A response to stupid questions about Women’s Studies

I have a degree in Women’s Studies. What’s that you say? You aren’t the first person to ask. Every time I bump into a desi person, especially a Pakistani, and tell them what my degree is in, their first reaction is to laugh and stare at me in disbelief. Somehow no one seems to believe that a major devoted to a feminist cause could possibly exist, and if it does, then why on a earth would a Pakistani want to major in “such a thing” since, according to a lot of narrow minded people I have met, it seems to be a major with which I will never be able to get a job. However, I believe that due to the excess amount of Pakistanis majoring in IT and CS, there will be a plethora of these graduates that will be left unemployed and will eventually end up driving cabs.

What I find really funny is people’s comments about my major. Someone once asked me why I’m studying women when I am one. He reasoned that men should take the courses I take in order to understand women. Another person asked me if I believed in human rights (as if women are separate from humans?!), and yet another looked at me and very seriously asked, “Don’t you think the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq is more serious?” People have asked me if I enjoy “academic male bashing”, since according to their narrow perceptive, feminists have nothing better to do in life apart from swear at men all day long. Others just assume that all feminists wish to create a matriarchy in society, not knowing that a hegemony of any sort goes against feminist ideologies and principles.

I think most people’s perceptions of feminists are that we are emotionally distressed women who have nothing better to do than talk about how repressed we are all day long. However, I do believe that the majority of Pakistani males I meet are extreme misogynists, especially in front of strong women. Feminism in its most basic form is nothing but the desire to make the world a better place for women to live in. The misogynists who condemn me for only concentrating on women instead of poverty, racial conflicts and “repressed men” are not willing to step off their pedestals for their own wives, mothers or daughters, and yet they claim they will willing do so for someone from a class lower than theirs and a different race. The feel that they need to control their women, like pet bitches, laying rules for each and every single aspect of their lives, which includes who they should love and touch. All these ludicrous restrictions, such as what a woman can wear, what she can do and cannot do, are meant to be for her “own good”. This sort of attitude has messed up our country to a great extent, and not many people are willing to change. We kill women for any violation of honour, like a fleeting hello with a strange man. We kill women for money, we sell our souls, our pride, we have no values and yet we preach religion.

What’s even worse is the amount of families I have met who claim to be “progressive, liberal and free thinking” when all they are an extreme confusion of the west and the east. They feel that by dressing like westerners and speaking their language they are great examples to the community around them. Yet, they keep their females under lock and key, monitoring their lives (and phone calls), and are more concerned about the daughter’s jahez than anything else. A female Einstein could be born in their midst and they would let her dress like him, but once she hits about 22 they would marry her off and then pressure her to become a baby machine.

However the worst of the lot are the women who have the ability and power to make a change and do not do so. These include the educated women who decided to give up on careers and settle for meaningless socialising after having bagged a rich man. Apparently children can’t be brought up properly unless the mother isn’t doing anything in her life. Ironically, most of these women have an endless stream of nannies who take care of the children, and all the so-called home maker does is look at them once in a while (when she isn’t too busy with the darzi that is). Some refuse to breast feed their babies because it takes up too much of her time and they feel restricted when they have to be with their baby all the time. They probably wouldn’t have had the damn child unless they hadn’t been pressured to, their attitude seems to suggest. Unfortunately most of these women then go on to join the aunty club and start an endless cycle of aunty hood by producing more and more aunties. Yet, the ones I feel deserve the most condemnation are the ones who are the advocates for arranged marriages, who put females on display like prized horses at a grooming show, completely marginalizing women as human beings. Unfortunately these women live in a delusion where they insist that arranged marriages work better than those where two people decide to come together in a union of love out of their own free will. Every time I hear that statement I think to myself that arranged marriages work because they people who entered them didn’t really do it out of choice, and that even if they are miserable, most of the time they continue to live in a bad marriage because of the taboo placed on divorce by our society. Also, families raise girls to be completely obedient, regardless of the situation she is in. It is a well known fact that a Pakistani woman will go to extremes to make her marriage work, otherwise, regardless of the cruel things that happened to her, she will be the one labelled “the bitch”. It’s unfortunate that these women are brought up to believe that her husband comes before her and that his needs are more important than hers. What’s even worse is that this is a plague that has infested the entire country, even the so-called liberal, progressive thinkers.

So next time you encounter a feminist and decide to start making stupid comments about feminism (which you probably don’t know much about), then watch out, we have a lot to say and are not afraid of saying it.