Feminism, come again....

Was more than disappointed to return from a break and discover half a dozen of Indian bloggers debating feminism. Brought up in my generation, feminism is like one of those battles you learn about in the history class. At the most, you can only understand but you shall never be able to relate to it either in spirit or in sense. Yet to see feminism debated in Indian blogosphere with as much blind fervour as it was done with just reaffirmed my beliefs about the poor standards of observational perspectives amongst Indian writers.
Not that its something dear or of a major concern, but since we are already here, I’m just putting up my final frame on feminism.

Although it is popularly perceived otherwise, feminism, say for instance like socialism or hedonism is not a fundamental ideology.In other words feminism can’t survive on its own and hence it can’t be imposed on populations. And moreover feminism is not universal, it moulds into connotations of its own. It is, at it’s best, circumstantial. So one activist might be fighting to wear a garment of her choice while elsewhere another might be suing a colleague for inappropriateness on the same grounds of feminism. To suggest that both of them are same or even different forms of the same is preposterous.

So what then is the foundation of feminism?
The basic furniture of feminism has historically entailed a motivation and rightly so, to fight for equal rights of women and against discrimination based on gender. Since any such collective motivation invariably leads to a mass activity, it naturally becomes a movement- of course notwithstanding the fringe it might eventually amount to. And all movements have a goal, therefore an end.
And so did feminism- when erstwhile male dominated society abolished the apparent inequality between men and women. That meant, by statute, the state promised equal rights and equal freedom irrespective of the gender. Unfortunately this has not been applicable in some fundamental cultures, but it has been achieved in the open societies to such an extent that folks of my generation, including women (as much as I hate to point out) find it quite dismaying to be subjected repeatedly to the often mistaken and convenient notions of feminism.

One of such commonest cart of convenience in present days is of identifying empowerment for feminism selectively. Although it is imaginable as a distant offshoot of, in principle, empowerment is hardly feminism. In fact, empowerment is contradictory to the very values (not ideals) of feminism, because it encourages another form of discrimination in a graded manner by claiming victimhood. If having equal number of women as men on a panel is a supposed credit to feminism so it must be as well to have equal number of Nobel prizes reserved for women. All one needs to do is exercise a bit of imagination. The women, as always, would be suddenly worth it.

Another unbecoming surprise was to find out about this fancy to exchange labels of ‘male feminist’, ‘female feminist’ etc. And it’s not all that hard to hear ‘gay feminist’, ‘metro- sexual feminist’ and even perhaps ‘anti-male feminist’ not very far down the road. Sounds colourful, but lacks meaning.I mean what’s this inscrutable disposition? The very sound of ‘male feminist’ is quite strange because it carries a connotation of predator sympathising the prey. The irony, that makes it more tastier is that no one has a clue who is who?
We live in a post-modern world, which is essentially individualistic. And that is as simple as one can try to put it. So wouldn’t it make more sense to identify oneself as an individual than to collect a dozen of labels for an identity? And moreover when did we start defining ourselves in tokens of negative definitions* esp. like that of feminism. Just because you enjoy cooking or relate to women at large as a person it doesn’t make you a male feminist. And since one can’t empathise with women as well can’t identify with the ‘male feminist’ bunch one must then be ‘anti-male feminist’? But hang on! Wasn’t he the chauvinist a while back? Ah! joys of reinventing? As if anyone cared? And it is perhaps the reason why even though Kill Bill is perhaps the most blatant feminist movie of our days (in a traditional sense), it is only marked as an action thriller.

Just a word about chavumism, since it has sneaked in.Well, Chauvinism is a metaphor for misconceptions of its own. Perhaps one relevant point in the context is how some social manifestations of chauvinism, is taken as being anti-feminist(for whatever it implies). Both in aesthetic and metaphoric sense, 'eyeing the honey' is purely, for the lack of a better word, biological. If at all it is anything , it is most definitely not objectification and poisoning with testosterone. And I mean only ‘eyeing the honey’ as chauvinism and not eve-teasing which is, illegal, and pathological.

To conclude, the very need to reuse the visage of feminism in the forms of second and third waves is a glowing evidence for the fact that feminism is dead and done with, unless one wants to pass it for something else unrelated- means of exploitation and a sense of college nostalgia.
Feminism for all it's virtues has become, to put it mildly, a tool of convenience, an instant headache of escape! To speak of it as something greater is perhaps a wishful ideal and we all know about such ideals.In these times, it is a seismic defeat even indulge in thoughts of supposed feminism; a debate to resuscitate the buried is nothing but an exercise in futility.
The future is the past passing by the minute. Unless one wants otherwise.

But what to I know? I hang out with female pigs!

Long live Queen Victoria.
But of course six feet under.

*Definition built on negation- like atheist: I dont believe in God.