Check out 16 Return-To-Work Programs In India For Ambitious Women Like You!
Men do not want make the effort to understand women as just as human, because they want to go on enjoying the entitlement that they have enjoyed for centuries.
Today another old joke came up in my feed. God offers man a gift and he asks for an impossible superhighway halfway across the earth. God says not possible, ask for something else. Man says tell me how to understand women. God says ‘Do you want a two lane or four lane superhighway?’
Years ago I had laughed at this joke. I took it to mean that women are way too ‘mysterious’ for men, or even gods to understand. It felt somehow glamorous and superior.
And that was an easy bait for a young woman with low self esteem looking desperately for approval from men.
Today, reading it, I felt fury. Even rage. Because I don’t think now that women are ‘mysterious’ in any way at all.
Women are human beings like men. They feel the same things and want the same things. They feel pain when hurt or exploited or violated. They want respect and consideration and freedom and safety and self actualization. Just like men.
What is there not to understand? How difficult is it to understand something so basic?
Women are made out to be, even glamorized as mysterious for absolutely no reason but that the patriarchy does not WANT to understand women and see them as human beings. It WANTS to go on exploiting and dehumanizing women. It is because men do not WANT to do the work of understanding women because they want to go on enjoying the entitlement that they have enjoyed for centuries.
No, women are not mysterious. No, we did not step off a cloud with a built-in capacity to smile and look pretty under abuse. We are exactly the same kind of people that men are, and we want the same basic things.
If the patriarchal male does not want to make the effort to understand her, let him at least say so honestly. Jokes like these are nothing but another attempt to undermine the basic humanity of women — it is a veiled way of saying women are ‘difficult’.
Image source: a still from the film Umrao Jaan
Aparna Pallavi's current callings are as a therapist, contemplative writer and researcher of indigenous and forest foods. Gender and patriarchy are among her favorite subjects in her contemplative writing. Formerly she has had a read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
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.
Please enter your email address