The famous American author Kurt Vonnegut once said, “Educating a woman is like pouring honey over a fine Swiss watch. It stops working.” This statement in itself suggests how the society sees a woman as compared to a man. Every woman is considered as a commodity by our society. She is expected to live as per certain standards set by the patriarchal society, and sadly in the present modern era too, most of the women seem to remain within the boundaries as well, because when she tries to cross the threshold, she is either lashed out at, abused, tortured, disowned or in some cases murdered.
In recent times, there have been many examples where one can easily see how because of the male ego, even top inspirational women suffer. In Pakistan, after the famous model and YouTuber Qandeel Baloch was killed in the name of honour by her own brother. Recently it was seen how people took on social media to abuse Miss Pakistan World, Anzhelika Rublevskaya Tahir, who is a Toronto-based Ukrainian-Pakistani.
On the other hand, Atif Anwar, the winner of “Arnold Classic 2015”, in Melbourne was celebrated and appreciated by many. Have a look at the screenshots below.
This clearly highlights that no matter what a woman does, if she tries to cross the boundaries, become a great woman achiever, it will hurt the fragile male ego and ultimately throw her into the vicious circle of female bashing and abusing. Search through google, you’ll find many inspiring women of India treated in the same fashion.
But Feministaa salutes another Pakistani man, Basit Saeed, who reached out to people using these two instances and made us realise the hard reality.
We all need more such men in our society in order to make women upliftment a reality. The sad truth is that there are less men like these and more men like those have drowned themselves in the ocean of patriarchy and feudalism.
As seen in the screenshots, we posted an article on virginity testing in India, and the comments that followed are an insight to the mindset of our society. How instances of losing one’s virginity before marriage can be a ‘criminal offence’ for a girl but an ‘achievement’ for a guy, are very clearly visible in these comments.
It is a shameful reality that the success stories of women are often brushed under the carpet but whether she is a virgin or not is a topic of discussion. This determines nothing but the moral and cultural standards of our society.
We wish our society to have more people like Basit so that the dream of women empowerment doesn’t remain a dream only.
Akanksha Rathore
An aspiring filmmaker who believes in creating stories, a writer, a dancer, and an avid food lover. Likes to keep the spirit and the music both high. If not doing anything then probably will be sleeping.
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