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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
Lopamudra Banerjee is an author, poet, translator, editor with eight published books and six anthologies in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She has been a featured multicultural woman poet at Rice University, Houston, USA in 2019 read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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