Is ‘Modern Feminism’ turning women into sadist radicals in urban societies?

Women in most urban parts of the world are most liberated and free in the human history today. Yet in many ways they are NOT doing merely as well as men, they are doing BETTER. Women’s emancipation is one of the glories of the modern civilization making the greatest chapter in the history of freedom. So why then women in feminist movements from organization like

National Organization for Women

Professors in our Universities and Colleges

Women in Media

Still so dissatisfied, the feminists rarely acknowledge women’s progress. Yes they agree to certain things have been achieved but they still don’t reject their activist brand of feminism and always end up defining “FREE” as proof of just how entrenched patriarchy and inequality truly are. Women are so oppressed they don’t even know it. Years after years these women make claims about women in violence, women in depression, and women in eating disorders, women and workplace injustice to support their views. Over the years their claims have been closely studied leading to a finding that their victim statistics are misleading.

Consider the issue of Gender Wage Gap

It is a common saying that women earn 2/3^rd of a dollar while men earn a dollar for the same amount of work. This is constantly repeated by feminists and their supporters. After a close in depth study this has been proven false. The pay gap is simply the difference between average earning of all men and women working full time, it does not account for differences in occupation, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week.

Now the wage gap activists like “American Association of University Women, National Women’s Law Centre say that even when we control these factors women still earn less” It always turns out they have neglected one or two major data points in their research.

Take the case of doctors

On the surface it looks like women physicians are clearly victims of wage discrimination, they appear to work less for the same work. But dig a little deeper and you find that women are far likely to opt for lower paying specialities like paediatrics, family medicine, gynaecology then higher paying cardiology, anaesthesiology they are also more likely to work part time and even the women who work full time put in 7 to 10 percent less hours then men. Women physicians are more likely to take long leaves of absence usually to start a family now there are exceptions but most workplace pay gaps narrow to the point of vanishing when one accounts for all these relevant factors.

Now how do the women’s advocacy groups react to this?

They say women’s choices are NOT truly free. Women, who take leaves for their families, work as paediatrics, put in fewer working hours are held back by invisible barriers or internalized oppression. According to National Organization for Women “powerful sexist stereotypes steer women and men towards different education training and career paths and family roles.” But is it really social conditioning that explains women’s vocational preferences and their special attachment to children?

I will answer it in a way that in pursuit of happiness men and women take different paths and isn't it patronizing to say that most urban women are not free self determining human beings. Another way to prove that male and female wage gap isn't true is that if women are being paid less than men, in a corporate world wouldn't the capitalist owners fire men whom they pay extra money to and give jobs only to women doing the same amount and nature of work. Why wouldn't they use this huge market benefit resulting in profits and cutting cost?

Christina Hoff Sommers (Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute) “as a regular lecturer on campus I have seen young girls have fully accepted the propaganda of feminism, even in US where girls are most liberated, fortunate women on the planet yet in their feminist theory classes they are likely to learn that they are put upon by men, tyrannized by men. The more elite the school, the more advanced the degree they are more likely to take such feminist propaganda more seriously”. But this doesn't have to continue.

The time has come for women to take back feminism, reform it, correct the excess of it, repudiate the victim propaganda, get rid of women are from Venus and men are from Hell and begin the arduous task of correcting a three decades of feminist misinformation. There has to be a platform where the excess of modern radical feminism should be checked for legitimacy that should be allowed to double check their actions and theories to reform the idea for generations.

Women who suffer and are true victims of domestic violence, wage gaps, rights in general can be helped by truth and solid research and not by hysteria and hype.

Appreciate and make good use of the unprecedented freedom that you have.

With reference to video from Christina Hoff Sommers.

Understanding Feminism in South Asian Society

A chunk of work that needs to be shared

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

The Engaged Feminist Intellectual 

What comes to me very strongly is that in many ways in order for what we recognize as feminism to operate as an engagement we must presume socialist norms, which are written within capitalism, because it means turning the use of capital from capitalist to socialist uses.

Where there is no agency of turning and development of capitalism not noticeable except as remote victim, today the task has been picked up by the international civil society, which I have described as "self-selected moral entrepreneurs" on many occasions. These people are confident that gender redress can be computed in terms of making the phenomena of gendering accessible by general terms provided by world governance style documents, every unit in fought over in prep com meetings, everything most simply understood, as in a PowerPoint presentation; as in knowledge management plans, decisions made by logic rather than subject-engagement.

A certain kind of anti-capitalism, not invariably present in this sector which is often dependent upon, and happily so, upon corporate funding, substitutes for a proactive socialism here. The slow and deep language learning that must accompany accessing cultural infrastructures so real long term change might be envisaged is largely absent.

The distinction between problem solving and the un coercive rearrangement of desires between doctors without Borders and primary health care, let us say, is often ignored here. This kind of "feminist engagement" is not noticeably "intellectual," if the intellectual is a person who analyses the existing situation before choosing the most convenient instrument for solving a problem that has been constructed as a "case" by looking at the grid established by people in a completely different level of capitalist society.

In this sort of below the radar rural situation, in eastern India, at least (that is another problem, we tend to generalize too soon, because of the alliances of the international civil society with the benevolent feudal feminism of the global South), the problem-solving approach can apply to clearly visible cases of domestic violence.

The Three Pillars of Modern Radical Feminism

I see three pillars to this new form of Modern Radical Feminism being engraved within the urban societies all over the world.

• Dignity
• The word NO
• Men

Dignity:

Tammy Bruce (Board of Directors on National Organization of Women) says “I feel pride and some guilt for this designation, Pride because feminism has pushed forward some very important and needed changes and guilt because it has done a lot of damage”. For radical modern feminists dignity stands for two things

•  It should be the core of what feminism should be about
•  A woman should be able to freely choose her path in life

College students in the western world aspires to be in any field such as lawyers, journalists, artists, doctors, engineers but they would not choose a wife or a mother to be a career path or even consider it one of the paths to follow. If this is a given factor to a college student today it is not just considered a no go as a career but it is discouraged by the feminists by labelling it offensive, sexist, embarrassing and anti-feminist. It has happened to many women who are pro-marriage and family life, their views are not event considered as ones to be heard or acknowledged by the radical feminists. This happened to a guest contributor Susan A. Patton at Princeton University in 2013 who published a letter stating that marriage and being a mother and a wife needs to be acknowledged equally as other career choices by college students and she suffered the criticism beyond our expectation by the feminist groups.

When what was due to keep the dignity of a woman was to value and respect all responsible choices. “While talking of dignity I can’t see anything less dignified that a woman in the sexual arena act like men or ought to act like men. Is this what a truly liberated woman wants?” Tammy. Think of casual sex and think of it like men do and what they aspires to? The answer to this question on an international level is a ‘YES’ by the women.

• Feminism has downplayed the desire of women to have family
• Simultaneously hyping the rewards of career and casual sex around the globe

Not exactly the recipe of success and happiness

The word NO

There is great power in the word No. The consequences of using the word No to define feminism has been catastrophic in the last 3 decades. Particularly the time when Pakistan met the idea of feminism while it was already evolved from the original narrative, women who fought NOT to be treated as a sex object have been more objectified than ever, you see it on tv, internet, advertisements, magazines, newspapers and now we see teenage girls pursuing teenage boys like boys used to do some decades ago. How did this happen?

Because feminism advocated that women should behave like men, whatever men did and however they did it, that is what women should do. Feminists were angry at men but they wanted to be like men at the same time. No wonder our society is so confused women are robbing themselves to say no to this, solution is to take that power back.

Saying No means that I will not be defined by anyone else NOT by feminists and not by men’s sexual desires. That is female power.

Men

Whether feminists agree or not, it was men who gave up their monopoly to give women the right to vote, men who invented birth control, refrigerator, washing machine and so many other devices that liberated women and men are different from women. Academics like to speculate that “men and women are basically the same but they like to socialized differently.” Bobbi J. Carothers Harry T. Reis (men and women are from earth Journal of personality and social psychology Vol 104 no 2 Feb 2013). Moreover sexes need each other for example women civilize men, its what they are suppose to do but in order to do so, women must

• Preserve their dignity
• Not be afraid to use the word No
• See men as partners NOT as competitors or oppressors

That is the solution for a society to be stronger otherwise it will only get worse, and by the time we will realize it the differences would be of such grand level that we will only be remembered as ignorant fools who damaged the society from a grass root level.

(with reference to Tammy Bruce's Video)

The Conflicting Tree of Belief

The biggest conflicts humans have faced within a society are associated or based on the word belief. The word holds the ability to penetrate and define a state of mind about a self sustaining idea or theory using sentimental values as a tool to incentivize inner peace or identification of self to set barriers and laws based on a hierarchy of superiority outlining social, moral and spiritual contentment that may be applicable on a person or group of people with similar weaknesses and strengths to adapt it and make it ultimate with or without a scientific logical method or an explanation.

“Discrimination is not liberal. Arguing against discrimination is not intolerance.”

Richard Dawkins

The idea of belief grows like a seed that doesn’t tolerate a conflicting idea that may question the basics or detailed explanation based on rational thinking. A human brain has boundaries but no limits; the potential of a human brain has the ability to expand like the universe. “A pattern of findings demonstrates that the anatomical structure of adult human brain can change very quickly, specifically during the acquisition of new, named categories,” said by Researcher Veronica Kwok of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This can be understood in a way that process of human evolution is limitless and is happening fast.

“Beliefs are propositions about the relations among things to which those who believe have made some kind of commitment that could be pragmatic or emotional. A proposition's credibility may appear obvious from experience or a proposition may seem to be the most prudent assumption on which to act. In either case the commitment has pragmatic basis. Emotional commitment to a proposition occurs when a person wants to feel a need for it to be true because of what its truth implies about things that matter.” As suggested by Ward H. Goodenough

Goodenough’s study does not include ‘rational thinking’ as a major pillar to base belief as an act to associate the ultimate both religion and science are trying to find. Historically we have lost a lot of information that we still have hard time understanding and decoding how it happened. But the information did leave some clues or proves of their existence in fossils and monuments and stories and myths. Using this statement to define everything that has been logically proven under scientific laws is something a belief hinders and rejects to exist and uses sentimental and psychological tools to reassure its existence thus belief breaks certain boundaries but rests in limits constrained by pre-existing ideas of the ones who understood the need and use of belief to rule or remain in power.

The capacity of belief cannot be endless because it demands submission of a person’s thought process. The idea of belief and energy are like two brothers fighting for royalty, where both have suppressed and oppressed each other in the course of history through a chain of command that uses similar tools like fear, spirituality, hatred, diplomacy and peace all leading to conflict for the gain of power or survival.

Belief resists the idea of knowing beyond limits, it escapes it by either refusing to acknowledge the endless capacity and capability of our brains to understand, adhere and possess infinite knowledge or the second escape is by putting barriers to the endless capacity of our brains to understand, adhere and possess infinite knowledge to label yourself superior among men and inferior to belief or energy. A human brain has tissues just like all other muscles bound by to give an outcome based on its use. The way we can build muscles on our arms and legs we can also train our brains to enhance our capacity of thinking and refining our thoughts for conclusions. This makes the limit of thoughts to become endless as associated with the diverse factors of both pure and social science. Yet we have no quarrel on accepting the existence of time and energy to be the building block of life and existence.

Hence it is difficult to rely on belief for conclusion rather than rational research justifying the findings and not the belief itself to an individual, leading belief not to require logical acceptance to many findings and proven theories. Since submission to a higher power can be diplomatically more rewarding but it will end up creating copies of information that seizes the idea of growth in all aspects that cross limits known sacred to a belief with slight alterations while energy remains neither inferior nor superior it may vary in magnitude but does not vary in core and nature.

The tool used by belief here is merely the idea of growth that grows different branches all connected to the same roots and refusing to accept the existence and possibility of different trees around it. It doesn’t mean the fruit it grows would not be sweet or the sweetest it may be, but the sweet is not the only taste a fruit is bound to have, unless all you consciously or unconsciously want to taste is only sweet nothing other than that is unacceptable even if it exists naturally too. This can be the core of conflict between energy and belief, the science and religion. Mostly led by belief through superiority based on the factors that offer awards like acceptance and endorsement in society, power in society, end of resentment within a group or a feud.

The idea of putting all your queries on to a higher being or a more purposeful existence of God and His most valued followers, leading to an end of your purpose or keeping you within a barrier or a group that may only end up making you a branch, a fruit or a leaf of just one tree standing over the same roots.

Insensitivity of Pakistan to tragedy (Laughter on tragedy and violence in Cinemas)

Death is a disturbing sight usually constitutes an awful spectacle. It intrigues a phenomenon of insensitivity demanding empathy and attention of concern. But we as Pakistanis have lost it and made it an amusement to justify our ignorance to humanity. Many cultures have depicted death, violence and tragedy as entertainment only a few have managed to make it humorous amusement, we have not realized it yet we should be put right at the top of that list. This turmoil is justified in the name of religious sacrifices or battles according to a general belief prevalent in Pakistan, but we Pakistanis have enhanced the scope to a day to day incident and our media made it a theatre of tragedy.

We Pakistanis share common traits with ancient Romans that we can witness if we would hit the cinemas, the only entertaining activity left to common people after food. Romans viewed bloodshed of humans as entertainment. The elites from English Renaissance theatre, also known as Elizabethan theatre in England from 1562 and 1642 also did the same. Common genres of the period depicting English or European history included violence and death. It should ring bells once we turn on our news channels or Facebook accounts which is filled with Taliban videos, disturbingly gaining thousands of likes and comments both pro and anti. Yet this remains on our radar 24/7 if we don’t see a terrorist attack killing none it wouldn’t be a news to us.

Shakespeare's plays about the lives of kings, such as Richard III and Henry V, belonged to this category of death and violence, so does the Christopher Marlowe's Edward II and George Peele's Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First all of these depict tragedy, death and violence as amusement.Later came the term “Dark humour” which became a more educated label for such entertainment.Historical plays dealt with more recent events, like A Larum for London which dramatizes the sack of Antwerp in 1576. The only difference was the act depicting tragedy, battles, and bloodshed, was that it was fiction inspired from the real life incidents leaving a strong moral or sometimes sarcasm to the spectators and society. So people could learn from it despite all the hindrances it continued to be bolder. But you don’t see that happening in Pakistan, the theatre and its informal education has lost its value among the potential audience.

Tragedy, death and violence were amazingly popular genres. Many plays managed to live for centuries like Marlowe's tragedies,Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta are only a few. Theatre even in darkages never left without a moral. The morals spectators enjoyed the most were “revenge dramas”, such as Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. The four tragedies considered to be Shakespeare's greatest (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth) were composed during this period as well as many others leaving strongest morals to date. How we Pakistanis can be related to this is exactly the moral, that we get none, “revenge, retribution, retaliation, rebellion mean nothing to us. Everything falls under the entertainment leaving us more insensitive to the real incidents and not fiction.

Speaking of dark humour as we know today were called “comedy”, yes Comedies were common, too where people laughed. A sub-genre developed in this period was the city comedy, which dealt with life in the city of London, after the fashion of Roman New Comedy they became happy whileour city issues remain to be the basic human rights, survival, and religion. These topics are still not felt to shake consciousness among us. Certain issue like religion still remains a sacred taboo in Pakistan that cannot appreciate controversial or contradicting views.

After about 1610 in the West, the new hybrid sub-genre of the tragicomedy became the centre of attention. Spectators’ laughter started getting suppressed; audience became more conscious of their theatrical experiences. Whereas in Pakistan this evolution didn’t occur, only the cultural stories relying highly on the imagination became the source of education, but with the advent of religious extremism in society even that was put to an end. It only took a few decades to completely put this education to an end, and spread the word of violence and tragedy in the name of religion showing value to the evolved out of the darkages.

Religious fanatics in Pakistan follow footsteps of the Romans killing for fun, raping for sexual pleasures and all of it gets easily justified under the umbrella of religion that nobody can be certain of and question. Criticism also doesn’t reach them, because the majority in Pakistan accepts it as either a religious conflict or religion itself, the dead gets labelled “Murtid” (Non-believer) so easily and deserving a brutal death gets justified.Leaving spectators entertained with an inspiration, Never does it get labelled “Extremism” that is punishable. This has become a day to day exercise and even the silent spectators have joined the club, slowly penetrating insensitivity among us. Now once a Shia, Christian, Baloch, Ahmadi, children, women get killed it’s no big deal.Bombs explode kill thousands doesn’t do much to Pakistanis yet some smile others stay quiet.

Fighting extremism has to go a long way in Pakistan since our society does not know what social change could be to them. We haven’t learnt anything from our past. Yet we set forth our critic and keep adding fuel to the fire of extremism on daily basis. We refuse to identify our enemy; we may come to a point where we can agree upon blaming the “Mullahs” but refuse to open our minds. We are immune to tragedy and are cold at heart, we enjoy being insensitive now. We are a country run by Islam leaving everything to Allah and the judgement day that is our escape If we consider extremism wrong in general we instantly come to point where we justify the acts of terror and we have been cold to this issue for so many years that now it has developed into humour.

Tragedy, pain, agony, death has become material of laughter in our society today. Our cinemas are reviving since 2008, people in urban areas can now have an activity other than eating food. Movies like ShoaibMansoor’s “Bol” (Speak) and “Khuda key liey” (In the name of God) have brought families to the cinemas a few years ago and they have highlighted social taboos like the role of “Mullahs” and religion in context to taboos such as violence, death, child molestation and women in our society. The subjects highlighted are disturbing on its own, (seeing ourselves on the screen being mocked and getting a reality check). But for me these negative highlights diminished when I experienced a much more disturbing social act, people in Pakistan laugh in cinemas while watching a child being molested by truck drivers (quoting a scene from “Bol”) that was funny to people. The hall laughed and I sat numb and shocked to see their reaction to the disturbance and tragedy on the screen.

How did this happen, we were taught in schools to obey the prerequisites of Islam based on “peace and humanity” when did we lose it I really can’t say. But it definitely has a lot to do with our beliefs and religion that failed to educate us unlike the theatre in the West. After the Peshawar attacks I believe all humans in Pakistan were in shock. Even the loss of 140 children in APS (Army Public School) didn’t do much to raise a consciousness in people and reclaim their sensitivity. A handful of people raising their voice against extremism stand isolated with threats of being killed.Neither the army nor the political parties’ wishes to back them, why!Its simple because it is not a big enough reason and the people in general are insensitive to this issue.

A few weeks ago I went to watch Aamir Khan’s latest movie “PK”. There is a scene when Aamir Khan goes to the railway station’s platform to receive his friend Sanjay Dutt and suddenly a bomb explodes killing many the very instant. Aamir Khan survives and as he sits in a shock … numb, I heard a roar of laughter rising from over 300 seats. The disturbance and shock of the scene itself died that very instant and the disturbance and shock coming from the crowd’s reaction took over and slapped my consciousness. I was disgusted of the people I was watching the movie with. How Roman could we be and how inhumane we were I cannot express.

The movie “Bol” was released in 2011, and “PK” was released in December 2014. In last three years over 50,000 people have lost their lives as a result of terrorist attacks, but their loss of lives has only added humour to our lives mocking their pain and tragedy either through our silence or through our pro-Taliban approach. Yes, this is who we are, we laugh at the loss of lives and nothing matters to us. The religious extremist mind-set has sucked sanity and sensitivity out of us. The few raising their voice against extremism stand alone to be opposed by 20 million people who laugh at the loss of lives and eat popcorn on it. They come out of the theatre without being bothered about their insensitivity proved not to be silent spectators they are bred to be.

The graphic images on the television showing blood stains, bullet holes, and wounded children yet again failed to kindle humanity among us. It’s going to be a month in a few days since the Peshawar attack on APS, nothing has changed, people can still sleep, Lahore High Court continues to free more accused terrorists, while others roam freely, we can laugh at the effectees, or simply forget their suffering,although the majority condemned the attack but they did not condemn the attackers.Yes they were Taliban but just not humans rather a mind-set that we all share shamelessly without a conscious analysis. The darkages and the Roman culture still relates us, violence still stands as the highest authority challenging and ridiculing humanity in the name of religion or beliefs. What would make a difference is empathy for humanity, or we can continue to spread bloodshed and laugh at it as well as get entertained by the death of others. This is what we will pass on to our generations with a similar violent abstract belief depicting extremism. Killing in the name of God or entertainment we should not differentiate rather just realize or may even feel bad about as humans so we could be more sensitive to humanity.