This Women’s Day, I Mourned

For all those women who were and are raped, for all those abused wives and friends, for all those women whose talents are suppressed for merely being born a woman. For the child raped by the Church priest, for the 7 children in the orphanage who were raped, for…

Yesterday, I was tagged in many Women’s Day post and videos and I did not participate or comment on any of those. Honestly, I did not feel like celebrating.

 

My facebook feed was flooding with women’s day wishes, tags and videos extolling womanhood and praising women. Meanwhile, the newspapers and TV channels had small snippets of rapes in orphanages, rapes of siblings, of little children and stories of rape related to various religions/communities! The irony.

 

I am not ‘proud’ to be a woman. It isn’t a hard earned achievement to be proud of. If anything, I am scared and I feel unsafe all the time. Umpteen times have I considered dressing up like men so I would feel safe.

 

I was born with genitals different from men and that dictated my life. My duties, the way I walk, talk, clothe HAD to be according to a rule book because of the body I was given at birth. I have been suffering on many levels because of something that wasn’t even my choice! If given a choice, I would prefer to be a male. I know! I know! Guys tell me it is not easy. But for starters, I would like to go out without being stared at (read x-rayed) or followed. Or even worse, without being groped, or pointed at like an animal at the zoo.

 

It is well and good if, after all this celebration, one really resolved to not make a woman in the street uncomfortable or to appreciate how one’s mother/wife works every day without even a break on a Sunday and resolved to give her a break every alternate week or so.

 

I doubt that any rapist, molester or vulgar men sending vulgar or threatening messages in facebook messenger or showing their genitals or rubbing them against women in public would be reading this or that this write-up would make a change in any manner. But if things like these could be stopped, that could call for a celebration.

Women Wouldn’t have to be celebrated

 

No offense meant to anyone celebrating it or wishing people. I am awed by your positivity. I just don’t feel it. This Women’s day hullaballoo has been immensely annoying to me because it is like celebrating Peace in Westeros! I don’t want to be praised, wished and extolled on one out of 365 days because I am a woman. I just want the respect that any person deserves irrespective of gender on all 365 days.

 

I am appalled by the necessity of a frequent reminder that women are people and not boobs and mere holes between the legs. A reminder that falls on deaf ears. In a perfect world, Women won’t have to be celebrated. The need for a celebration is disheartening.

 

Note – I am not generalizing and I know, all men aren’t the same. I am not against the celebrations either. A series of events and news during the last couple of days disturbed me and the women’s day celebrations seemed like a joke at the wake of it. Hence the rant. Phew!