I’ve always considered myself a feminist. But much of the movement in the name of feminism disturbs me deeply. It’s like today we celebrate when a woman ‘becomes a man’. Not that a woman should be forced to remain at home and care for her children, no. But it is like that just isn’t satisfying enough anymore. There was an interesting discussion in this context on my group recently, and I post it here because I thought it got interesting. 

Ashwita women getting into air force.. fighter jets.. and all this concept of feminism…Isn’t current feminism trying to make women more masculine?

Is war masculine?

Yes feminism is pretty much dead. We’ve glorified and rewarded only masculine qualities and demeaned feminine qualities for decades. So it’s awesome for a woman to go out there and make money – we think she’s awesome, but when a man stays home to take care of the kids he’s somehow a lesser human being. The stars, the achievers, the providers have been glorified, the nourishers, the caretakers, the teachers have been trashed. A cricket star is bathed with money, a nursery teacher responsible for the future generation barely makes two ends meet. So you can see what we’ve prioritised as a society. In your own mind, if you were meeting a star and a nursery teacher, who would you be more interested in? That’s the problem.

And then of course the same gets applied within ourselves too, we prioritise our masculine qualities and downplay our feminine qualities. This works for women because they can get both. You see so frequently these days ‘be the man that you need’. Men suffer too here because then either they lose touch with their feminine altogether and become brutes or they move to the other end, becoming ‘the women that they need’. Now a days I see more kind and nourishing men than the women I meet.

War and aggression are masculine acts yes. Manipulation and brain washing are feminine.

(Someone else) I had a similar doubt. Each soul has different purpose.
Should tasks be characterized just based on gender?
Or one should put effort to look into soul of the partner/family member and support for its upliftment by doing for that soul (be it man being kind and nourishing)?

What makes you think that gender would limit the soul and take it away from its purpose? If the soul had a different purpose, it would have been born as a different gender.

The soul itself is colourless, odourless, limitless, property – less. It is only the mind that imagines a purpose, ideals, values, etc. If the focus of our life is simply to maximise each moment, we are already living out the real purpose of our life – which is for the soul to experience what it is like to be you.

My mom once said in this context. Go to a shop and look at plain cloth. You can use it for anything. But once it is stitched into a pant and shirt, then the pant goes on the lower body and the shirt on the upper body. Neither is superior or inferior.

Today in the name of freedom, pants want to be worn on the chest and shirts on the hips. To anyone looking at this objectively, it is nothing but ridiculous. We’ve turned everything into a chase these days, including experiences. Women want to become men, men want to become women and experience waxing and threading, the monthly cycles, labour pains, etc. Its insane. You’ll run out of your lifetime simply experiencing what it is like to be you, that’s how intense it is, but no, you’d rather abandon that and focus on trying to experience what it is like to be everybody else! (not you, I mean this generally)

(In response to ‘What makes you think that gender would limit the soul and take it away from its purpose?’)
Frequently nowadays, people categorize the tasks, no males have to do this task, female have to do this task.
So I thought, that does constant nudging can eventually take soul away from its purpose.

Yeah so who categorizes it? Like putting clothes in a washing machine is not a male or female task, it is a role assigned by the mind. Giving birth to a baby, breast-feeding, these are clearly female tasks. Chopping wood, clearly a male task. Opening a tight jar, clearly a male task 😁 the mind is screwed up for sure, that’s why our society is where it is today. If you’re confused, ask yourself this simple question – who would do this if I was alone? If you could do it, then it is your role too. If it wouldn’t have been possible, then it is clearly the role of the other.

If it is part of your life choices to marry and co-exist with another person (or even co-exist in another setting) then it isn’t about gender roles. It is about finding a balance and making things work more beautifully with that person. If we want to remain attached to your ideas of gender, then you need to be alone – and even then you might have to change them – a woman might have to pay the bills and fix the light-bulbs and a man might have to cook for himself and clean for himself. If you want to effectively function as a unit in harmony with another person, then you have to set your mental ideas aside and see how you can blend in and maximize the potential of that equation.