Posted:
"Always justify the burdens you impose upon girls but impose them anyway... . They must be thwarted from an early age... . They must be exercised to constraint, so that it costs them nothing to stifle all their fantasies to submit them to the will of others." ..."closed up in their houses", "must receive the decisions of fathers and husbands like that of the church".
These are some very controversial and famous words from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. For centuries this has fueled debate regarding the place women must have in society. These words were written at a time when the word feminism wasn't coined. A time when women were not even seen as the stature of a human being. Women were required as a means to an end...the end being many some of which are efficiently managing the servants in the house or if you are too poor to be afford servants then playing that role herself, being available for sex when man is home and wants some, or being a harlot when man is not at home and wants some...kind of like having a phone for work purposes and having a personal phone...women existed for the convenience.
They were so efficiently used that other than giving birth, they didn't even play a role in rearing the child that came from their body. The child was born and immediately handed off to a nanny to raise or sent off to boarding school. Aristotle and Socrates famous words define women as imperfect beings that aspired to be men but just were too defected to become that...but will forever want to be a man because man was beautiful, whereas women were imperfect and aspired for the beauty of a man...so they forever desired men.
Emile was a radically liberating thought in that world, because it gave a new reason for the existence of women. Women suddenly became an important player in creating a peaceful home, the foundation of a stable society. Women's abilities were recognized for being home makers while the patriarchs were warned to keep the women in the home, and from an early age, to kill their ability to dream, to fantasize, to think, to decide...for themselves. Instead in order to make women able homemakers they must be kept away from the public life, to be bound to the home, incapable of independent thought, bread to be obedient to the father or husband.
Do these thoughts ring a bell?
A breed of women who are raised to believe that their virtue is in being bound to the home, to kill their desires, to never think anything beyond what is deemed appropriate for them by those who feed them the norms. Such women are bound to cry foul when a woman doesn't follow these norms. They are bound to cry foul when a woman defies the rule and engages in free thought, in dreaming, in desiring, in making a decision for herself.
Today we may no longer have women raised to be just homemakers. But today women are raised to be superwomen, who are not just homemakers but are excelling in all undertaking, yet the freedom of thought is still not something that is permissible. Because you can breed parrots who speak intelligent and radical thoughts, but the minute a radical thought originates in a female brain, the fear of undoing the societal fabric exists even today. On one hand women are told they are not burdens, they are capable of being equal to a man, yet she only must aspire to be married as soon as she can, her purpose of education is to achieve a qualified man. If she is supported in her effort to have a career it is so that she can provide all her earning to the husband to manage. If she is raised to be independent, she is still chastised as vain when she indulges in fashionable trends. If she dares to think of herself as an equal an demands that her needs be met, she is named with a scarlet letter.
We still have women who are raised to hate their bodies, to hate their desires, to say that it is a sin to allow yourself to think freely and have your own opinion if it doesn't match the opinion of the others. Instead of saying "I think..." women are conditioned to start their sentences with "I feel..." or "Maybe if we did this, instead of that..." never truly attributing authority to their opinions but instead leaving a choice for others to ignore what she said as uncertain babble or emotional foolishness...because God forbid the day a woman makes a statement of choice...that will be the day she has forgotten her place in the world.
-JC-
Anupamaa
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
