A reflection on the eve of Bangladesh Victory Day
I have been thinking about feminism and the relentless efforts and struggles that it has been waging for women’s liberation and equality. I have started to reflect on the society into which I was born, the various places where I moved in and out from after living there for a while, and the experience of constant changes. I hope to write a bigger piece in the future on the impacts of women’s struggle for freedom on men and traditional societies.
In brief, I have now realised that controlling and dominating women are not acts of freedom that men or society exercise or enjoy freely and willingly, although some men get a lot of pleasure from exercising power over women or any other human beings.
It seems that in traditional societies individual men are compelled by some kind of collective, deterministic drives, which oblige them to try and control the lives of women. They do this through existing and evolving social tools, such as constantly checking up on their girls, restricting their movements, keeping an eye on them, telling them what to do and getting the young unmarried ones married as soon as possible. They listen to and learn from their friends, relatives and colleagues on how to control their women and get influenced by warnings about what would happen to society if girls were to transgress limits set by social rules and traditions. Men either try to hide, explain or justify hypocrisies, sins and unethical acts of other men or their sons or their brother but are extremely hard on their girls, event when some of the girls only commit a fraction of ‘transgressions’ of what men regularly commit, boast about and express pride in doing.
In many traditional societies, people (families, fathers, mothers, etc.) are constantly worried about and afraid of what others will say, what society will say, the shame that they and their families will face if people were to know what their girls were doing – the activities not approved by hypocritical societies. They do not care about the feelings and needs of the girls but care every bit about the feelings of society, which does not exist as a separate entity but is made up of individuals, families and other types of associations.
What kind of society are they afraid of offending from ‘transgressing’ girls? They are afraid of the same society that they help to sustain, which also imprisons them and restricts their ability for free thinking and free actions. Of course, it’s not only men who try to get their girls to conform to certain norms and limits set by traditions and social rules. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters and other female family and non-family members of society play a role too in this regard. Both men and women are involved in the marginalisation of women from society, the domination they suffer from and experience and the efforts made by men and women in this regard also imprison and hurt them.
Men are also victims and prisoners in certain traditional societies, although they enjoy better quality prisons as compared to women. As I will write a bigger piece on this in the future with more detailed arguments and evidence, here, I will just sum up my conclusion very briefly. When men try to control and dominate women’s lives they do not do this, in most cases as I can see, because they really enjoy and independently think that this is a good idea. Why should a father or an older brother or a mother enjoy keeping a girl in the family ignorant, prevent her from getting an education and enable her to develop her potentials? They, in fact, do this due to some kind of social compulsion they experience every day to make society happy, where in reality everyone and every family in that ‘happy society’ is miserable, unfree and under pressure.
But what is society? It consists of individuals and families who are in some traditional societies engaged in keeping their girls under control. Individuals and families, as part of a society, are unconsciously and unknowing participating in a process that compel them to be nasty to their girls and make their life miserable. The efforts they make in this regard also cause them to suffer from guilt, ill health, fear of and actual shame, stress, etc. Nothing good comes out of controlling the lives of women.
Breaking up and throwing away the social norms that control men and families and compel them to deprive their girls of having a chance to be happy and live according to their full potentials and desires will also help demolish barriers and liberate men, families and society. In such a society, people will spend less time worrying about and policing the lives of women to stop girls from bringing shame to them and their families. They will have more time to enjoy their lives, including seeing their girls growing up, developing their potentials and being happy.
When I look at my own life’s journey and ponder how I have lived my life and the many changes that I have gone through I am more and more certain that feminism has been one of the important factors responsible for my liberation too and the freedom that I enjoy today.