Feminism Today Is More About Power Play Than Protecting Women; It’s Killing Our Freedoms Faster Than We Realise

In the Part I we discussed how the debate following the ‘Bois Locker Room’ controversy largely skipped the context in which the debate over these issues should be framed, and ignored those who don’t have a voice in the matter — the children.

In this part, we will discuss the elitist hypocrisy of punishing the powerless for the “new normal” that the elites have set, and attempts to hide the failures of the free-sex culture by the narrative of “Indian rape culture”, “Brahminical patriarchy”, or “all men are trash”.

While the show business elites constantly chide the common man for being regressive, mock his traditional values as the source of "sexual frustration" and express pride in their good-for-all free-sex culture, MeToo exposed these industries, from LA to Bombay, to be a bastion of sex abuse.

Jokes by anonymous nobodies on social media are made out to be a proof of Hindutva’s “rape culture”, while the same media channels suppress the news of crimes committed by their powerful ideological brethren.

The news of Left-cadres running torture chambers, harassing, molesting women; the recent suicide of a young female journalist in Uttar Pradesh involving a Samajwadi Party leader, or the rape of a minor Dalit girl by an AIMIM leader — much more harmful than the jokes on social media — don’t get similar coverage.

Such is the desperation to whitewash these crimes that the AIMIM leader is made out to be an ‘autorishshaw driver’; and the report on suicide-victim who left a note holding Shamim Nomani responsible highlights that she once said she was harassed “for being a Muslim".

It is also important to note that despite the attempt to paint sexual/crass jokes as a right-wing thing, such jokes are common on the other side of the aisle (link 1, link 2). Many well-known left-leaning comedians have made quite controversial jokes on right-wing women.

In fact, whenever there is some outrage on crass jokes, especially on Hindus or Hinduism, we are told to adjust with the sense of humour of the "new generation".

Of course the same comedians then quickly offer an unconditional apology to the archdiocese for a tiny joke on church sex abuse.

A comedian doing it on stage in English is funny, while a twitter handle with similar jokes is “Indian rape culture”. Never mind that some of these comedians who routinely chastised Indians about respecting women were themselves found to have allegedly molested women.

That the “new generation” comedians were abusing women didn’t raise questions about the reality of the free-sex culture. But the jokes by “new generation” common people on social media is a proof of “Hindutva rape culture”.

The tweet by a middle-aged woman — a political party leader — accusing another woman of sleeping around to win favours got a lot of exposure but no police action, but a joke on her by a common man on social media with mere 6 retweets quickly became a law and order problem.

In summary, this isn’t about protecting women or freedom of expression, this is pure power play.

This is why feminists who find toxic masculinity in office air conditioning, don’t squeak a word on the kind of toxic masculinity that raped, enslaved, forcibly converted thousands of Hindu women, and gets expressed as demands for mandatory, extreme purdah, sex segregation, ban on same-sex relationships, Love Jihad and comments rooted in the self-image of the superior masculine race.

Today, knowing what we know about the Catholic church and paedophilia, rape of minor Hindu girls in Pakistan facilitated by Muslim preachers, several self-anointed god-men convicted for sex crimes, no serious intellectual could give “religious” as a defence against accusations of sex-crimes.

But those who said that the nurses who accused Tablighi Jamaat men of molestation were lying because the religious Muslim men 'could never do that' routinely get invited on big platforms.

A journalist, well-known advocate of women empowerment, accused of molesting a woman her daughter’s age continues to be given platform, because punishing someone on the basis of mere accusations is wrong.

The daughter, a well-known feminist comedian herself, came out in his support.

But the life of a common man destroyed because of accusations on social media is a justified collateral damage in the feminist movement’s march to success.

At the end, everything can be blamed on “Indian culture” , “Brahminical patriarchy”, or “toxic masculinity”.

The point isn’t that there is no problem. The point is that the response of the intellectual establishment — "all men are trash” “Hindutva rape culture”— are but narratives to further ideological goals.

These are worse than the problem itself because they don’t solve the existing problems, and create new ones.

The fascism of victimology

The propriety and impropriety of sexual conduct has traditionally been mediated by the value accorded to man-woman relationships by the culture and society.

Those days are gone. Now men and women interact with each other on their own in the dating market, set their own expectations.

What, then, constitutes a universally applicable ‘no-go’ line?

Feminists answer this question by 'consent’. Everything between a man and woman with consent is right, without consent is wrong.

Fair enough. But still, there are problems.

How do we decide consent? What about the cases of longstanding psychological-spiritual abuse? Would one ‘yes’ of the woman absolve the abuser?

In other cases, absence of consent may not be as clear as, say, physical abuse.

A man-woman relationship is not a stamp-paper agreement to buy and sell goods. It is complicated. People do all sorts of weird things when in love. There are all kinds of gestures, mind-games, push and pull.

The feminist movement’s failure to grasp this has resulted in the fascism of victimology — all women are victims until told otherwise.

An example of this is the assault on ancient works of art, reducing their complex message to the oppressor-oppressed binary.

This, essentially a Marxist reading of the man-woman relationship, has no place for the variety of emotions that come as a part of the roller-coaster ride that is love.

In such a reading, the painting of Arjuna-Subhadra by Raja Ravi Varma in which Subhadra has her face away from Arjuna becomes a proof of no consent, not an expression of lajja or, say, playing hard to get.

There have been many attacks on the other art works, for example, the classic Hollywood song ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ being dubbed as ‘rape-y’.

An oppression-filtered feminist version of the same song was released later.

In the former, when the woman tells the man she wants to go home after the date, the man tries to make her stay by excuses like ‘it’s cold outside’. The readers are advised to see the body language of the woman and decide if it really is ‘rape-y’.

On the other hand, in the oppression filtered version, when the woman says she is leaving, the man replies, “I am fine with that”, “I am cool with that” “You have the right to say no”.

To each his own, but this sounds like a lawyer talking to her client or an obnoxious douche trying to send the message “don’t care whatever” to have the upper hand in the relationship.

The point isn’t that the remake is worse than the original, but that the Left scholars see every nuance as a bourgeoisie luxury — an expression of privilege — and hence an abomination.

Sorry boys and girls, in the dystopian times we live in, there is place for romance. You can either be oppressed or an oppressor. Choose wisely.

Since there is no nuance to the man-woman relationship, it becomes all about short-term sexual gratification — wherever, however available.

Multiple sexual partners, short-term sexual relationships are seen as a sign of empowerment.

No wonder a supposedly feminist TV show depicts grown women with emotional maturity and decision-making capabilities of a 13-year-old, and we are told Poo of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham was a “feminist idol for an entire generation of women”.

It is one thing to demand the freedom to make mistakes, and a completely different thing to make virtue out of vice.

The assault on art and culture, and almost everything that gives meaning to our lives isn’t the only problem. The destruction of dialectics between the sexes has more direct consequences.

One would be the increasing role of the government, especially with the breakdown of the traditional institutions of family, society and community.

Not just that the legal process, by design, is long, difficult, reactive, adversarial and foments more bitterness, but the calls for legislating every tiny bit of detail of a man-woman relationship show how the free-sex culture can quietly kill our freedom by bringing the big state into our personal lives.

We’d jump from moral policing of society to legal policing by the state.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s warnings are visible in how the radical individualism of free-sex culture is preparing the ground for state totalitarianism.

Two, the more immediate ill-effects of these changes will be borne disproportionately by the weakest in our society, including children.

In a previous article, we discussed how the feminist movement encourages counterproductive behaviours and dysfunction.

Also read: Six Reasons Why Indian Women Must Stay Away From The Feminist Movement

While the rich can use money to somewhat cushion the losses due to their immaturity, impulsiveness, hedonism, and chaos, a poor person with the same ideals will perish — the reason why all the glorification of unconventional relationships happens only in the backdrop of a rich and privileged lifestyle.

For a rapidly modernising, young country like India, free-sex culture is practically a ticking time bomb.

The critique of the feminist doctrine and free-sex culture often earns accusations of defending ‘patriarchal’ values and institutions, and the critics are seen as regressive traditionalists who want extreme censorship and the state to enforce their notions of moral and good.

For the sake of brevity, we shift the discussion on the Indic perspective and solutions to the third and last part. The readers are advised to reserve their judgements till then.