. Moreover, most of the boys themselves are minors like the girls they are discussing, so the punishment should not be severe. They also assert that the blame partially lies with the girls for uploading ‘sexy’ pictures of themselves on social media and cannot complain about attracting male attention.
Radical feminism has also not been adequately critical of the debacle as its reaction is severe and it calls for extreme punishment like hanging or castration and compares this to the Nirbhaya rape case. In its inability to distinguish between real and discursive acts of patriarchal violence, radical feminism falls into the trap of appearing too extreme and unequivocally supporting the cause of women. In fact, it is this form of radical feminism that puts off most people because it doesn’t see nuances and only sees women as victims.
And this is in fact what gets labeled as “pseudo-feminism”. This is a recurring narrative used by patriarchy to ensure that the status quo doesn’t change. When women are given special reservations or female-centric programs are provided to improve gender representation in certain industries, there is a huge portion of society that raises their arms in contention. “Men go through these hardships. Why can’t you?” is often used as a retort to women asking for better opportunities and their refusal to such a challenge is often quoted as a failure on their part.
Some industries have very few women in the workplace, and fewer still coming up in higher management. Coming closer to home, until recent years, almost every field of engineering had a very skewed gender ratio. This is prominent to this day. Studies show that women are more likely to undersell themselves in job interviews as compared to men, and women’s opinions are either ignored or taken less seriously in the workplace. A lot of this can be attributed to societal standards and, in some extreme cases, systematic oppression of women from progressing.
This sort of socio-psychological conditioning is seen to demotivate women from getting into such fields. This, paired with the low gender ratio of women in the industry, lead to the creation of special programs aimed at creating a balance. The aim is to bring equity to the equation as equality is simply not enough. The goal isn’t to eliminate the struggle for women, but to bring them up to a position where the amount of effort required for women to progress isn’t as skewed as compared to men. This is not on an individual basis and is aimed at bringing a balance to society as a whole.
This is where Intersectional Feminism steps in. They don’t aspire for a level playing field or equality with men since men also suffer from patriarchy. This approach hopes that society will slowly forget its historic biases and move on to much brighter and healthier terms. It recognizes this fact that men also do suffer, and also proclaims that patriarchy doesn’t simply exist in criminal acts or specific incidences. It is produced and replicated in everyday behavior and language due to its historic linguistic biases. The language itself is problematic and needs to be systematically changed.
Countries like Norway and Canada have recognized this and have made it a crime to use words like ‘slut’ ‘nigger’ etc in any context. They raise children in a gender-neutral environment and do not reward men for derogatory behavior towards women. And this is working. To mention a few successes of the Third Wave so far, the words “nigger” and “slut” and have now been taken over by the communities that they used to oppress, people of color and women, and are now used to portray camaraderie within those communities exclusively while it still remains offensive for people outside those classes to say it. These might seem small, insignificant changes, even nuisances or wordplay, in fact. However, they play a major role in shaping mindsets in the generations that will come.
Feminism is as complex as the issues it aims to resolve. While the core belief of equality among humans is agreed upon, the methods used to bring about this harmonious balance seem to be vastly disagreed upon. Each wave has seen its own merits and demerits, with the definitions evolving to be inclusive of highly discriminatory behaviors as well as the subtle nuances of daily life. One thing that has remained constant is its inescapability, be it in government policies, or a mess-table conversation. We’re all entangled in the giant web of patriarchy. The first step towards breaking free is to understand the struggles each of us face and, feminist or not, acknowledge each other for more than just our gender.