What does Feminism mean?
Sense & Sensuality
Chittaranjan Mishra has started an interesting discourse at my Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sarojini-Sahoo/106035073915) asking me some questions on Feminism. Here are the questions and my answers. You can share your ideas and make this thread a meaningful forum at my page. I hereby invite all of you to my page for joining the discourse.
Here are his questions to me:
Dr Sahoo, I have been following your writings since long, particularly since the second half of the seventies when you would write regularly for Jhankar. While I have been supportive of the Bohemian pursuit of gender equality, and sexual expressiveness that your protagonist champions, left to myself, I wonder whether equality of sexes has a glass ceiling or not, beyond which it just cannot grow.
Some questions:
Does equality mean that a rape of a boy by a girl will raise equal amount of eye brows as the rape of a girl by a boy would? Can that ever happen?
Does equality mean that a woman would welcome her bridegroom into their (that is, her) conjugal abode and give him her maiden name quite as often as the vice versa?
Does equality mean that the effect of unrestricted sex will someday be borne equally by both the sexes? Will nature ever permit that? After a one-night stand, a girl becomes pregnant and bears its repercussions for ever, but the boy takes a shower and dresses back and just wipes the memory away with a towel.Will it ever be reversed? Has not nature distributed the burden of the effects of sexuality unevenly, and with a purpose?
The day nature decided to avoidably link the procreation of the offspring ( a noble social task) with the process of deriving intense bodily pleasure ( a selfish, personal task) was the day nature laid the foundation of gender inequality. Human society over the centuries has tried to offset nature to a certain extent by laying down codes of behavior.
But nature itself sides with men. Nature is grossly unethical and partisan.
Is not feminism more a fight against the pig that nature is than a fight against MCPs?
Regards
Chittaranjan Mishra
AND I HAVE REPLIED IN THE THREAD LIKE THIS:
Dear Sir,
Thanks for your comments and questions.
Feminism has been wrongly interpreted in India. Most of the people have very wrong idea about feminism. For me, feminism is more a gender sensibility matter. I differ to Simon de Beauvoir in her 'Other' theory where she tells us that 'one is not born but rather, becomes a woman'. I think a woman is born as a woman. There are inherent physical, behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences between men and women. And we affirm and celebrate these differences as wonderful and complementary. These differences do not evidence the superiority of one sex over the other but rather, serve to show that each sex is complemented and made stronger by the presence of the other. As a different unit, similar to man, the female mass has their right for equity. Jaydeep Sarangi asked me in an interview at Muse India:" Do you consider yourself a radical feminist?" I replied:"I am never against marriage and motherhood as the Western feminists of second wave projected themselves. I am neither pleading for a patriarchal or a matriarchal society. I am never for replacing the matriarchal society with patriarchal one. What I want is a gender-neutral society. I am for a woman's existence with all her 'feminine-fragrance' as a different 'genus' or 'species' with her complete 'generosity.' "( Please see http://www.museindia.com/showcurrent17.asp?id=1477 )
Sir you can view my ideas on Feminism from the following links:
http://sarojinisahoo.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html
http://sarojinisahoo.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html
http://sarojinisahoo.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
http://sarojinisahoo.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
Thanks again for sharing your feelings and ideas, Sir
Regards
Sarojini
And, if you want to share your ideas, you can post at : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sarojini-Sahoo/106035073915