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“So wait, let me get this straight.”
“Ahan.”
“You’re serious.”
“Ahan.”
“You’re actually serious?”
“AF.”
“You’re a feminist?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“But. You’re a guy.”
“Was it the patchy moustache that gave me away?”
“Why would you hate on your own kind, man?”
“Ah. To paraphrase PG Wodehouse, you seem to have the look of a man who had drunk the cup of life only to find a dead dung beetle at the bottom.”
Feminism: a term that has gained so many negative connotations over the past few years that it makes a dead dung beetle sound like a compliment in comparison. I mean, ask the average Indian man what his definition of the F-word is and you’re likely to find yourself somewhere on the spectrum between confused and amused. “Feminists are particularly cantankerous women who spew venom in the general direction of men, aspire to usurp their positions of power in boardrooms and in society, smash our fragile egos by doing just that, and in their free time, you can find them braiding each other’s armpit hair.” Bullshit, of course, because everyone knows they first comb and then braid the hair. That bit’s common sense, really.
Still, even as these aforementioned men engage in a war of words with what they deem to be your stereotypical bra burning ‘outspoken’ feminist, I pop by, proudly braless myself, and voice my support to the movement and the cause. It’s at this point that we exchange positions on the confused-amused scales as they try to figure out where I fit in all of this. Oh wait, this one has a penis, they say, nothing a little name-calling can’t sort out. On lucky days, I’m a libtard, a mangina, or a liberal snowflake, but on days they can’t be arsed with creativity, I’m simply a misinformed pussy who’s stupid to not take pride in his masculinity because it’s ‘God’s gift’ to me. To be honest, I don’t fully understand this sense-of-entitlement-in-one’s-penis bit, but that’s probably because mine was stored in the bit they cut off when I was circumcised a week after birth.
So, when that (obviously) doesn’t work, I get accused of ‘backstabbing’ them by switching teams, or speaking in favour of women’s rights because I have a cleverly hidden agenda or an ulterior motive.
“There are other ways to become popular, you know?” I’m reliably informed by a guy with 12 followers and an Uday Chopra avi on Twitter.
“How can you be a man and yet be a feminist? Don’t feminists just hate men?” I’m asked by a curious-yet-horribly-misinformed uncle on Facebook.
Here’s the thing: as a kid freshly out of an all boys’ school, I shied away from the term ‘feminist’ for that very reason, because it was propagated that being one implied hating on men and advocating female superiority. Perhaps it was negative connotations like these that made me hesitant — who wants to be called a feminazi, 16-year-old me thought. Or perhaps it was because I didn’t want to lose the people I called friends, who I presumed to be good people despite their penchant for constantly putting women down and cracking crass sexist jokes.
“Are you doing this to get laid? Won’t work, buddy,” because of course, Bollywood has taught us that everything boils down to ‘tricking’ a woman into hopping on my dick. Actually believing that women deserve an equal status in society is too farfetched an idea, innit?
Thankfully, the older I got, the more I read, and the more female friends I made caused the voice inside me to start growing stronger too. I started wrangling with male cousins and elders over the rights of women in the family. Voices were raised, which soured relationships, but I refused to budge. I rowed with classmates in college, male and female alike, who deemed a woman to be inferior because she’s ‘biologically weak’. The fact that she can bleed out of her vagina for a week every month, push a three kilo baby out of it and live to tell the tale is irrelevant information that doesn’t fit their agenda, of course. I began calling out sexism everyday, blatant and casual alike, even if the people involved were some of my closest friends. I did all of it while steering clear of the term ‘feminist’, because I simply did not know any better.
Till one day, a female friend of mine told me, “You know, you might not claim to be a feminist, but your actions are as feminist as they can be.”
So yep, here I am today, a feminist loud and proud, because at twenty-four, I know that feminism is about equality between the sexes — nothing more, nothing else. And before the flak come flying in, I’m not saying I deserve a medal for stating something so blatantly obvious, and I’m certainly not saying it because it’s ‘cool’ to do so. I identify as a feminist simply because I have always felt this sense of disparity — both in my family and in society in general.
I grew up watching neighbours pull their daughters out of school so that their sons could study further. I failed to understand why my cousin had to throw away her dreams, aged 19, to ‘make a home’ with a stranger eleven years her senior. It confused me when I watched women in my family serve men first, only to eat after every single male was done gorging. It pained me to hear horrific tales where women, young, middle-aged, and old alike, had been sexually harassed and abused. I’ve known women who’ve endured decades of mental and physical torture because they feared ostracisation if they chose to get a divorce — if they had that choice to begin with, that is. And all along, I never encountered a single patriarchal figure who believed in using his privilege to elevate them to an equal status. None of them, not a single one, stood up for the women in their lives they claimed to love so dearly.
And where did I grow up? Bandra, Mumbai — which is supposedly the most progressive city in the country. Despite that, I’ve watched several urban men, both within my family and outside it, constantly treat women like second grade citizens. I’ve seen boys in my family, myself included, relish the freedoms that our female cousins could only dream of. As a boy, I could get back home at any time I liked, but if you’re a girl, you were expected to be home at 7 or 8. Not because they feared for her safety, but because, “Ladki itni der raat tak bhatkegi toh log kya kahenge?” Furthermore, I didn’t have to spend hours in the kitchen to ensure my rotis were round, because I was repeatedly told that my job is to earn the bread, not cook it. The woman I marry, of course, would cook them for me, lest all those years of forced training go to waste. And if a few brave women dared to rebel, they were immediately intimidated, bullied, and silenced. “We’ll pull you out of school”, or “We’ll get you married” being the preferred threats, while verbal and physical abuse worked splendidly as the last resort.m
And so, if much like me, you’re a privileged urban Indian man who can relate, here’s what I implore you to do: look around you, objectively, rationally, and just try and gauge the levels of disparity that exist. If that doesn’t work, speak to the women in your life, and get first person accounts of the same. Now, proceed to use your logic, and imagine how infinitely worse it is in areas where there’s a serious dearth of education and awareness — which, sadly, constitutes a significant rural portion of this country. Where, as a woman, if you’re lucky enough to not be killed at birth, you’re raised to believe you’re the inferior sex, meant only to do the bidding of the patriarchal head — usually in the form of a father, brother, or a husband — who controls your life. You’re constantly denied access to basic opportunities and rights, your education is stolen from you, you’re stigmatised for something as natural as getting a period, and at the same time, stigmatised if you miss one out of a holy wedlock. You’re expected to quietly agree to marry whoever your parents pick for you, produce (preferably male) babies, and watch movies with strong female leads and wonder what your life could’ve been. And you have no choice but to succumb to your fate, and endure it all, because that’s how a patriarchal society functions: men make the rules, and women are expected to nod, be docile, and move on.
And if, at the end of it all, you feel that women are marginalised, suppressed, face inequities in all walks of life, and deserve more than what they’re presently offered, congratulations, that’s the first step towards becoming a feminist. Because no matter what a sanghi, or an islamic, or a neo-nazi white supremacist troll on Facebook tells you, that’s what feminism is all about — elevating women to an equal status in society wherein they’re given fair and equal representation in all spheres and most importantly, wherein they hold the power of making choices for themselves.
“But hey, what about those people who engage in a war of words and question your stand? Being a male feminist is tough, isn’t it?”
Good question, so here’s the deal: from personal experience, I can reveal that being a male feminist in India is exactly like being a female one, except I do not receive unsolicited messages from my brethren wherein they speak about forcing their privates into my orifices sans explicit consent. Furthermore, the aforementioned brethren actually hear my point of view without speaking over me or cutting me off halfway by telling me I’m a bossy bitch. And oh, there’s also that bit where I’m not forced to ‘settle down’ (settle being the keyword here) with rich strangers the minute I’m feeling 22. I’m not ostracised — or worse, killed — if I choose to marry out of my caste or religion, because it’s automatically assumed the girl in question will convert or adopt my ways. And after being married, I’m not forced to quit my job to turn into a baby making machine, only to produce more girls and watch them go through exactly what I went through because the men in my life refused to stand up for what’s right.
So, TL;DR: Being a male feminist in India is exactly like being a female feminist, except your patriarchal privileges remain unaffected and wholly intact. You might face slight discomforts, sure, but it’s incomparable to the injustices the women you love go through everyday. And if at the end of it all, your stand helps dismantle patriarchy even a little, isn’t being rechristened ‘Dead Dung Beetle’ absolutely worth it?
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