#11 A Feminist FAQ, Being Apolitical & A Mild Urban Identity Crisis
Hi there, this week we talk about some replies to stingy, sexist comments, having no political opinions and the dilemma of being from Mumbai and Pune at the same time.
FAQs' Radical Cousin
- Diti
Are you tired of coming across the same, uncreative sexist comments on the internet over and over again? Have you been stuck in the middle of a conversation you’ve had a million times before? Do you also find it difficult to articulate just the right comeback for such comments in the moment only to think of one in the shower five hours later? Is slapping people with thick books an option generally frowned upon by your acquaintances? Well, then I have the perfect solution for you. I have put together the most articulate arguments for the most frequently used sexist comments (FUSCs, if you will) and put them in a list for your convenience. Feel free to use them the next time a classmate gets into an argument with you that is dripping with misogyny. No catch! No trick! 100% satisfaction. In exchange, all you need to do is spread the word. God knows the world needs it.
Frequently Used Sexist Comments.
If feminism is about equality between men and women then why is it called ‘feminism’? Doesn’t bringing ‘feminine’ into the picture make women more important?
Feminism is advocacy for equal rights for men and women. It does not mean that women are better than men and it definitely does not mean that women hate men (well they only hate men who deserve it). But it is necessary to acknowledge the group that has been oppressed forever (Do I really need to tell you which one that is?). The fight is to give women the same rights as men so calling the movement humanism (a term which has a completely different meaning), or any of the other infuriating terms people on the internet suggest, including those who call themselves ‘equalists’, as alternatives do not acknowledge the root of the issue at all.
Why talk only about women getting raped? Men get raped, too!
Yes, men get raped and every time anybody ignores consent to exert their power- rape has everything to do with power and nothing to do with sex- it is horrifying. But if the only time people (Ahem, men!) talk about men getting raped is to take space in a conversation about women, they are not only belittling the experiences of the women but also the men they are so-called advocating for. The word ‘too’ has no place in this context.
But what about all the false accusations made by women to gain popularity and fame? The law is biased in their favour.
To begin with, laws regarding rape have shown any kind of change only after our country was brought to a standstill post the Nirbhaya case. Men are still raping women and getting off scot-free, most of them backed by casteism and it is clear who the law and order of the country are working in support of. Name one woman who has gained fame or popularity after reporting a rape case. Instead, they receive death threats, acid attacks, ill-reputations in the society and their names are dragged through the mud on national television. This is not to say that false accusations have not been lodged. But in a country where the victim is often intimidated out of naming the perpetrator, do not disregard their accusations because of the small percentage of false accusations.
All men must respect women because they are someone’s daughter, wife, sister or mother.
All men must respect women. Period. Women deserve respect because they are humans who have the right to live a respectful life. Saying this means that the only reason you wish to treat women with respect is because of their association with a man. Women are not the property of men. Disrespecting them is an affront against women and not the men in their life.
Why teach only boys how to respect women? Teach women to earn respect.
Women do not have to earn the right to be treated in a humane manner. That should be a given. In a country like ours, girls are taught from a very young age how to behave with the men around them, often even within the family. While boys get away without such knowledge because it isn’t considered important enough.
I know what a woman is wearing does not contribute to sex but women also need to be careful. Why should they tempt men by wearing certain clothes?
What a woman is wearing is never the reason for rape. The rapists’ sick mentality is the only reason for rape. Saying that ‘indecent’ clothes will tempt men to commit such a crime does not only blame the victim but also insults men by comparing them to savages.
Feminism talks about men’s issues, too, so it is good.
Yes, feminism talks about men’s issues, too. But the value of feminism does not come from what it does for men. This is only a statement used to make feminism as a concept palatable to men and it fails at even doing that successfully.
Girls mature faster than boys.
They don't. Girls are just held accountable for their actions at a younger age while boys aren’t till they are much older. Sometimes never. And if that’s the case, this is an argument that should also be used while deciding leadership roles and not only while discussing additional household responsibilities.
A good wife will make a good man out of him.
The onus of ridding men of their bad habits does not lie with the women in their lives. Men are not improvement projects that women have to take on in relationships. This should not be an expectation from them.
Women are ahead of men in every field today. They have all the privileges and opportunities they need. Clearly, we no longer need feminism.
Anyone who says this is saying it from a privileged place or just an ignorant one. 88 rapes take place in this country every day. Human trafficking is at its all-time high. 39.4% girls aged 15-18 drop out of schools and these are the ones admitted in school in the first place. 1.5 million underage girls get married every year. Acid attacks, online rape and death threats, eve-teasing are now prevalent more than ever. 82% women do not have access to hygienic menstruation products even today. The percentage of women in the workforce is only 20.33%. Even a woman with all the privileges of class, caste and education faces sexism in every facet of life from workplace harassment, discrimination, the pressure to get married and have children, inability to make decisions for themselves, I can go on. And do not forget that marital rape is still not illegal in this country because it harms the ‘sanctity’ of Indian marriages.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many statements and comments made by your sexist uncle at dinner parties that I haven’t acknowledged. Being on the internet or even being a member of this society means coming face-to-face with sexist and misogynistic comments every day and from every sphere. Educate yourself. Read. And take every opportunity to argue with people on these points. The world needs more radical women who do not take things lying down.
PS: I am not the perfect feminist. I learn a little more everyday and my opinions / ideas / arguments are further honed through other feminists who are, more often than not, more eloquent than I can ever hope to be. The idea of this article was not to pretend to be the know-it-all with all the answers but to collate some statements that frequently pop up about feminism.
An incomplete list of great books that you can pick up to educate yourself further:
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit
Feminist Theory: From Margin To Center & Feminism Is For Everybody: Passionate Politics by Bell Hooks
Hood Feminism: Notes From Women That A Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
Seeing Like A Feminist by Nivedita Menon
Above Them All
- Sneha
Back in 2019 ahead of the General Assembly Elections, I would routinely pester my friends to go register for a voting card. Now, we had learnt all along in our civics classes about the universal adult franchise and our primary duty as a citizen of a democracy to vote. But much like other information fed to us, we barely remembered this as well. So here we were, 21 and zero interest in doing the one thing that is expected of us. “I’m just not into politics”, they would justify. Some would even wear this apolitical ideology as a badge of honour. Proudly declaring their lack of interest in politics and its associated areas.
In most “apolitical” circles around us, politics is looked at as a dirty word, full of negative connotations. We have in mind, a firm example of what a politician looks like, largely dictated by Bollwood’s version of it. In the popular imagination, the politician is a mighty old, grey-haired man, clad in all white, sporting a tummy and chewing tobacco all along. He sits in a throne-like chair and shouts random orders on the phone. He’s barely seen doing anything apart from conspiring to pull down our hero from his legacy. They’re all power-hungry and corrupt. Think Amrish Puri from Nayak or Amitabh Bachchan from Sarkar. This caricature of a politician further taints the image of politics in the minds of young people. After all, it is not far from true. Real-life politicians also tend to be more or less similar. Most of them practically live in the 1950s espousing cultural values and norms with little regard to making actual improvements in our public services. So can we really blame the citizens for being apolitical? Yes.
Part of what makes the politicians this way is public apathy. It takes a lot to shake the conscience of the people who are not directly affected by the inefficiencies of the state. And the ones who are affected find themselves unable to channel their response. Therein lies all reasons for the beginning and the end of apolitical beliefs. It is this ability to distance ourselves from it. Because we believe politics doesn’t affect us. Most of us look at politics from a distant lens, and being able to detach from politics is a privilege of its own. But this detachment also comes from this poor understanding of politics. Politics is defined as the art and science of running a government. For the uninitiated, the government is a body that manages and conducts all public affairs of a country/ state/ city/ district. Keywords being “all public affairs.” In my simpleton view, every citizen of this country is counted as a public hence public affairs concern all of us.
Away from the constant bickering and TV debate screaming from our elected representatives, there is a whole lot more to politics. Politics decides everything. From the price of tomatoes and petrol to the number of hours of availability of water, how fast or slow the metro line is constructed to how many times a road is remade. It is everywhere. And it affects everyone as long as they like the tanginess in their salad and sandwiches; like to drive to places without encountering too much traffic and enjoy smooth roads. Politics. Is. Everywhere. By virtue of being alive, we become political. Free maternity leaves for our pregnant mothers are political and so are free vaccines for babies. All children having the fundamental right to be educated till the age of 14 and them receiving mid-meals is political. We become even more political when we turn 18. Our driver’s license and pan card are political. Our college degrees and examinations are political. The minimum wage we earn and how much income tax we pay is political. Who we marry is literally a matter still being discussed in courts. Senior citizen pensions? Yup, political. What about our deaths? You guessed it!
Politics are a part of our life milestones and everyday affairs. We just don’t see it because we are protected by our little class and caste bubbles. Safe and sound inside, politics seems too far away. For as long as we wouldn’t have to be personally worried about bearing the brunt of a CAA-NRC pull off or have our friends’ colleges be attacked, we like to believe it’s not real. The last few years have witnessed great political turmoil within our country. Right-wing nationalism is at an all-time high, many protests have already taken place and continue to take place, as we speak, a state was ripped off its statehood, students were beaten and activists arrested. Not that none of this happened before, but doesn’t mean we ignore it now.
Politics is not just banter for dinner with our extended family. Nor is it just reposts and tweets on the internet. For most people in our country, these things dictate their daily lives in more pronounced ways than it does for the rest of us. We just happen to have got lucky. Except in the past few months when every single decision made by our overlords were felt by each and every person. And that is also when suddenly many of my formerly apolitical friends started signing petitions to the UGC for postponing final exams. And just like that politics started to become personal.
No extra links for this one, just read the news and register for a voter ID if you haven’t yet. <3
Not So Punekar Anymore?
- Diti
In 2016 I moved to Mumbai from Pune with my family. For the first few months (okay, who am I kidding, for the first year) I still introduced myself as someone from Pune. I missed the city, my friends, the life I was used to and not a day would go by without texting my friend “I MISS PUNE!” in all caps like it was her fault that I was being forced to stay in this city that felt hot, sweaty and uncomfortable.
It’s been close to 5 years and things do not feel as bad any more. I have adjusted to Mumbai almost coming to *gasp* like it. Yet, I always felt like an imposter calling myself a Mumbaikar. I don’t look at the city with the pink-tinted glasses that so many of its residents do and I still can find a long, long list of complaints. But when on October 12 Mumbai faced a blackout caused by a technical glitch, I realised just how much of a Mumbaikar I have become.
Every Thursday, like clockwork, Pune is left without electricity for almost 12 hours, sometimes more. It is a normal part of life in the city and no one even blinks an eye anymore. You just go about like it is a normal day. We fondly call it ‘load shedding’. In one instance, I had been stuck in my grandparents’ house without electricity for 48 hours in the middle of May, eating fried fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner because the Sunday stock of fish (every Bengali knows what I am talking about) had to be finished before it went bad. I had to call my father and beg him to take me back home where the generator made things easier.
That’s the thing, in Pune almost every house, and definitely, every society, has backup to keep certain appliances running. While in Mumbai we live with the assurance that we will always have electricity. Home generators are a far off thought when we have one solar-charged hurricane lamp here in Mumbai, although I have no idea how sun rays reach it inside my father’s bar. Some time between seeing a tweet by Amitabh Bachchan telling Mumbaikars not to panic because we will get through the tough time and feeding my puppy an ice cube to cool her down, I realised that I had become more of a Mumbaikar than I thought. The things that I had found ‘normal’ not so long ago no longer seem that way. And before you tell me this, I am privileged, I know Pune is clearly one of the better examples, there are many, and I really mean many other places who live without electricity for far longer and some places that have never had it in the first place.
These five hours without electricity- and not experiencing the legendary Mumbai locals firsthand, the first time I told someone not from Mumbai that the humidity was really not that bad and getting a taste of the city’s hospitality during the horrible monsoon- was what made me realise that maybe after five years here… I was no longer a complete Punekar…? The jury is still out on how I feel about this realisation though.
Somethings to watch out for this week from India and around the globe:
Bihar is currently witnessing the State Legislative Assembly Elections and it’s the first one since the beginning of the pandemic. Find out what’s happening there. Read: The Print
The 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections are right around the corner, and all eyes are on Trump and Biden. But what does this mean for India? Read: Washington Post
Ankhi Das, the policy head at Facebook India, has resigned after accusations on her of favouring the ruling party in Facebook’s moderation. Things sure get spicy. Read: Economic Times
Remember the Pulwama attack in 2019? Yeah, Pakistan basically admitted to it. Read: Indian Express
Nigerians are out on the streets against persistent police brutality in the country. #EndSARS demands the removal of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. Watch this to find out all about it.
In other news, women in Poland are protesting against the new anti-abortion laws. Read: Indian Express
Post the death of the iconic Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Trump administration has picked (albeit hastily) the new Associate Justice for U.S. Supreme Court. Amy Coney Barrett is known for her conservative views. Find out more about her. Read: BBC
That’s all for this week.
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Note: The pandemic persists, but with the easing of lockdown and other activities, college and work are slowly catching up. So in order to avoid premature greying of our hair, we have decided to make Footnotes & Scribbles into a fortnightly newsletter instead of a weekly affair. This is (hopefully) temporary, and we’ll soon be back to the weekly format.
Until next time
Love & Long Weekends,
Diti & Sneha