How do we view a female activist?
Recently, AAP candidate Prof. Anand
Kumar contested Lok Sabha elections from Northeast Delhi. Among the
people who campaigned for him were some female students from Jawaharlal
Nehru University who, apparently, had been wearing jeans while
campaigning for him. BJP workers in the area, while commenting upon
their dress, said that they would also “hire” models for their campaign!
While one could argue that NE Delhi has a particular social composition
(and, hence the comments), I’d choose to differ. No matter how modern,
emancipated and liberated our constituency may be, the attitudes toward
women haven’t changed much.Shehla Rashid Shora Be it the rabid character assassination and
personal slander campaigns that women politicians have to face or the
mindless online abuse generated in response to mere tweets by a woman
activist or journalist- it has been established beyond doubt that the
expectations of a woman in public life are completely different from
those for a male. There is no dearth of misogynistic comments made
against female politicians by rival politicians to illustrate my point.
Our activism is branded “pre-menstrual stress”. We are asked why we are
so angry- and whether it is because we aren’t having enough sex.standwithJNU Taking
this concern further , we are asked, at times, whether we would like to
helped in this area! Earlier this year, in a protest at Vasant Vihar
police station during which protesters broke the gate open, I happened
to be in the first line clashing with the police from across a barricade
of police lathis (clubs). The cop right in front of me didn’t
miss a chance to grope me. This is clearly a gendered experience and not
a gender-neutral one.Having said that, it is also important
to point out that there are enough men who do view you just as they
should- like an activist, a political being.Shehla Rashid At the same time there are
enough women who will evaluate you based on “looks” and “character”.
From acquiescence to active participation- they will be part of
misogynistic jokes having a female activist or politician as the
subject. They get irritated if one were to point out that the jokes in
question are misogynistic. They tend to think that the definition of
misogyny has been overstretched by feminists and many of them would not
want to identify as feminists (which is okay in its own right). However,
there are two points that I want to highlight here. First, it is important to identify the enemy- it is neither men nor women- it is patriarchy. Second,
it isn’t until we identify and rectify even the last remnants of
injustice that we will achieve a revolutionary transformation of the
society.
I wouldn’t blame modern, educated,JNU
emancipated women who are party to the perpetuation of patriarchy
without realising it. We are born in a world of partial equality. As an
urban, middle-class woman, I may feel agitated at harassment and
unwelcome physical advances but I’m grateful that I’m not beaten up-
grateful because I do not have to move about in public transport late at
night, unlike a girl of my age working in the BPO sector- but that’s
not the point. The point is that I should be able to do so without
having to feel either grateful or terrified.Shehla Rashid Shora As Marx points out, the
good thing about capitalism (vis-a-vis the earlier, feudal social order)
is that class inequalities became stark and that it helped consolidate
the class struggle. The bad thing about this ‘partial equality’ that has
been achieved as a result of consistent women’s struggles is that we
have learnt to be grateful for the freedoms that we now have without
having to fight for greater freedoms in order to carry out our daily
life.As unfortunate or pessimistic as it
sounds, it will take a few more,Shehla Rashid grave violations of women’s rights to
make us aware of the freedoms that we do not have. It is only with a
consolidation similar to the post-Mathura or post-Nirbhaya gang rape
cases that our concerns will be seen as genuine once again. Perhaps,
then, we will also be able to identify patriarchy as the enemy because
such inhuman incidents also mobilise men who assert that they will not
be party, through acquiescence, to violence against women. It is only
then that our rants won’t be dismissed as PMS and taken a little more
seriously.standwithJNU It is then that being a Left female activist, who has concerns other than gender,
won’t be read as an act of solicitation. It is then that university
students dressed in jeans won’t be called “paid models”. It is only then
that we will be able to communicate our politics effectively.JNU
Academic education and civility (if such a word exists) are two different entities with a huge gulf between them. We need to identify and bridge this gap in order to produce people who are more in sync with their human side. We need to find ways and means to bring ourselves from apathy to consciense-ness.
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