Gender- GENeral DERogation
Feminism is
a new trend mushrooming in various disciplines of life; to the populist eye it
looks like an endeavour to give the rightful place to the female populace, but
at an ulterior level, the feminist approach is actually helping all those
respective disciplines in opening up to their real potential. For e.g., philosophy
has been traditionally male oriented. The entire ancient and medieval periods
were dominated by male thinkers and hence it risks being one-sided in its
approach. Feminine gender carries a view of life that the masculine can never
approach and it’s imperative that philosophy should integrate the feminine
aspect so its spectrum widens like never before.
Now, what
exactly is feminism? It’s not as simple as just being the female sex. The
Female and her Feminineness are not really as tightly bonded as commonly
understood. There is an ontological and conceptual difference between them. The
female sex is just what the body is made of. It’s a direct result of her
genital organs. Biology dictates her sex and its significance is only in the
tick mark she makes in the various application forms she fills up. Sex is binary;
it can be either Male or Female. No human is sexless or hermaphrodite in nature
(maybe only in Ripley's museum). Feminism, on the other hand, is her gender,
and gender is a continuum between the two extremities of Male and Female
sexualities. It’s in gender talk, we refer to transgenders, crossdressers,
heterosexuals, transsexuals, etc.
In today's
world, after all the rigorous researches in Psychology, Cultural Anthropology
and Feminist Philosophy, it has come to light that a person's gender, though
being a primary facet of his/her identity, is actually not directly pinned down
to his sexuality alone. Gender inhabits a human being at various levels of his
existence. We label a baby as boy or girl as soon as it is born, but in
contrary for the few months of its life, the baby has no gender identity at
all. It is wholly ignorant of what is male or female. It is not even aware of
its own sexuality. As the years develop, it starts observing the world around
it as well as changes in its own body, and learns gender based realities. The
environment and culture has a lot of contribution in shaping the gender
identity of a human being. Gender is the sum total of feelings, thoughts, and
expressions in a human that puts the person at a point somewhere between the
two extreme sexualities, and probably never at one of the extremes.
To
generalize gender into either simply male or simply female is derogatory to its
meaning. Gender is more of a mindset than anything material.
We all have
masculine and feminine traits in us. Carl Jung had used the archetype
Anima-Animus for the same (Anima is the feminine aspect in a man, while Animus
is his counterpart in a woman). The degree varies from person to person,
creating an infinite number of possibilities in human personality.
I belong to
the male sex, but my gender is certainly far from it. My nature is on the shy
side, I can't break the ice with strangers very soon, I have moody phases all
the time, I am soft-spoken and extremely courteous and avoid confrontation at
all costs. I have, what many of my friends call, a "girly" character.
Now, in a totally frank evaluation I may be rated as belonging to the feminine
gender. At the same time, I have so many lady friends who are extremely
outgoing, brash, super confident and good decision takers - I classify them as
more masculine than a lot of the other men. The sexualities of these people had
nothing to do with their gender traits.
This is exactly where I feel
feminism, as a gender, has been kept out of the mainstream. It does not mean
ladies/women were sidelined. Queen Victoria ruled a major part of the world
centuries ago. All South Asian countries have had a lady as their head of state
by now, but these were ladies who fought with men and rose above a male
dominated society. They were probably more masculine than the average men of
their generation. Feminism probably didn't find a niche in their lives. It’s
time we take up the case of real and true feminism and give it the fillip
required to escalate it into the mainstream, where it can give the world a
truly balanced line of thought, as well as, a balanced way of life.
