Feminism Archives - DU Times

VANDANA SHIVA AND MARIA MIES ON “ECOFEMINISM”

Chaitanya Sharma — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 06:45:46 +0000

INTRODUCTION:
The term feminism was coined by the French philosopher Françoise, in 1974, in the parchment, which was roughly translated in the English language as “feminism or death”; It was talking about how women’s are sharing a special connection with nature and are capable of bringing revolutionary reform in the existing policies and attitude through environmental activism. It also pointed about the conference on women and life on earth, which happened in America, the case of Chipko movement and Bhopal gas peedit mahila udyog sangathan 1984- all of these things forms the cornerstone for this article. Let us understand these aspects of ecofeminism in depth now.

MAIN BODY:
Feminist see a connection between the technology and the war against women plus nature in the same sense that the operation and domination over women and nature was coming from the same ideology of the masculine aggression that is to be labeled against their oppressive tendencies towards women and nature in order to control, regulate and order them according to their own requirements, needs and wishes. It represented the colonized, non-western and the non-white people and nature which were all at same in the hands of the white aggressors and the colonizers, the same colonial mindset, the hegemonic attitude, which is evidently present in their suppressing tendencies.

Spiritual dimension was also present, which was brought out of this hideous facet from this material outlook, where in the nature, nature principle which is considered to be as that just because women’s are very close to nature, they and the nature are sharing one of the most common character characteristic among them, and that is to nurture the things to take care of all the items as well as to be very soft which makes them a product of easy subjugation and subservience. This Proposition was rejected by the feminist. It was even the fact that some of the people said that the spiritualism that is being exhibited by the feminism Ideology and movement is nothing but escapism escapism in the sense that if you will look in the traditional perspective, this will tell you that spiritualism will lead to other worldliness In which you are concerned about emancipation and entertaining liberation by giving up an abandoning on the domestic ways of living and becoming a mendicant;

Some however asserted to the opposite of this thing by pointing to the very fact that the spiritualism that is being exhibited by this feminist postulation is work in present to live in present to fight in present in order to have a better constructive and developed future in which nature and women’s are not considered to be as the play things in the hands of Tyrant men. It was another point which got major attention that the materialism which is present in their spiritualism in the sense that they are taking care of the material, not in the sense that they are attached to the material in the form of preserving the material from being exploited, that is the sort of materialism, the feminist are trying to Highlight in their pitch. It is not the type of materialism, which is comm capitalist nor mechanical Marxist materialism, which points to the fact that they are not believing in mysticism or myth, and there is no absence of human efforts.

It is also been pointed out by various Indo German feminist writers that let’s take the example of India and Chinese tradition where there are meditation and yoga practices which are being popularized for the sake of coming. It instrumental them and they are being presented to dual and board population, which indeed serves a testament for these items being considered as commodities and its intrinsic and important value is being reduced to assets for the chronic capitalists or the masculine force behind it, intent to accumulate prestige, wealth, and fame. This has been beautifully put by Mr. Saral Sarkar, Who says that: “ This is called as the luxury spiritualism, where in the ideals are dicing on the material cake for west’s standards of living”

We come across another essential point here which is about the fact that the patriarchal science and technology developed only after the so-called witches Were murdered and their knowledge, wisdom, and the fact of close relationship with nature have been completely annihilated. The desire to regain, re-discover and relearn. This lost, informational, and epidemic matter, became a way to liberate women and nature from the patriarchal destruction.

It all points towards this fact that the third world women who do not fit for the dichotomies of spirit and matter because this respiration does not simply exist for them as they are working only for the conservation of the world and preventing its commodification. By doing this, they have presented a critique of technological advancements such as IVF, and with this, they have also pointed out how the critique of philosophical dualism in the form of subjective and objective in the form of realism and idealism has been decorated on the lines of the sexist view between man and the other, which are usually considered the women who are deemed to be as Inferior than their respective male counterparts, which is plainly false.

CONCLUSION:
To conclude, these two philosophers are only trying to point this out to this. Very fact that spiritualism should not be commodified or other worldly, this does not mean ecofeminism, it is simply the market cactus eagerly consumed by the industrialized. Capitalism in the north-west ecofeminism is a way of liberating women’s a direction which points towards the progress of nature and preservation of these importance. Life preserving forces by the concept of subsistence perspective which holds its base in fundamental necessity of life, which is equating or life forms on earth and appreciating nature’s potential to nurture and sustain all life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva
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Imagination & Reality: A constant tussle

Chaitanya Sharma — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:54:29 +0000

INTRODUCTION

“… we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

~Seneca

Have you ever been left strangled between reality and imagination at some point in the course of your life? This has been a constant part of stoicism and their philosophical expositions which they went on to expound much like the Buddha and his Bodhisattvas. Seneca comes to the rescue here, “Seneca does not write as a philosopher who creates or expounds a philosophical theory from the ground up. Rather, he writes within the track of an existing system that he is largely in agreement with.” A philosopher who was an independent thinker, free man, liberated from the clutches of worldly belongings and stoic from mind. “Follow no one but learn from everyone” we say, but, who initiated this saying in a more grand way? It was none other than Seneca alone when he emphatically reiterates that: “Surely you can only want me to be like my leaders? Well then, I shall not go where they send me but where they lead”– a defiant statement by the philosopher who wanted to educate the humanity through the “Letters from a stoic” that humans should not turn out to be like cattle breeds who will blindly follow a man without questioning, much like the Katha Upanishad’s expression of a blind man leading another blind man in a circle of infinite regress- they are rightfully called as “mando” the dull witted and dumbfounded person. Similar to this expression, we come across a psychological tussle that races past the screen of our mind endlessly- the overgeneralization, over exaggeration and overthinking with the philosophy of fear that creates a poignant figure for us. Let us examine it.

ANALYSIS

Sometimes, we tend to think excessively- everything starts from a thought, it spouts in a endless cycle of if and buts in our mind, we being to revolve in and around that thought, trying to find what could it take to become- what will be the consequences of it- what if fall and fail in my endeavor and what if the things do not end up picturing the way I have drawn it in my mind? A series of questions- which are not necessarily directed towards finding answers and actually working upon it, questions which keep us entangled in our thoughts of failure- it births feelings of temptation, aghast and anxiety of losing. These pertinent ripples cause much distress which becomes developmentally inappropriate for the functioning of a human being. We can’t seem to get away from the horrifying thoughts as contended by Serenus: “as if I were on a boat that doesn’t move forward and is tossed about.” Such tumultuous and harsh ravages of time-frame only causes a person to feel in a constant despondency, deflected with positivity and decreased in bewilderment by happiness.

A person only accumulates in more of tragic, unfathomable fear and anguish which he nurtures within and the thought becomes like a never ending trail of fearful ideas which have already started to have deep imprints on the life, words and actions of a person. Seneca attempted to explain the premeditation of negative thoughts that possibly hamper our idea of present and color the notion of future. But why were negative thoughts highlighted by Seneca? It is because as he contends: “We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.” The fact that tend to imagine the loss, exaggerate the ideas and anticipate the horrors befalling us prior to the happening of the actual incident in the empirical world- a phenomenon which is downright devoid of actual potency- practical basis, it starts to haunt us to the core of our soul. It starts to destroy us from within, slowly and slowly eating up all that is left within us- bringing us closer to nihilism in its extreme sense and pessimism in its crude sense. As Kevin Walker says in his interpretation of stoics from “Reading the Stoic with Millennials” that: “our disappointments loom large because we have nothing else to focus on.” deep clutches of separation, alienation and Wobegon passivity looms large on a person, only because he or she had primarily imagined it- allowed the seeds of detrimental ideas related to sorrows set in the mind, and thereby allowed the admission and significant exaggeration by holding tightly onto that particular idea- it ended up spreading like a wildfire, ended up consuming all that was inside the human.

CONCLUSION

“Hence comes grief and melancholy and the thousand fluctuations of an uncertain mind, held in suspense by early hopes and then reduced to sadness once they fail to materialize.” Adding to this, “the human mind is a battleground; tame the negative reflections, conquer the internal judgments, reduce the number of times you compare yourself to others and self-criticisms.” because, as it is said by Aurelius: “External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now”

It is, however, generally believed that the philosophy espoused by stoics were filled with passive ideas and theoretical abstractions which are redundant, useless and downright filled with literature of valueless syllables. They were defamed as people with no legitimate philosophy and self deluders only talk about sorrow and escapism- but a deep analysis of the view withheld by the stoic makes us understand that we are actually looking towards a philosophy which is dedicated to serve the humans by highlighting the psychological, physiological and bodily anatomical issues which are at the core of mind-body dualism which is studied by the scientists and bioethicists till date.

RESOURCES

https://aureliusfoundation.com/blog/we-suffer-more-in-imagination-than-in-reality-explained-2022-04-01/

https://betterhumans.pub/seneca-was-right-we-suffer-more-in-imagination-than-in-reality-67523e5b6502

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucius-Annaeus-Seneca-Roman-philosopher-and-statesman

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/seneca/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger

https://dailystoic.com/stoic-quotes/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism

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Idea of women in patriarchal history

Chaitanya Sharma — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 12:44:47 +0000

INTRODUCTION:
Women history has been a troublesome issue since a very long time which has grappled attention in recent times because of the injustices and injuries inflicted in both psychological and social manner which has tarnished the status, position of women and has led to displacement of their rights and hampered their liberties in a way which has casted clouds of hardships and sorrows to the womanhood. This trend has been captured perfectly by the American historian turned philosopher: Gerda Lerner in her magnum opus:

“The creation of Patriarchy”– a book wherein she delves deeper into the society where the ruling dominance is in the hands of a male and how the monstrous attitude of negligence towards costed them with stigmas that are visible even today be it in educational, political or power parity issues with men, In the middle of 21st century, when the world has been reduced to the technical device in our hands, what is the relevance of ideas espoused by Learner’s discussion of “women being deprived to write their own history”- what could be possible reflections over this thought, let us revisit this discussion of depriving women the right of self-determination.

THE DISCUSSION:
In her book, Gerda contends that the women have been rejected, deprived and kept away from making their own history, learning their history or knowing about others history. They have been used only for their reproductive capacities. She continues to add that the men have orchestrated their hegemonic occupation on the concept of “history making” in such a way that:
“…historians have been men, and what they have recorded is what men have done and experienced and found significant. They have called this History and claimed universality for it.” This has been made possible because men have selected historical heroes, villains and anti-heroes from the distant past as per their own wish and will. Men have been ruthlessly ignoring the initiatives, occurring, projectiles and predicaments that have been led by, for and through the women. What women has felt, suffered and undergone has been largely left neglected and these so-called historians have turned a blind eye towards their experiences to get the equal opportunity as the experiences encountered by the males to get the chance of being imprinted in the history of the mankind and this has led to the formation of biased, prejudiced and half history of the men.

Learner says that: “As formerly subordinate groups, such as peasants, slaves, proletarians, have risen into positions of power or at least inclusion in the polity, their experiences have become part of the historical record. That is, the experiences of the males of their group; females were, as usual, excluded. The point is that men and women have suffered exclusion and discrimination because of their class. No man has been excluded from the historical record because of his sex, yet all women were.”
She takes the example of Mesopotamian civilization where she contends that since then the women have been rejected to be students, learners and educators; they have been, at best, the supporting actors in the play. Even in the case when we have a history replete with female goddesses, we cannot turn a blind towards the fact that:
“The dethroning of the powerful goddesses and their replacement by a dominant male god occur in most Near Eastern societies following the establishment of a strong and imperialistic kingship. Gradually the function of controlling fertility, formerly entirely held by the goddesses, is symbolized through the symbolic or actual mating of the male god or God-King with the Goddess or her priestess.”

The historians found easy and narrative-appropriate male-gods in the place of female counterparts and replaced them efficiently. It is believed that merely the concept of womanhood has been endangered in the historical context and when we say “all world’s a stage, men and women are merely players” it is to say that “Men have written the play, have directed the show, interpreted the meanings of the action. They have assigned themselves the most interesting, most heroic parts, giving women the supporting roles. As the women become aware of the difference in the way they fit into the play, they ask for more equality in the role assignments.

They upstage the men at times, at other times they pinch-hit for a missing male performer.” the wide array of implications on fronts that have been essential for the development of every human being- but unfortunately, after reading Gerda, it can be inferred that since the Aristotelian times till now, we have kept the women away from the spectrum of human being, either making them the witches, commodities of sexual gratification or the playthings in the hands of the male counterparts. The sod image says about the reality in a blatant yet precise manner to bring about the truth to the central position where it can no longer be sidelined as a passive issue. Because as Learner puts it:
“It takes considerable time for the women to understand that getting “equal” parts will not make them equal, as long as the script, the props, the stage setting, and the direction are firmly held by men. When the women begin to realize that and cluster together between the acts, or even during the performance, to discuss what to do about it, this play comes to an end.”

CONCLUDING REMARKS:
The history of women is the history of mankind, of the universe and abstaining from yielding positions where women historians can make their reasoned claims and providing them with the “meaning making and interpretation” in the context of history and academia will be detrimental loss for the intellectual population and world in general, we tend to believe that women have been devoid of the capacities that could make them stand shoulder to shoulder to a man in reasoned debates just what happened during “Janaka and Sulabha debate” as mentioned by Ruth Vanitha which justifies that even the “enlightened ones” could be blinded by this very prejudicial attitude towards intellectuals who dare to ask, question and challenge the hegemony weaved by men.

As Lerner maintains the same by asserting that: “The women finally, after considerable struggle, win the right of access to equal role assignment, but first they must “qualify.” The terms of their “qualifications” are again set by the men; men are the judges of how women measure up; men grant or deny admission. They give preference to docile women and to those who fit their job-description accurately. Men punish, by ridicule, exclusion, or ostracism, any woman who assumes the right to interpret her own role or— worst of all sins— the right to rewrite the script.” We have to emphatically reiterate that the history of mankind is the history of women as well, they must not be left isolated, alienated and segregated from academic pages as “Women are essential and central to creating society; they are and always have been actors and agents in history.

Women have “made history,” yet they have been kept from…interpreting history, either their own or that of men. Women have been systematically excluded from the enterprise of creating symbol systems, philosophies, science, and law.” The time is testing our grit and determination to bring a mental, psychological upheaval to make conscious change in the present state-of-affairs- that would be an appropriate meaning of women empowerment and reason for celebrating women’s day and true spirit of viksit bharat @2047.

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The Basic Problem Behind “Bois/Girls Locker Room”

DU Times — Wed, 06 May 2020 17:26:36 +0000

Two days ago in Delhi, On Sunday May 6, 2020 several girls on Instagram exposed a few Screenshots from a Group chat named “BOIS LOCKER ROOM ” showing how several boys were body shaming and passing unusual comments on different girls, known or unknown, underage or adults. May be a guy from the group was good enough to handle over the names and the screenshots to the girls involved to have them exposed, the exact source is yet unconfirmed. Now, there were a lot of questions raised on those girls that they could have handled it in a better way, went directly to the police and shouldn’t have posted all of it on the social media and not defamed those guys by revealing their names. They are apparently doing all of this for merely increasing “FOLLOWERS” and their “FAME” using “FAKE FEMINISM” as their weapon. Followed by all of this there was another screenshots release from a group chat named “GIRLS LOCKER ROOM” in which the same things happened but instead girls were the one performing a role here. Now, people say that the girls also do the same and “they” do not have the right to defame boys like that after the outbreak of the idiom “All Men Are Trash”. If you, in general know for sure that you aren’t, you wouldn’t get offended by such things right?

The matter has gone under legal ways now. The Delhi police along with the Cyber crime department has been investigating what is the truth so far about both the groups. But my point here is that, even if those girls didn’t do something good or they themselves might be the ones doing the same but at least they made a little bit of awareness for everyone to know what might be happening around them. Yes, the names shouldn’t have been exposed because it might in some ways leave no room for counseling for the underage children involved here but the exposure of such things is quite important. Social media isn’t about giving justice to anybody but creating more and more awareness and that is what we are entitled to do.We have to look for the bigger issue here.

It is okay to have group chats and normal talks and judging people, Everybody does that. But , what we need here to understand is the difference between TALKING AND TEASING. Females have always been dominated by the others for no matter what reason. That thing needs to be changed, they have to be accepted as equal as males. They are not the objects that you own about which you can talk or tease whatever you want and definitely not threatening them with rape threats, be it by a or for a girl. Body shaming shouldn’t be followed, it is irrespective of the gender. Shouldn’t be done by any gender upon any other gender. All the genders shall be taken equally. What is important here is the upbringing of the children by their parents wherein they teach them from the start that “EVERYBODY NEEDS TO RESPECT EVERYBODY.” Feminism can be followed by anyone a boy or a girl, as it is about the gender equality of women and men and not the superiority of females over males or vice versa. This is a huge problem in India and the mentality of the people here and this where somebody needs to take a stand and talk about the general and the basic problem behind all this instead of defending girls or boys or their group chat locker rooms.

These screenshots just gave a push for a change that has to happen so instead of taking it for defending your gender or friends or anyone else we shall take a better part in helping form the change. Some or the other day when somebody does something wrong, he/she has to pay for it,may it be by legal or any other means. We can atleast do what’s possible in our part.

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The Feminism Challenge

DU Times — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 06:01:34 +0000

Welcome to the beginning of feminine era. So welcome baby girl! You are all set to rule and kick this world indeed. You have right to cry, stand out of queues, get sympathy from everyone and oh yes! Don’t stand while reading this, just snatch a seat from a man sitting beside you. So isn’t it a true scenario now a days? Well yes, it is to an extent. We can see girls all around. And Delhi especially comes with a security pack for girls . With all metro coaches reserved for women to police and security forces geared in their forms to protect them. Even Separate security checks and token preferences in metro lines.

Well yes ,with all the recent harassment cases that came up and are still taking place, the world has started perceiving Delhi as the crime capital and hence grossly unsafe. A small percentage of evil people are showing up and taking around the world a bad face for Delhi but as one looks deep into it one realises that Delhi, other metropolitan cities and even towns are becoming woman oriented. Apart from criticising the government, we need to look into the positive side of what our country is providing to our goddesses. From quotas to women to other various privileges, they are on their toes, apart from the various curative legislations passes to protect their rights and to a give them reliefs of various kinds.

We have sections for abuses, dowry, harassment etc but the main problem which is popping up is the misuse of these sections by some girls who give feminism a bad name, resulting in some genuine cases who are not guilty which come up, but these things overshadow them.
Of course we need to eliminate those happenings against women community but still we cannot ignore the progressive steps taken by government and indian community for equality and security of women.

So in a nutshell, we need no female domination and so is the case with males.

What we need is harmonious and cooperativeness between the two sexes so as to make this world a better place to live in for both these creatures where no one tries to overpower other. After all, equality of all and superiority of none is the true meaning of feminism and it’s ultimate aim.

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