A Lot Is Wrong With The World, But Every Story We Tell Need Not Be About Oppression

I am not saying that there is no oppression of women. But if everything we write or read is about this oppression, it can be very stressful.

I am not saying that there is no oppression of women. But if everything we write or read is about this oppression, it can be very stressful.

Is it only me or is there someone else who feels like me?

Of late, since we are more connected via social media, the time I spend on browsing through the various social media sites has increased.

Maybe it’s because of my browsing history or because I follow a lot of pages which are women centric, I tend to visit these more, and since I like writing, I try and take part in all the writing competitions. Sometimes I like to read all the entries even if I have not sent my entry.

Yes, oppression is a reality

Trust me when I say 90% of the time I read only about oppression, even in fiction.

It could be a 100 word story challenge, a story about a picture, or captions about a picture, or articles about any given topic, most women write only about how woman have it bad. And in 90% of cases these entries are adjudged as the winning entries.

I am not saying that there is no oppression. I am not saying that we should not fight for our rights. I know women all over the world are fighting so many battles every minute. I know that every story must be told, every culprit must be punished, every woman deserves justice.

But the thought that we don’t own power unless we shout about our woes is a bit too overwhelming.

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But is it the only reality?

We are going through tough times, and it is very depressing to read only about oppression. I sometimes go back to look at the prompt or the picture to actually understand if it really is so oppressive.

I don’t know the statistics but let’s assume for every ten men who are bad there is one man who is good. Why can’t we write about these good men too?

At the risk of receiving flak, I want to say that sometimes I feel we are more beaten down and manipulated by fellow women. With men we are instinctively alert but with women we often let our guard down and we are taken for a ride.

Where are the positive stories?

We all know that many women, irrespective of their age, colour, status are being abused all over the world. We need to do something about it but I definitely don’t think that every story we write should be about oppression even when it is not required.

It can become very depressing to read about the crime against women in real life; god knows we have enough of it, and I don’t want to read it again in fiction.

Hoping to read more positive stories.

Yosarian / CC BY-SA

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