Being a Pandemic Womyn

We tend to put an excess of emphasis on the 'Fem' of feminism, assuming that it only concerns women's rights. I'll tell you something which is not new, and something more - feminism can be defined as "the belief and aim that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men; the struggle to achieve this aim." according to the Oxford Online Dictionary. It's not just about women, though. As one might know, the word refers to the provision of equality in all aspects to all people irrespective of race, caste, gender, age and sexuality. But, I want to add something more to that idea: feminism stands on the foundation of an ideology which is a long-term struggle. It thrives on questioning not only patriarchy, but a built mindset. Everything which is built can always be reconstructed.

Last night, my father and I debated on how females throughout history never had it easy unlike their male counterparts. Women have to fight harder to get what they want. Take the suffrage, for example, or withstanding victim-shaming. Based on stigma associated with their genitalia, women have always been objectified to be moulded into a certain look, becoming a source of lust. It still happens in twenty-first century media, even. You've heard about double standards. I have been lucky enough so far as to not immediately experience its severity, but all of us (more or less) have gone through incidents here and there. But, things like this do happen; more so for females in the world at large. I ask - what can be done.

A common misconception is that feminism is equivalent to "man-hating". It's not. Feminism does not preach that all men are terrible. It's instead a movement pinpointing the darknesses of the human impulse targeted towards the innocent. It's to remove how females are looked up and down in the street when they walk to someplace. It's to remove injustices leveraged against women, for pay and everything else. Do you remember that advertisement which billboarded that fact that "men will be men"? It's basically about men's weakness of drooling over women. So, advertisements like these promoting the male gaze are normalised; but have you seen anything with the tagline "women will be women", or "people will be people"?

Being a woman is difficult sometimes. Our actions have a vulgar and decent side which gains more public remarks than necessary. Gender roles are no exception. Working women constantly fight against perceived expectations of rearing children, managing the household and organising their job demands, now aggravated during the pandemic. Some able husbands depend on only their wives to serve them meals. I've read in books that masculinity and femininity are nothing but social constructions which have grown into place over millennia. They are not golden rules. What is "normal" now is never absolute.

I'm not talking about a violent and exaggerated form of feminism (which, unfortunately, is recurrent nowadays). I'm talking about how feminism isn't just about women. It also includes the suppression of men to fit into toxic masculinity or the idea that they are supposed to be the ones with visible muscles and six-pack abs. Feminism is about humanity.

Some feminists use the terms "womyn", "wimmin", "womban" and "womon" to break off the "-men" part. As Simone de Beauvoir, a French feminist philosopher, said: women have been seen as the second sex, after men. We are people, after all! Nobody is anybody else's physical derivation! However, we sometimes forget to live for ourselves and our identities. It's okay. It doesn't mean that the fight is over.

The fight should be for equality AND self-fulfilment.

A journey.

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