Feminism: Battle for Balance, Not Superiority

Did feminism become mainstream nowadays?

The history of feminism started in early 19th century, addressing issues of women's suffrage and till date it has diverse strains of feminist activities being conducted by activists. Modern feminism is the fourth-wave feminism - aimed to fight contemporary challenges. Whereas in today’s dog eat dog world, feminism is dealing with issues like street harassment, workplace harassment and sexual assault which are faced by thousands of women and men which deteriorate their lives, careers, and personal relationships — no need to mention the damage to mental and physical health, as that’s pretty obvious!

Why Feminist get affected only when a women is accused? Why not for men? This is exactly why the topic of feminism is not only up-to-date but also worthy of examining and highlighting.

Feminism means when a woman wants to be a strong individual with equal freedom, rights and opportunity like man, but not its misuse in any way.

Feminism is about equality of all genders.

Many ‘so called’ feminists are misinterpreting ‘feminism’ for commercial & monetary gains. Don’t they know that many women since centuries around the world have fought for their individuality and not for the sake of commercial popularity? Still in many parts of the world, women are struggling to survive, to raise their voice against injustice and tyranny inflicted on them. Feminism now has become a political movement or a social identity more than a philosophy or a group of beliefs, just like ‘#me too’ movement drove many to stand up for their rights. Yet it wasn’t that successful, but for some it did! Also, in other parts of the world huge riots took place regarding all these.

Once you’ve got a group of people together, for a single purpose, achieving political leverage and adopting power then-- all sorts of bad human tendencies start to take over. Now that’s where, the fake feminism takes over.

Fake feminism makes false equivalences. As we all were aware about the recent controversy of Bois Locker room and Snapchat Incident, so why did people turn a Nelson’s eye when the actual news broke out? Where did the entire feminism vanish? I totally admit that there are a lot of gender-based issues to address, even after our law being so improvised for all genders.

Does fake feminism harm men? A classic example of fake feminism in a nut shell - ‘In 2015, in Delhi, a girl, posted a photo of a guy on Facebook accusing him of outraging her modesty. The case when went in court, the girl never made a single appearance even after the summons issued against her due to lack of evidence. After 4 years, the guy was acquitted as he was proven not guilty’. This truly portrays why men in general have always been more likely to be caught up in the criminal justice system or be homeless. Sometimes even fake rape accusations or fake sexual assault cases are lodged against men, and before the case goes on trail, half of people have already declared the conclusion on the basis of their assumptions. And men also face mental harassment due to all these false allegations. These are some real issues our society needs to think about.

Effects on Adolescence

It is important to recognize that both young men and young women tend to have equal respect for each other and responsibilities for their families. When any teenager reports incidence of sexual assault or sexism happened, the authorities seldom turn a deaf ear to it. This eventually leads to adverse effects on the victim’s mental state leading to grievous consequences in near future. Pubescence is the age where the appropriate molding of a child needs to be done, to prevent influence's from over powering him/her, to do a wrongful act. Also, some girls these days in peer pressure support their male friend even after knowing that he committed a wrongful act with another girl-- this is shameful. As these are such females, who turn out to portray themselves as “feminist” when the same incident occurs with them. How relevant is that? Why people need to wait to speak until everything happens to them?

Has Social Media Reshaped Feminism?

The online space also opens the door to the very real issue of trolling and cyber bulling. Many girls aged 11 to 21 claim that the fear of abuse online makes them feel less able to share their views. This however, does not mean they don’t share. Likewise, cases of men fighting for false accusations are also turning up now. Why fake feminism? Do people start calling themselves “feminists” because it’s fashionable? One need to assure their facts are right before publishing any such content on Social Media, as it’s a platform where any news spreads like a wild fire. One such presumptuous behaviour may lead to infinite mediocre results. Social Activism is a good thing but it shouldn’t deteriorate your mental health.

It is the crying need of the hour to think twice before judging someone based on- a sentence, whose facts and real happenings are unknown to us. A dork blindly follows this codswallop and even we get dragged into it unknowingly without analyzing the actual core of the matter. People especially women themselves should try to break this chain of fake feminism and support the real activists. Think about it! Speak up, its time!