Feminism from my eyes.

A girl gets brutally gang-raped and tortured in a bus in New Delhi and suddenly, after decades of delay, the city wakes up from it's deep sleep. I am convinced that every report of a rape troubled the people but somehow this time 'what can we do' turned to 'whatever we can do'. This one fact is extremely encouraging.

Personally, this issue affects me immensely. It fills me with emotions I cannot quite comprehend and makes me reflect on how this system that treats women so much more inferior than men has affected me my whole life. I grew up in a small town where the purpose of a woman's life is to get married, bear children and take care of her home and family. Somehow I got lucky and landed the two people who thought I could be more than that for parents. But growing up in the small town, I saw women feel pressurized to have another child so that this time it might be a boy. I've lost count of the number aunts who wanted to know the sex of their foetus, so the pregnancy could be terminated were it a girl. Mothers are supposed to fast once a year for the long lives of their sons. I have a younger brother and once he was born, my mother was expected to fast for his life too. My mother would hide and eat a bite of food she wasn't supposed to because she cared for both our lives, not just his.

I grew up being told that I was too immature to understand when I asked them why they wanted sons. I was too immature to understand why a girl should lose half her weight before she may be 'shown' to prospective grooms (or their families). I was too immature to understand why my grandmothers lived in mortal fear of my grandfathers, despite the love that I know they shared. I guess I never understood because I did not want to accept.

But now if the women of this country are to have the same rights as the men, if they are to be safe walking in the streets be it night or day, then the system must be challenged. It is not I who should consider accepting the system, but those in the system who should accept a new way of life, it is them who should accept me.