Pastmaster: A battle 'among' the sex.

 

The modern-day woman has achieved Herculean feats, she has worked devised complex algorithms, performed brain surgery, brought justice to the aggrieved and influenced as well as inspired the community positively in a plethora of ways, and rightfully so. Women have fought hard to be heard and be on equal footing with men. But there was an era when women fought against it. The 1970s America was full of women marching on the streets demanding equal rights and working in many important offices of the country. Women like Betty Fridan, Gloria Steinem were considered the pioneers of The Women’s Liberation Movement. Their arguments in favor of the rationality of women and their spirit were well received by the American women and many joined them in their quest for ameliorating women from the clutches of patriarchy and shackles of their self-limiting beliefs caused due to patriarchy.

 

But there were also many women in America who did not espouse the feminist agenda and movement. They were the wives of important American office bearers who held key decision-making positions. They considered themselves as women divorced from feminism because feminism was a daily part of their lives. The 1970s America essentially saw two different factions of the same sex fighting against each other out of the same reason of fear, but with a different manifestation. While Betty Fridan and Gloria Steinem began The Women’s Liberation Movement out of fear that the unbridled potential of women would go unnoticed and be stifled by men, anti-feminists tried to better their position with the argument that they did not want to work and did not want their daughters to be drafted into the army.

 

While feminism, in its reality advocates recognition to all sorts of women essentially, it also includes recognition to all other persons of diverse orientations, ethnicities and backgrounds which are normally not recognized. Feminism, in the 1970s was controversial because its perceptions among the feminists themselves were diverse. While Betty Fridan contended that feminism was only restricted to straight women across the world of all kinds of ethnicities, Gloria Steinem espoused women of diverse sexual orientations, trans people and all other sections of the society who were marginalized.

 

Feminism in that time was essentially perceived as a ‘fad’, something that women will finally grow out of. This perception was the result of a cloudy and hazy understanding of feminism among the pioneers themselves. The idea that women will always be against each other was again supported by the clash between the feminists and the anti-feminists. Both the schools of thought, in Atticus Finch’s language, “needed to be in each other’s shoes and walk around in them” to empathize with each other’s situations.

 

Women at work were being sexually harassed and looked at as nothing but objects (a sad reality for many working women today, as well) and even when they had the capacity to be appointed as one of the key management persons, she was appointed as a secretary and her suggestions and inputs were ignored (again, a sad reality for many working women today). The anti-feminists had their own struggles, being voluntarily dependent on the husband and always being at his mercy was no easy task either.

 

The great Jurist Roscoe Pound propounded the ‘Theory of Social Engineering’ where he says that laws should be framed in a way that augments the make up of the society. The 1970s America was far from that and was a motley of perceptions and improper conclusions and full of patent and latent judgments.

 

The journey of feminism is still ongoing, and it is safe to conclude that modern-day feminism is not about women only. Today’s feminism is essentially humanism. Like everything great, even feminism took its time. It was a result of these hazy perceptions and the fact that generations kept clearing them. The cycle of evolution kept going, and still is where we can see millions of youngsters ‘come out of the closet’ on platforms like ‘Tik Tok’ (one of the better uses of the platform). Today’s feminism has women supporting each other and everyone in need of support no matter what life choices these people make, be it being a home-maker or an astronaut, modern-day feminism celebrates everyone.

 

The essential aim of any movement is to make the world a better place than it once was. Feminism is one of these. There would be no feminism without the debates surrounding it, the varied perceptions, the effort of the privileged to stifle the unheard the rising of the unheard above such criticism. While many state that women do wrong things under the garb of feminism, it must be stated that these are the kind of women who don’t know and understand what feminism is. True feminism, in The great Sting’s lingo would be to encourage people to be themselves, no matter what they say!.

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Author: Ms. Radhika Sunil Vaidya. 

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