From incipient times the absence of the male genitals in females had been treated as a fatal shortcoming in women. Women therefore had always been treated as unequal fellow beings by the overwhelmingly patriarchal society. They were taken with frolic and sometimes even with hatred and indignation. No wonder the English word ‘cunt’ means ‘ugly’ as much as it refers to the female vagina.
At a time when ‘might’ was ‘right’ women were given preferential treatment as possessions who were required to be protected from becoming the bounty of the aggressors. Cattle and women were the first things to be hoarded up during tribal wars. To these early societies therefore, women were cattle- an essential commodity for survival that furthered the purpose of the continuation of progeny.
Even today this idea is in vogue. You just need to look through the veil! Yet amazingly such societies did exist in the past that placed both male and female on an equal footing. The Rig-Vedic society, for instance made it a law to educate women in sacred texts, even arranged for their upanayanam, had in-vogue widow re-marriage and saw to it that women were given the due share of inheritance. Or else the likes of Gargi and Aditi would not have gone down in the pages of history as Maharishis.
Feminism was an idea that breathed the pristine air of freedom in the Rig-Vedic society. This is an idea that runs the urgent need for resurrection. But the Feminism in practice, the Feminism that we see around us is not the Feminism of the book. It is more like communism awaiting socialism i.e., it is the precursor to true Feminism. And to usher in true Feminism the distinction between male and female must be extinguished. The very idea of the sexes has to go. But how is this to happen?
To change this we must begin at the beginning. The cradle is the pillar of civilization. From our birth we learn that a boy is a ‘he’ while a girl is a ‘she’ and gradually we learn to ‘see’ a boy and a girl differently, then we start believing in their differences and then a boy crystallizes into a ‘boy’ and a girl into a ‘girl’. The task before us is to call a stop before this convention. It should be thus arranged that the mediums for educating the new minds should be sterilized of this idea. Women are not born; they are made. Therefore the primary focus should be on preventing young minds from believing in sexual distinction. Equality should not be sought in the society; it ought to be manufactured in the mind. And what better place to seed the idea of sexual equality than in the fertile tracts of the infant mind.
The need of the present moment therefore is to unshackle our minds from the very idea of sexual inequality, of the very notion that ‘I am a boy and you, sweetheart, are a girl’ so that there may no longer be distinction among people on the grounds of sexual identity. Let children be brought up with this idea that ‘there is nothing called a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’’ and that all are equal and unique. Had this not been the lifelong dream of the likes of Sojourn Truth and Virginia Woolf? Yes it was. And as the rightful heirs to their undying glory it has been left to us to realize their dream, and know all ‘yes we can’.
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