Between the social titans
By Mushtaq Ahmed
In the famous words of Simone de Beauvoir, “Women are not born, they are made.” The same is true of men. The making of a man or a woman is a never-ending process that begins before birth, from the moment someone begins to wonder if the awaiting child will be a boy or a girl. The institutions start their work about the gender of the newborn, just after the ritual announcement of baby boy or baby girl. These formally made institutions and some of them start determining the baby’s civil status, his/her rights and obligations and society working under these institutions increase and decrease the importance of rights, status and obligations directly and forever.
Man’s dilemma is that if you ask him whether he ever imagined “WOMAN WITH MIND” the expected answer will be a blurred nix as her ability has been perceived as only responsible to making sure her available to man for sexual takings only because she has not been supposed more than the sex and naked attractions over centuries. You try all magazines, paintings of famous artists and statue makers all have demonstrated woman’s body. The world famous artists did not try to spot woman more than sex. Even woman artists are also representing woman with this prospective in art galleries and receive acknowledgment. If an honest, experienced and intellectual man would be asked how he found woman in his life? I think he would confess that he has spent his all life sleeping with her not having waked up. If he would have spent his days with a consciously awaking state he would definitely have changed his life and his generations as well. You can take a cup of tea with a wise woman you can talk to her but you cannot conclude your courage to propose her as your life partner whilst you are thinking good but cannot ignore the compatibility factor and your muscular courage cannot find more ways except mentioning her somewhere as the only woman I met in my life type escaping words. Now, question in man’s mind how woman thinks about man has very poor logic because she is crying for centuries to give her shoulder to you but you had more strong shoulders than her in various terms.
A woman must be honored no doubt but at the same time man is also respectful. Both the genders deserve respect, this is education we learn and teach. Now I would like to take the opportunity to point out where we are losing our learned lesson, there are individual happenings around us where man becomes intolerant or the same can be with a woman. For instance, a rape case somewhere with a woman or an unprincipled behavior of man that cause a divorce or murder of woman and sometimes most harsh incidents like throwing acid on girl’s face trying to make her unable to get accepted in society or let say a severe inhuman act beyond the human expectation etc.
Let’s come now to the domain where a woman thinks very right to be cruel, she rebails against murder of her husband and runs away with another guy for the sake of love, she slaughters her kids, she prefers to have one more man for sexual relations, she deceive her husband, brothers sisters and whole the family, she cheats, she doesn’t compromise on her husband’s ability of earnings and create hue and cry for luxury which is beyond husbands income and disorders the family bindings etc. Almost everywhere there’s a clash between the genders in individual and collective cases.
We as an influential social unit in the capacity of both man and woman are the responsible to create mess in the relationships as well as in the society by our irresponsible attitudes. For example, as woman we assume the responsibility to support the woman as because she is woman and generally same the case with man. Here we usually forget the education we have learned and we do not converse about the dynamics of results either it is social or economic and unfortunately we do not try to find out the root cause and factories where such issues are being considered as the opportunities for those who are igniting gender clash. We do not make each other understand the consequences of clash between the social titans. We find it as the earliest opportunity to discuss the issue with the intention to win the argument rather than trying to find ways heading to the solutions. Intentionally or unintentionally we are becoming part in creating a socially misbalance. Not only this, we seek other people around us to support our point of view and then looking for some sort of endorsements favoring our utterances and we very easily find some readymade minds who are already in the struggle to find a place where they could adjust themselves as opinion leader. This practice of becoming the opinion leader rises in people around us and gradually they become the standard of getting nobility on the cost of social destruction. Such aristocracies enjoying the decision making process and set traditions and induce new age-band to follow the traditions which have been made by their elders for their wellbeing etc. and produce a brand new generation that believes on traditions and feel themselves as from the prominent families of society.
Irony is that the Governments in the scenario of 3rd world, specially, in Pakistan are comfortable with social issues in different and divided societies of country so that it would be able to timely divert the thinking of the nation towards such issues to enjoy getting away of questions raised in the minds of people, public demands and collective national effort for a social or economic cause. evoking traditional set-ups, Jirgah’s and empowering feudal systems are the tools upper houses use with lot of appreciations instead of enforcing laws and establishing writ against such violations being appeared every where almost every day.
I think the biggest problem is using the word “feminist” to define themselves instead of using a word to define the people who don’t believe in equality and it is very easy to target people under a word, and it’s easy for other people to try and redefine it. Feminists have objectives that they clearly communicate to public and they have own internal objectives that they don’t tell you. What they don’t want to tell anyone might be the dream of supremacy. Same the way without any movement man has their own objectives that they don’t even want to communicate but it is not beyond of one’s perception may be a threat to an established supremacy. Both the genders seek supremacy on the cost of each other’s rights. There should be a mutual understanding to keep an ideological movement that be believed in brainwashing and an open dialogue as the supremacy of a particular gender is an un-accomplishable objective.
The contributor is a ‘Development Consultant’ working for GBRSP, Gilgit. Email: mushtaqtayyab@gmail.com
