I am responding to this post against my better judgement
You seem to be using the word 'feminist' as an epithet. Not sure why
This is the Webster's definition of feminism - a belief that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men.
Do you somehow not believe that?
Marriage is not an Equal Opportunity Exercise. Draupadi didnt say, you have no right to be King of Anga. She said she didnt want to marry him. As in, any of us might say, I dont want to marry anyone shorter than 5'10", is that height-ism? Prejudice against vertically challenged people? As for saying it in public, when else would she have said it? After he attempts to shoot the arrow?
In any case, there is a difference between INSULT (which you seem to believe that the rejection was) and ASSAULT (which Draupadi endured). VH was not a Bollywood movie from the 1980s where the hero's sister gets raped and then it ends up being called 'dishonor' or 'insult'. It was a crime of power, an abuse of authority, a blot on society. All those present from the Kaurava side had a part in plotting and executing the events of DS/VH and that includes the name calling / justification for the VH
Btw, that sentence attributed to Draupadi didnt make the cut to be included in the BORI Critical Edition. Neither did the Andhe ka putr statement. That is, they thought these were later interpolations. The Southern versions say, he attempted to shoot the target and failed. I am strongly tempted to say - perhaps by authors driven by misogyny
But I wont say it.
Lets just say that if these inane accusations were the only things they could find to malign the only person in the epic who was otherwise blemishless, then she was truly a Mahanayak!
As for the rest, I am quite willing to acknowledge that some good people do some very bad things and live to regret it. But, though those things can be regretted and atoned for, they cannot be justified
Edited by AnuMP - 10 years ago