-Harsahej Mann

“Only we riotous livers have imagined that this way was bad , and have invented another . And this other , — what is it ? It is this. The young girls are seated, and the gentlemen walk up and down before them, as in a bazaar and make their choice. The maidens wait and think, but do not dare to say: “ Take me , young man , me and not her. Look at these shoulders and rest.” We males walk up and down and estimate the merchandise, and then we discourse upon the rights of women, upon the liberty she acquires, I know not how , in the theatrical hall !” Leo Tolstoy ( The Kreutzer Sonata And Other Stories )

“The personal is political” Carol Hanusch

The contagion called feminism has engulfed us all. It is like a disease, the vaccine to which has been ostensibly developed yet the virus within the vaccine has not been wholly inactivated , hence the ineffectiveness of the vaccine called feminism. As females, how liberally emancipated are we ?
Do we and can we call a young girl in a hijab an emancipated woman ? Or does the ambit of liberal emancipation only take into its herald young, cigarette wielding , scantily clad girls ? What of the inner republic of spirit ? Can a burka clad girl be “more -of -an -emancipated – female” than the club going apparition of liberality ?
Take for example , a young girl of 20 , who does none of the above because she finds the concept of making merchandise of herself a purely reprehensible idea . She is totally opposed to the idea of “ hooking – up”. Would you call her emancipated ? Would you include her in the bandwagon of your feminism ? Perhaps not . People talk about all types of inclusivity . Where do people like her go ? Society’s caricature of an emancipated young girl has become so incorrigible , that I fear it will not grant me an entry .

To Him : “I am mine alone. I am not yours. I am no object, nor fancy merchandise. my vanity is already throbbing with all its glory intact , so I don’t need you to placate it for me. You tell me I am pretty, but all your efforts are doomed to fail for I know why such sweet meats drip from your mouth — mostly for self-gratification. I will not be an entity that furthers your quest to gratify yourself , thank you ! I will not be dislodged , sweet as your sweet meats may be. I am no Tess, Anna Karenina or Bathsheba even though you may be the cumulative whole of Alec, Vronsky and Sergeant Troy summed up into one human form: yours.
As I said the cup of my vanity is already filled to the brim, so I don’t need you to tell me about my beautiful eyes, my mirror can tell me that.
Who is more emancipated, the scantily clad young girl who is drunk in a bar , fondled covertly (if not overtly ) by the relentless male gaze or the burka clad girl who asserts the republic of her spirit by upholding her vision of herself ? On a ladies night , in a club , on Saturday throngs of men literally lie in wait to covertly devour women . Do young girls feel at ease with this persistent negation of their humanity ? Does the jamboree of feminism not flare up in repulsion at this morbid and callous de-humanisation that pervades the clubs of each metropolitan city every Saturday night ? Do these ostensibly emancipated apparitions of liberality not feel just the opposite of what they preach ? Yes , the swanky clubs of the metropolis swim in the haze of patriarchy where females are just adorned mannequins , stripped of their humanity ( not to say off their clothes ) and yet each Saturday night all of us throng these clubs in the name of feminism. We scoff at the hijab clad girl , we call her backward , orthodox , conservative etc while we serve ourselves as garnished dishes for the ravenous men to devour . This is the essence of our feminism , yet we refuse to accept it and continue to persistently delude ourselves .
To Him :
“When I walk , amidst a throng of men , I look neither left nor right . I look only straight ahead , for my purpose lies neither to my left nor to my right , but straight ahead . You cringe as you behold my arched back , unbent , like an iron rod which refuses to bend in the face of your dehumanising male gaze . I am not a coquet , I don’t live for you . Do not expect me to dive into the sea of animation in your presence . When it comes to my aims and ambitions you do not matter .”
The head of our sports department at my school would lecture us relentlessly each time we would venture out of our safe little feminist haven , called Welham Girls’ School for an out- station tournament .He would extoll the virtues of sports , namely focus , focus and focus . Somehow his words would stick with us , and we would remain just that – focused , looking straight down the track , toward the finishing line , at the rod above the high jump pit or at the ring of the basketball net . Other girls’ would often dub us as arrogant , competitive , snobbish egoists , but we did not mind because we beat them anyway .A certain somebody once told me that girls who graduated from the school that I graduated from were undesirable and unattractive to the male gender owing to the fact that we had abnormally “high testosterone levels” ( in retrospect he was debilitating his own “ machismo” by saying that we were more “ manly” than him and since he was clearly contradicting himself I refused to contradict him !). “High testosterone levels !”I thought . It was meant as a slur . But I did not take it as one . Yes , we are a notch higher than others in that we do not wish to be candy sticks for you to suck , so high testosterone level it is !
Now ask yourself , who is more emancipated ? The distracted , free , approachable , affable girl who has no reservations and is ready to hang out , never mind the fulfilment of her purpose or the focused , “snobbish” , ambitious girl who does not waste her time fitting into your vision of what a nice girl should be ?

To Him : “If you invite me to clubs at night and I ask my parents before giving you an answer in the affirmative , you call me a kid. These are my moral values , I will not budge from them . Make any amount of silly catechisms . If I don’t wear a short dress to your party , you say I’m conservative and orthodox , you tell me to look at the “emancipated” girl in the short dress , smoking weed . As I said I’m not merchandise and I’m not comfortable wearing a short dress with a plunging neckline in your presence .The day I wear a short dress in your presence I will have given you a reason to give yourself a pat on your back . You offer me a whole lot of alcohol. I don’t drink , I say . You fume in exasperation . I don’t drink with strangers , at odd hours , in odd places . Say what you will . Make me trust you and then I might share a drink with you sometime .”
To Her :
“I’m excommunicated from your feminist jamboree as I have not yet attained the desired “ liberal score” that you require as a minimum prerequisite for entry . I’m not “emancipated” enough because I don’t stay out late , smoking weed , hooking up etc . I am not liberated enough . Never mind the fact that you spend hours in your trousseau on Saturday nights , you , who are so eager to please “them” —the very people whose hegemony you wish to subvert .”
To Him :
“Then you see me at a marriage in traditional cloths with my grandparents . All your doubts are confirmed . You spread the word that I am a marriageable commodity , waiting to have children . You say that I am on a husband hunt .You laugh with the “emancipated” girls at the club . I itch to tell you that the joke is on you . The girls at the club are praying and waiting for the very same thing , in a slightly different way . Trial and error is their method , not mine . I choose to leave such things to destiny .You exalt emancipated girls . They flit from one to another to gain succour and whatever else that comes with it . I choose to stick with myself . As I said, self-preservation. then you mock me . You tell me to learn cooking and wear salwar kameez . I pity your scope of thought , you who thinks that salwar kameez means manacles or going fully covered to a club means backwardness . It’s beyond me to even refute this . You say my school was “ backward” because we had salwar kameez as our uniform. Yet , to your dismay my school continues to top the list of the best girls schools in the country , even though we haven’t yet embraced the alleged “modernity” that short skirts bring with them .”
To Her:
Ask yourself will you include me , in a salwar kameez , just as I am , in your movement or am I supposed to change into a mini skirt to gain entry ?
To Him :
“I tell you , I have never dated . You are astonished , aghast , dumbstruck , appalled, amazed , delirious, exasperated …. confused . Then you Marr my continence by your perversion . You call me a lesbian , a prude , asexual , snobbish , a prig etc . When none of these are concomitant with who I’am you say that my family is orthodox , backward , strict , patriarchal etc . It isn’t so , I tell you . My family is the most forward , free thinking family that anybody could have , but
“forward” not as you and your kind take it as . My father loves me as every father loves his daughter , my brother loves me just the same , so when they read about one successive rape after the other in this country , they have a natural desire to protect me . When I hear about the multiple instances of hook- ups , one night stands etc I wonder relentlessly at the way sex has become the biggest joke shared by the youngsters of our epoch . I don’t see the humour in the joke you all share . Hence I will not share the joke, call me what you will !”
You must be thinking snob , prude , prig , egoist , even “sour grapes” . Well think what you will .
To Her :
You keep me out of your plush cause because I’m not plush enough . I don’t date , I don’t hook up . I believe in something deeper , but you dismiss this as melodrama . To further the cause of the “emancipated female” you have got to embrace modernity . To diminish patriarchy you have got to flout obsolete conventions . Randomly Hooking up is just one step . All this you wish to tell me .
But I will not listen .
To Him :
“Your perversion knows no limits . Your main aim is to convince yourself that I am just like you . You watch and you pry , you stalk and follow until you catch hold of some “dirt” . You spread rumours and gossip . You convert my platonic relationships into liaisons . You invent , you spread and you destroy . You poison and pollute what had hitherto been pure . You shall not share space with me , not now , nor ever . You don’t deserve it . The spleen and dirt that covers you will forever keep me away from you . you call me an outdated behenji, while at the same time you sit with your boy gang and call girls who post “such pictures” sluts or talk about how “fuckable” they are . I don’t want to be weighed on such scales by you . Your dirty mouths don’t even deserve to take my name , let alone talk about me . My body is sacred for me . Dare you try and spray your dirty commentary upon it .”
I do not falter to call myself a philosophical anarchist in the face of such philosophy and you in your turn , are welcome to call me what you will , dear reader .
However you were supposed to have read this at your own risk.

-Harsahej Mann