'Reclaim the night'- As I sit in my cluttered desk in a chilly lab eight thousand miles away from the city, the people and the culture I call my own, thousands of Bengali women are out on the streets of Kolkata protesting for the rape and murder of a resident doctor at RG Kar hospital.
How do I feel? Claustrophobic. My eyes are welling up, with every bite sized news that I see my friends posting on the social media. A good advice would be to just shut off that source of stimulation and regain the calm. But you know what the problem is? I have always felt terrible like this whenever there is a crime against women, even in the movies. So much so that, it has become like a version of me that surfaces at adverse circumstances like these. It is so emotionally daunting, that I cannot even explain in words.
But why are we so fragile and exploitable as women? Why is the world unfair to us? Do we deserve to be just secondary to the world whereas, if you really think about it, we are the most fundamental of all. A woman not only births new life with her body but also nourishes her, teaches the child all her values. If you really think about it, it is the woman's contribution to life that has got this beast of species called Homo sapiens sapiens going for eons now and yet the whole universal construct seems to be unfair to us. Allow me to elucidate this point in greater detail:
The physical makeup of a man and woman are different, more than what meets the eye. The male hormonal cycle is connected to the solar cycle, where testosterone, the primordial male hormone is on the rise making the man feel energetic and ready to seize the day. Late afternoon to evening is when the testosterone levels plummet allowing estrogen to take the center stage. Estrogen allows you to socialize and take the most advantage of the happy hours at bars and pubs. Eventually, evenings bring about a decline in almost all the hormones and induces sleep in the body through melatonin. On the other hand, a woman's hormonal cycle is connected to the lunar phases and it encompasses four different episodes every month. An yet, we wake up in a man's world everyday and fight for our careers, nurture our families and care for our parents often ignoring our hormonal health, pushing through the lack of diabolical strength that testosterone gives a body, and most importantly, being gaslighted, shamed and belittled for our emotional needs and femininity.
As I stand today, a 28 year-old-Bengali Indian woman, I know nobody that has ever acknowledged women for fighting everyday with all her mind body and soul to have firm ground in a world that was designed for a man. Sadly, if that wasn't enough, we have now transcended in a society that commits hate crimes against women, rapes them, assaults them, bites off their flesh and murders them and then blames them for the kind of clothes they wore, or the time of the day that they chose to explore the world, or their virginity. Every single woman I know has faced gender based harassment several times in their life, including me.
I don't who needs to know this, but I want to scream out saying that WOMEN DO NOT BELONG TO MEN. We are entitled to be free as the men are, we are entitled to live out lives, to build our careers, even if it means fighting against our own body. We deserve to get that job by talent without having to hear from men that it was really the tight blouse that led us to success. We want to top our universities without being told that our skirts were the holy grail of information. We want to love whoever we want: man, woman, queer - and not shy away lest you slut shame us if the relationship fails. We want to breathe in a world that at least perceives us as equals, if not put your trust on the early scriptures that worship us as goddesses.
It is not really about a Jyoti Singh, or a Moumita Debnath, patriarchy is everywhere. It is in our homes when your mother asks you to dress a certain way in front of your male relatives. It is in our academic circle, where your male friends assume the more social and polite girl to be available, it is in the boyfriend that keeps saying that 'my girlfriend cries a lot' amidst his friends trying to prove how emotionally weak you are instead to lauding your EQ. It is in our government funded universities that have a gym for men, but not women.
And this last one for the men, if you have the audacity to worship a goddess, have the courage to respect women. Not every man, but always a man.
As I stand today, a 28 year-old-Bengali Indian woman, I know nobody that has ever acknowledged women for fighting everyday with all her mind body and soul to have firm ground in a world that was designed for a man. Sadly, if that wasn't enough, we have now transcended in a society that commits hate crimes against women, rapes them, assaults them, bites off their flesh and murders them and then blames them for the kind of clothes they wore, or the time of the day that they chose to explore the world, or their virginity. Every single woman I know has faced gender based harassment several times in their life, including me.
I don't who needs to know this, but I want to scream out saying that WOMEN DO NOT BELONG TO MEN. We are entitled to be free as the men are, we are entitled to live out lives, to build our careers, even if it means fighting against our own body. We deserve to get that job by talent without having to hear from men that it was really the tight blouse that led us to success. We want to top our universities without being told that our skirts were the holy grail of information. We want to love whoever we want: man, woman, queer - and not shy away lest you slut shame us if the relationship fails. We want to breathe in a world that at least perceives us as equals, if not put your trust on the early scriptures that worship us as goddesses.
It is not really about a Jyoti Singh, or a Moumita Debnath, patriarchy is everywhere. It is in our homes when your mother asks you to dress a certain way in front of your male relatives. It is in our academic circle, where your male friends assume the more social and polite girl to be available, it is in the boyfriend that keeps saying that 'my girlfriend cries a lot' amidst his friends trying to prove how emotionally weak you are instead to lauding your EQ. It is in our government funded universities that have a gym for men, but not women.
And this last one for the men, if you have the audacity to worship a goddess, have the courage to respect women. Not every man, but always a man.
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