Dissecting - My Choice...

There we go! :) Any good thing and we are ready to retaliate tagging it under the unnecessary tags of useless feminism tactics! Let me do a reverse engineering. Consider the men of India! Forget women.. Please! Women are not important here. Let’s concentrate on men! Now line by line.. Concentrate!

My body, my mind, my choice

No one has a problem with a man who has unkempt looks, shabby clothes. The mind of men is respected more, than that of women. Has been so, always. The decision maker of the house – man. The one who gives permission to the women of the house – man. The one who controls the finances – man. The one who uses his mind – the man! Their mind, their choice!

How do you look at a woman with hair on her arms, face and legs, wearing short clothes and walking openly on the street?

To wear the clothes I like; even if my spirit roams naked

He wears whatever he likes. Irrespective of his chicken legs, irrespective of how clearly his underwear appears from the shorts, they roam around displaying their attitude. Because they have nothing to hide. They can roam without t-shirts, because the season demands. They can sleep naked, because it’s comfortable! It’s their choice.

How do you look at women who wear bikinis on the beach?

My choice; to be a size 0 or a size 15

A man can be 100kgs and still demand a slim fair bride. A man can eat and drink beer merrily to aid his paunch. His choice!

Would you marry a fat woman?

They don’t have a size for my spirit, and never will
To use cotton and silk to trap my soul is to believe that you can halt the expansion of the universe
Or capture sunlight in the palm of your hand
Your mind is caged, let it free
My body is not
Let it be
My choice

Little boys have their thoughts caged. They have the same fears and same doubts as girls do. But they are told that they are super humans. They are given an extra piece of chocolate an extra glass of milk. And even if it can’t be their choice, it is. Most of the times! How many of us tell our little girls that she can fly an aeroplane, or become a police officer or become a superwoman? Why do we give them Barbie dolls and kitchen sets to play with?

To marry, or not to marry

If am man remains unmarried, he is a sanyasi. A man having a bunch of girlfriends has a great social life! He is ideal. He is earning. He is living independently. His choice!

Would you stop questioning a woman who is 40 and not married? Could it be true that she is not a whore or an escort either?

To have sex before marriage, to have sex out of marriage, or to not have sex
My choice

Sex is just a natural need for men. Women can't have that. Like masturbation is boring after a certain age, it is essential to have sex. They do or do not. There is no judgment. It’s their choice!
Isn't sex a natural, physical need of women too? What’s wrong if they have sex before or after marriage?

To love temporarily, or to lust forever

My choice

Men may lust. And it is termed as love. Men may love, and may never lust. It is certainly their choice.

Why is a woman expected to mix the concepts of love and lust. Why is it assumed that if she loves a man, she will readily sleep with him?

To love a man, or a woman, or both
Remember; you are my choice, I’m not your privilege

A man can love one woman. Two. Three at a time. A man has spoiled many lives loving the mother wife and sister at the same time.

Why are women expected to love just her man and her kids and no one else?
What’s wrong, if a man loves a man. What’s wrong if a woman loves a woman?
It’s certainly every human’s choice!

The bindi on my forehead, the ring on my finger, adding your surname to mine, they’re all ornaments and can be replaced
My love for you cannot, so treasure that

Why does a relationship need to be in bondage? Or why does it need a validation. Are bindi, rings or mangalsutras sign of happy marriage? Love is. Happiness is.

Where is love?

My choice; to come home when I want
Don’t be upset if I come home at 4am
Don’t be fooled if I come home at 6pm,

Men can come late from work. They can have busy schedules. And they are considered to be working hard for the family. What would you think if a woman comes late? Is she necessarily partying. Even if she is, what is wrong?

My choice; to have your baby or not

Why do men pressurize women for sex, without precaution. And insist on abortion, if they are unable to manage the responsibility. Why is sex for pleasure for men and not for women?

Why can't a woman decide that she doesn't want to have the baby?

To pick you from 7 billion choices or not
So don’t get cocky

Why do men expect that they will get any girl? Why is there so much ego?

My pleasure might be your pain
My songs, your noise
My order, your anarchy
Your sins, my virtues
My choices are like my fingerprints
They make me unique
I am the tree of the forest
I am the snowflake not the snowfall
You are the snowflake
Wake up
Get out of the shit storm
I choose to empathize
Or to be indifferent
I choose to be different

And so the woman decides to empathize. She accepts you the way you are, dear men.

And all she tells you is… She is as powerful as the universe. Vast. Nothing can bind her. And she has the right to choose. She has the right.. And she can. But she slows down for you. Walks a little behind so that you can lead, but give her a chance to fly too! Because she has that power. And how far can that be contained?

I am the universe
Infinite in every direction
This is my choice

 After years of confinement, if women want to make a choice, what is wrong? Wouldn't you do the same?

When there are women who are trying to break free, take decisions for themselves, trying to live a life that any human has the right to live, why is she considered to be a rebel? A feminist, wrongly so? Why is she tagged as someone who is taking the men down?

Nowhere, is she trying to demean the men in her life. She is only expressing what she wants.. How she wants to soar, break free, live, and feel.
Just like every human has the right to breathe, so does she.
In the perfect world, there is no right and no wrong!

We respect the men who empower these women. Without them, they wouldn't be able to make these choices!
I support this initiative. It's my choice. If you don't I respect yours! 

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Kudos to Deepika for such a powerful voice over. Piku promotion or not.. you are always great, girl! 

When they Bleed Feminism....

I happened to stance upon Rupi Kaur's picture on Instagram yesterday. The one with blood on the sheets and stained lowers. It was a very very powerful picture. I also read the excerpt that went with it. Instagram had removed the picture categorizing it as unsuitable content, and then it was later put back on.

I wouldn't say there was any valid reason to put that picture down. There was no obscenity and like Rupi mentioned, there are other thousands of pictures out there which objectify women in a very negative light. And this picture was not one of them.

As I read more of her works, I got drawn towards her instantly. Her poetry was effortlessly beautiful. There was a subtle pain, which you could feel, as you read. I also saw how this one particular photograph was trending on FB and other sites. I also read the comments and I was so happy with the immense support it got. I, perhaps would not be able to put in words, the power that one picture holds!

And then I landed on to her website, and saw the other pictures of the same series. And I won't lie, I was disturbed. The freedom expression has been granted a green flag by the court and we all are absolutely free to express whatever we want to.

But I take offense in other pictures of that series. The way feminism is propagated through used pads and blood in the pot -I have a problem with it! 

That is not how I would support feminism. I am a woman. I will bleed, and i do not want to display it so that I show the men that this is what happens to me, but because it is a natural process of my body and it will happen every month.

I take offense when men piss publicly. I take offense when I see pornographic sites with huge penises. I take offense when men touch themselves in public. I don't like them being so chauvinistic about their body parts that they touch and feel and piss in public! Why wouldn't  I expect them to do the same, then, if I put up displays of blood?

I would most gladly educate the men in my life about it, but I do not find it necessary to show them how I bleed and how the used pad looks like.

Menstruation and the talks, are definitely a taboo in our nation. And that needs to change. There is a way in which a topic is conveyed. This extreme form of expression is something that I think is a problem, today. 

This extremism has made a patriarchy of our society and these means will completely defy the purpose of driving feminism. We need to strike a balance. No wonder why there are so many people who hate feminists. Because, the understanding of Feminism is not clear, for most!

I had a small survey taken a few days back, where I asked my male friends if they would buy Sanitary Napkins for their wives/girlfriends/mothers/daughters/sisters. 95% of them said they had no problem going to a shop and asking for Sanitary pads for the women in their family. The remaining 4% had never done it so they did not know if they would. And the last 1% did not know what it meant.

For the 1%, if I am to show these pictures, as a mean of educating them about equality for men and women, or making them understand about the natural process that females go through, they would rather find it gross. Let alone understand the main motive of the series of these pictures. It is like showing porn to someone you want to explain "intercourse" to.

What are we trying to prove? As women, we do not need men to know what bleeding "looks" like, because we can never understand what happens to them when they have an erection at a weird time of the day! We become judgmental and call it perversion, then what do we expect them to label this as? Men most definitely need to understand what happens during that process, but they can only understand so much, because no matter how much they try they will never know what it feels like, to menstruate!

The main idea of feminism is defeated here because we are only thinking about one side of the story. Is it the fault of the men that we bleed, or we have menstrual cramps, or we have blood oozing out of us 5 days in a month, nonstop? What is that we want them to know? That it shouldn't be a taboo, and that it should be considered as a natural process? 

Well, most of them already know. They do think like that. It us unfair on our part to think of men as someone who have no knowledge about these natural processes of women. We underestimate our men a lot. We have to accept that the times are slowly changing.

The people who are stuck up and have been a barrier in advancement, are people who are either uneducated or have no means of accepting this new wave of change and awareness. The chances that they will see these images or change the way they think, is almost nil, again.

Then what are we, as feminists, trying to prove.

I have no problems with the way the pictures are taken, the art form, or the medium of expression. I have immense respect for it. But  I have a problem, when you tag "feminism" to it and say that these pictures will aid to that cause. Because it won't. And i have a problem with that. Because I am supporting the same cause! 

The beauty of women is in lot of things. Even in menstruating. But some things are to be understood, not displayed!
 
And this is not what I would do to prove my point about equalism! No matter how misogynist the society is! 

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PS: The views are personal, and  I understand, most of the readers have understood these images to be highly feminist and supporting the cause. Rupi has not mentioned it specifically anywhere. My opinions are only based on the comments I read from the one picture on Instagram.