It’s Time We Tamed The Unbridled Privilege Of Men Who Think They Own Their Women

Who owns women? Only themselves. Unlike the ownership that is ascribed to men since time immemorial. It's time we realise this and change.

Who owns women? Only themselves. Unlike the ownership that is ascribed to men since time immemorial. It’s time we realise this and change.

Mention any cult or group, and we will find practises and norms laid down for women that would turn us contemporary women into outraged devils hungry for justice. There are many writings and ancient rules that further the restrictions placed on women to do things that were permissible to men.

Why even make such rules?

This is just one example where men have tried to dominate over women. This misogyny has played its part too, in India, where women are worshipped as goddesses and have also been tried as slaves and sold as brides with dowry…  The designations men have for women: sluts and whores and what not in 7104 other languages where women take birth to give birth, work and entertain men.

Now, if she sleeps with you, she is a slut and if she doesn’t you simply call her a whore and move on. Either way, women are humiliated, frowned upon and abused.

However hard we try, the barbaric attitude of men towards women seems to be unabated and unfazed no matter what rules and laws are made, men can’t be policed! They are the untamable wild creatures of nature who were created to be so. Period.

According to our forefathers (there has never ever been any importance given to foremothers, mind you!), women are meant to be tamed, bound, intimidated, enslaved and protected by the owner from other men as if they were objects like cattle and stock which could be stolen or fought over for ownership. We hear about guys fighting over girls, bets being placed on our bodies and abuses made out of the words for our body parts, hurled at each other in anger and as jokes to humiliate us too.

This not just about feminism or equality, it is about women being treated as individuals and humans with rights to their own body and life. We don’t owe you anything men, even our birth was given by a woman.

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We are supposed to stay behind the veil and if we ever decide to come out of it then what happens to us next is only our responsibility, as it was the girl’s who was raped in the bus and thrown on the road, as it was the woman’s who was molested on New Year’s Eve, as it was the little girl’s who was born to a family with men.

And this is ‘normal’, this is how it has always been since ages and we aren’t expected to oppose it. Being ‘normal’ is not necessarily a virtue, continuing with it sometimes denotes lack of courage. It’s not the future that we are afraid of, it’s repeating the past that makes us anxious, hence ‘what if’ always remain unanswered!

Have you ever heard of a topless man being groped in the midst of 50 women? Never! But when it’s a woman walking even completely clad and covered (or not), she becomes an object of entertainment and molestation because she is a woman. Forget about 50 men, lets just take a woman amidst 3-4 men from her own family, would they leave her untouched? Okay, let’s take a woman and her own husband, does he even wait for her acceptance before he forces himself on her? Every 4th woman has a history of being assaulted by her own family members.

Do men even understand the meaning of consent?

Why can’t men keep their body and thoughts to themselves?

To men: “Is it because you can’t or you just won’t?”

Men can’t, we have seen them ‘helpless’, but we can!

Not all men are alike, but the ones who don’t indulge in such violence are the ones who make up the audience that whistles and coaxes the rest to commit such horrible crimes (for men). They have all sorts of reasons for their actions like being drunk, the woman was standing/sitting too close to him, the woman was scantily clad, because he was a man with needs or may be because she was just a woman and SHE EXISTED!

Men hate women so much that they go berserk to the point of causing life-threatening injury if women “invade” their spaces never mind their constant whining and mocking women’s need for safe spaces from men.

There have been incidences where a woman is beat up at home or in public, and no one dares to interfere because they feel that she is being beaten up by someone who ‘owns’ her. Now, let me restate the misogynistic definition of an ownership of a woman: “A woman can only be owned by her father, brother, husband, boyfriend, or the male head of the group or society she belongs to. She has no right to any of her dreams, soul, life and body and remains to be in the same state until death. Throughout her life, the ownership may vary, but the order is never feminine, neither can she set herself free nor can she buy her way out of it. If she tries to escape any of her boundaries (which includes all human feelings and aspirations), she will be burnt alive, shamed and shunned upon, looked upon as an outlandish morality, paraded naked or even raped and left to die.”

In order to uproot this misogyny, we need to stand up against a plethora of violence which begins right from the moment we are born… It’s time we tame the untamed!

Published here earlier.

Image source: pixabay

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About the Author

Sonal Kothari

Professionally, I am a content developer and editor. Other times I'm involved in various activities as a freelance blogger/writer, volunteer in my college's alumni association, career coach, tattoo and skating enthusiast. read more...

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