Radical feminism can be defined as a perspective of feminism that emphasises the patriarchal roots of inequality in the society between men and women. It looks at patriarchy as something that oppresses men and gives men more privileges.
Radical feminism emphasises the patriarchal roots of inequality, with men placed as ‘unsolicited Gods’. This poem offers us a deeply personal view of feminism.
My love, we sing a different song,
Born into the revolution of female birth.
We have laboured in war, as your thorn of love
pierced our core, made us bleed.
Oh men, comrades or rhythmic reminders—
Did the thorn pierce your hearts too?
Our radical feminism holds us in transitions,
From the haunted sadness of thwarted births
To the restlessness of love letters and coquetry,
From the Radha led astray by Krishna’s flute
To the Kunti bearing Karna, her first love-child,
Tears, epic-like silences, the wet world of wombs,
Blooming anew with pleasures fought for,
Traded with momentous strife.
Oh men, comrades, we hear you’ve carved our destinies,
Rowed our boats since our mothers have borne us.
We hear your love is our elixir, your scornful abuses
Our poison. Comrades, we don’t know who chose you
As our unsolicited Gods, in this colonised, unaccustomed earth.
Our radical feminism is our desire to be whole,
Between nameless atoms and the magic of our sculpted presence.
Oh men, comrades in our twilight sky of unending love,
We have been scalded by your liberated, sunlit bodies,
The smug embrace of your masculine arms, the pride
Of us love-sick women, cocooning our nihilism.
Comrades, our souls have been nourished by your fire, your ice,
Our radical feminism—the naiveté and necessity
Our grandmothers and their grandmothers never knew,
The skin of sex and the crescendo of our revolution
Our daughters and their daughters and their daughters will adorn.
I crave to fight and make love, comrade, as sports played by equals!
My love, I hope to merge your roof with my sky,
Your temple with my shrine, your water with my earth.
We, the remnants of blood and earth are changing,
Our rivers gushing, forcing down before you.
Our radical feminism is not a style statement of postmodern longings.
Wasn’t the blood of disrobed Draupadi feminism enough?
Weren’t the coarse wars and solitude of the oldest women scribes
The earliest jargons of feminism?
Wasn’t the enraged, trembling body of Sita
Returning to Mother Earth’s core a feminist chanting?
Didn’t the bold strokes of women, and men entering their moist core
In Khajuraho, in Konark sow the earliest seeds of feminism blossoms?
Oh men, comrades, let your mothers teach you to strip your pride
With your first baby steps, to come to us with a new love born within you,
A wet, nourishing love of the Ardha-narishwar, the half-man, the half-woman,
Embracing our spirits warm, our cogent fire, the palimpsest of our scars.
Author’s note: Radical feminism is a topic very close to my heart, and quite a number of my poems and essays are centered on my expressions as a feminist poet and thinker. ‘Comrades of Radical Feminism’ was a theme-based writing prompt given in The Significant League, an online literary group, and I chose to write this poem, inspired by this writing prompt, focusing on a woman’s body, her longings and her expressions as a feminist scribe/poet/artist.
Picture credits: Christopher Dombres, used under a Creative Commons license
Lopa Banerjee is an author, editor, translator and faculty of Creative Writing at Richland College, Dallas, Texas, USA, but originally from Kolkata, India. Her memoir 'Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant's Wayward Journey' and her debut read more...
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This strange love story reminds me of Princess Diana when she gave an interview about Prince Charles - "There were three of us in this marriage!”
This love was flawed and broken the way only we humans know how to break things with our ego, pride, insecurity and complexities!
Where do I even begin to tell the story of how deep a love can be, how it transcends time, place and people. Perhaps this is a story about how women are their own worst enemies. Either way it is a story that tells us how frail, fragile and fraught we are as humans and how much we hurt each other.
This love story began when I was two years old. Growing up in India in a culture that wove love stories like Laila Majnu, Heer Ranjha and the epic symbol of love, the Taj Mahal, into the very fabric of our existence, love was always an integral part of our lives.
One such love story was of a boy and a girl who were neighbours. The boy, an athlete, artist and a poet, found his muse in this shy, thoughtful and in her own way poetic girl, who seemed to worship the very ground he walked on. Her face could be found in all the paintings he created, and her name in every poem he wrote. The girl called him Sagar, which means ocean, symbolizing his all-encompassing love for her.
Everything thing was going well; their wedding date was being finalized, till the boy’s older brother who was a doctor in the same little town, got accepted into Stanford Medical School to do his MS.
Earlier my husband would say, 'Arey! What is there in making dal-roti? It's so simple.' After he had to cook everyday when I was ill, he has stopped saying that to me!
“Arey! What is there to do in making dal roti? Put a handful of lentils in the cooker and let it whistle and make two rotis. After all, how long will it take?” A handful of dal (lentils) and two rotis! This is the story of every woman and no one seems to understand.
Some time ago, after a shopping spree, my husband and I entered the house, exhausted. I had just about kept all the bags aside, when my husband said, “I am very hungry, can you make something.”
I looked at my husband in amazement and thought, ‘He had just had food, how did he get hungry again so soon?’
My husband, as if he had read my face, said, “Arey! You know that my stomach is not filled with outside food. Just make dal roti. What is there to do in making dal roti? Put a handful of lentils in the cooker and let it whistle and make two rotis. After all, how long will it take?”
‘Is this the way dal (lentils) and roti are made?’ The thought came to my mind. ‘After all, I also went along and now I am tired too.’ I was also getting angry at myself that after all, I had spoiled the habit of everyone in the house.
What does feminism mean? It addresses the gender discrepancies women face daily, but it is most misunderstood, even by women themselves!
What if I told you I was a librocubicularist?
Or maybe, I told you I was a sapiosexual?
Each and every scenario looks ridiculous, right?
This post offers up an individual view of what feminism is, and how it can be used to further the rights of everyone, regardless of their gender.
This post offers up an articulation of what feminism is, and how it can be used to further the rights of everyone, regardless of their gender.
I do expect a lot of ire from my sisters herein when I say that notwithstanding the fact that feminism mainly focuses on women’s issues, feminism in its widest sense seeks gender equality, hence it must necessarily include men’s liberation as well. There is no denying the fact that men are also harmed by sexism and gender roles thrust upon them by our age old customs, though admittedly not as badly affected as women in India.
To those women who act upon false notions about feminism, please do not put the word feminism to any further disgrace by identifying the same as man hating or man bashing. Feminism just tends to break the patriarchal sheath that we live in, for the woman in us to emerge and assert primarily as a human being. In the process, as some comforts bestowed upon men by age old traditions and culture gets shattered for the betterment of women in general , they seem to feel that the ideologies are anti-men. In the present Indian scenario as women need more empowerment in comparison to their male counterparts, the word feminism just appears to be more women friendly.
Feminism does not mean you need to override men on all counts or counter whatever a man does. It just means you need to be yourself, rise on occasions when you are being oppressed, and assert your independence, including your freedom of movement, thoughts and dreams and make your voice heard and valued in a highly men-centric society. .