The Indigenization of Western Values; Why Feminism Cannot Flourish in a State like Pakistan
An invisible veil has long split the global space in two. In terms of the Orient it is a civilizational split constituting Darul Islam, the land of knowledge and Darul gharb, the land of ignorance.
In lingo of the Occident, this serves as an equator to divide the world into the East and the West. The us and them. Naturally, just as the equator is not a material line, but one of astronomical and geographical importance, these civilizational lines are not material either; they are psychological, historical, spiritual, and philosophical.
But would it be apt to presume that the constitutional makeup of the human psyche would become any different by laying down an iron curtain that divides the peoples so? When for centuries the philosophers, the poets, the academicians have attempted to somehow study the human brain and have always discovered a core of the mind; self preservation for the realists; selflessness on the part of the idealist; that man everywhere thinks, feels, and acts in like manner.
Of course there are extrinsic factors which mold and shape the intrinsic aspects of man, these being; race, ethnicity, creed, belief system etc. But that which comes to man naturally and that which man has made for himself cannot compete.
Similarly, the need for self-expression, identity, the desire to carve out ones place in the world are something which are so inherent within the natural makeup of the human mind regardless of the sex, that man made constructs like the East and West can never suppress!
Nay! Feminism is a global issue. It is a concept which will encroach every space occupant of a woman’s presence. The suppression of the general will, will rankle a white woman’s heart as much as it would break the heart of a woman of color.
Perhaps the reason why the feminist movement is attributed to West might be due to it being the place where the initial pangs for a politicized and organized movement of women’s rights were felt. Since the democratic concept as we know today was widely disseminated in Europe, it is there where the first groups were formed to advocate the woman’s right to vote, to abolish subordination to one’s male guardian, to end the patriarchal oppression of a woman’s desires to pursue creative endeavors, to allow woman sexual freedom, to lend her some surcease of sorrow.
When the Bastille fell in Paris on 14th of July, 1789, the French Revolution had started. It was a dual revolution, both of mind and of the will for it aimed at the abolition of all established institutions of Europe. It mattered little whether existing institutions had thrived or would continue to thrive, the mere fact of their existence and that too in a society which promulgated the elitist view of an aristocratic government at the head of an ignorant peasant class, validated their destruction.
The revolution had crept not just the social circles (coincidentally one of it’s most famous social group was titled the Social Cercle), it was also political, economic, and most importantly philosophical, for in the latter is how it had reflected as a revolution of the mind. The philosophe moderne clashed with 'subordination' which had long enslaved the common man to his aristocratic masters.
Subordination had to end. Of man to man. Of woman to man. Intellectual enslavement was as much divisive as was the physical one.
But even when that monstrous physiognomy of the Revolution began to show itself, and the educated elite vouched for the liberation of woman-kind from clutches of patriarchal guardianship, the main voices rising against such a novel cause were not only of men…but of women too.
Marat had published pamphlets titled “Mother Duchesne” targeted at a female demographic in what the French called ‘tiers etat’ or the third estate. These were women who were quite satisfied with their existing dynamics with men and their routine gender roles, of mother and wife reinforced through Mother Duchesne, and perhaps it is ironic that Marat received his death blow at the hands of a woman, Charlotte Corday. But with Napoleon’s introduction of the Civil Code, much of the difference that the Revolution had made in the way of women’s progress had been reversed and woman was once again denied the right to divorce and subordinated to her husband.
Simone de Beauvoir, the existentialist born in the home of Revolution, France, claims in her tome The Second Sex that a human being is not just a body but also a perspective and a point of view in the world, and that one's worth can only be estimated via the projects that one devotes oneself to, and she spoke in favor of a gender equality which had little to do with geographical boundaries. She also said that one is not born a woman but becomes it. Her argument being that patriarchal suppression of her sex is one such form. A woman is a global being, like man, and therefore her dilemmas are global too, for in feeling othered by men, she is feeling suppressed around the world.
But what has troubled me is the way the movement has devolved along primitive lines. Where it was established to inculcate a sense of sisterhood among women, raise the stature of the woman in an otherwise masculine society, it has now begun to engender a form of male-hostility which is gradually growing into misandry.
There was much conundrum about the 2020 aurat march and both the genders had a lot to say of it; from talk shows monetizing on a nasty exchange of words between a social worker and a dramatist, to TV channels replaying misogynist words spoken by a marriage bureau worker, to vloggers and TikTokers actively voicing their opinion on their social media platforms: everyone of whatever persuasion has given their take on their issue. But does this still solve, or even bring to fore the real misery of the twenty first century woman? I would say it does not!
Feminism, despite attempting to perpetuate an equality of the sexes, has only managed to make the men even more hostile to its cause. The aurat march placards had some distasteful texts. One particularly caught my attention. It said 'apna khaana khud garam karlo' (heat your own food), but that's not what had me troubled, what did was the image below it, with the severed head of a man in the microwave!
WHY?
Why would any sane person deliver such an imagery? In trying to make our worth recognized, why are we, the women, doing what we claim had so long been done to us; throttling the other gender!
In putting out such a message, we have truly devolved our kind to what male writers from ancient to contemporary times have seen in an authoritarian woman; the murderer of man! Praying Mantis! Black Widow! The Salome who caused the death of John Baptist! The Agave who decapitated her son Pentheus! Placards such as these provoke the ancient imagery of the she-killer out for male blood.
Euripides play, The Bacchae gives one such example of angry women, who at the behest of Dionysus, brutally murder their king Pentheus, and the leader in this crime is Pentheus' own mother. Though it is an exaggerated tale, it is just an example of where the feminist movement is heading.
And though it might have managed to ring an urban bell, it has little rural approach or appeal. The girl child is still treated as a burden, child marriages are still the norm, little empowerment through education, next to no work on menstrual health and sanitation, and the near handicapped subordination to ones male guardian is still the rural culture. The men there don't care what city girls have to say, and thus this elitist voice never reaches the woman who could benefit from it. Although the 2019 march did have a few rural representatives, not much became of it.
This will continue as long as: men who have undoubtedly played and continue to play a major role in society are sidelined and villainized and; the feminist movement is treated with little seriousness.
Pakistani thought axiomatically equates such ideologies with the penetration of western values even though it has much more to say than the type of clothes a woman wears, who warms the food or does the dishes, or the destruction of the family unit by encouraging divorce! Unless real issues are brought to fore and men are not brought to the table as major players in a movement which (theoretically) is all about gender equality, no consensus or progress will be made: we will cry and we will speak and the message will go unheard....and the truly oppressed woman will go on to say "I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM"
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