Matter of Choice

Often I end up arguing with my male friends and also my husband about "women" issues. Things like woman get reservations, extra privileges, special seat in buses (in India) , special train compartments (in India). Each time I try to convince them that these reservations are needed for people (like women) who never enjoyed equal rights for a long time, specially in a country like India. They now need special attention and additional motivation to re-establish the male female balance, in all aspects of society, be it in education, career building, politics.

Men of the present are very angry that their female counterparts are getting so much privilege. I am angry too, why are we still getting privileges for the things that was supposed to be available normally to woman from the very beginning of time. We should have had equal opportunity as human beings to do whatever we wanted, to hunt, to fight, to study, to marry, to choose partners (in life and bed). And I have been rudely pointed out that women let go of all these basic rights and chose a life of domination and despair for thousands of years. She supposedly chose to stay at home, cook dinner, take care of the children and husbands and build a family. With fellow women she chose to build a community and hence a society.

Thus for centuries she chose to be oppressed and dominated by the male counterpart, be denied of civil rights, social rights and in many cases burnt alive as witches or as Sati (where the woman is burnt alive in Hindu custom with their husband's aging corpse).

Today it is very normal for men to vouch that women cant drive, they cant do maths, they cant think logically, they cant work in the oil rig, they cant work in the mine and multiple other things women cant do. I stress upon the fact that it was a choice made by woman. And even today when there is so much going on about equal rights, woman choose to be housewives, give up their career, be a teacher and not a scientist and even choose to wear the scarf, cover their face, adorn symbols of marriage (sindoor, mangal sutra, etc etc). Your choice for centuries to put your family above your selfish needs have given all woman a bad name today. Your so called glorious sacrifices, your strength to run the home and hearth, to bear a child , to endure labour, to give up all your aspirations to be happily married and build a happy family have adversely proved that woman are weak and they chose the easy life to be at home.

Seeing this bewildering gamut of choices women made to say at home and follow a traditional makes me wonder was it really a choice. Could it be that men being physically stronger could force some of these so called choices and that slowly shaped to become normal way of life. Just because nature built men physically stronger than woman, he became the master, just like in the animal world. Men and woman species evolved to take on the primal role of two separate reproductive organs, that eat, sleep, hunt, mate, bear children and keeps planet alive and running. But then comes the biggest problem of all. Human beings are not just primal animals, they evolved to acquire more grey matter, invent the fire, invent the wheel, build tools, calculate, read, write, fall in love, feel pleasure, discuss philosophy, discover medicine, build the atom bomb, take drugs. Men and woman alike went through these evolution of becoming humans after being "just animals". What went wrong at this stage, why did the words like domination, suppression, inferior gender, weaker sex evolve faster than equal rights, freedom of speech, freedom to work, freedom of choice. Woman bowed down, they made a choice to keep their voices low, and chose peace over happiness (as we say in bengali shukher thekey shanti bhalo)

O stupid woman....when will you become man enough to break free, make some choices that make you happy. When you will choose to your chase dreams and not give up every pleasure to build the happy family. When will you break society into pieces and declare your equality.