Just like white privilege, there is male privilege. It's when you think something is not a problem because it does not affect you personally. It's easy to ignore sexism when it works in your favour! Your feminism isn't valid if it only applies to your mothers, sisters, and daughters.

This lockdown induced a new trauma through the online learning system. Well, starting off with the fact that not everyone has access to laptops and computers to attend classes. Even I’m one of them, so no - we are not in this together, because you might not even know what it’s like to wait for your turn to use a laptop.

At an individual level, people's experience of reactance strongly depends on the most attainable goals and values when the threat occurs. In the COVID-19 case, fundamental goals and values such as education, the right to freely move, and religious practices are threatened. Two main factors that determine the reaction to these announced health-related measures are the absoluteness and self-relevance. If the threat is absolute, people rationalize it. If it is not, people respond with reactance. Both become stronger when the threat is self-relevant.

It's not happening to us. Death was a distant entity. The COVID crisis in no time has collectively given us the sudden realization that it is happening to us!! All our reassuring narratives and stories that soothed us have been questioned. The helplessness and powerlessness is making our minds chaotic. Our reality has been crushed. Truth came very abruptly. The truth of our mortality, our vulnerability, our weak existence in the face of this adversity.

I know so many girls in my country who want to wear jeans but are not allowed to do so because you see “decent girls need to dress a certain way”. Your jeans are too tight, your shirt is too short, lower your dupatta and cover your face, if someone touches you it’s probably because you dressed a certain way.

Gender roles expect girls to marry a man of their parents’ choice and if they don’t, they are labelled as characterless or disobedient. Boys are expected to follow the footsteps of their fathers. If a man has worked day and night to build his business, his son is bound to take over.

Everyone in this world is trying their best to contribute a teensy bit in this huge world with an ocean of knowledge. Some of us achieve the brownie points, while the others remain deprived until the right time. However, we all get paid for whatever contribution we make for the betterment of this world. Why are people trying to humiliate and belittle the efforts that others are making every day?

To the ones who feel the need to satisfy society: STOP. Look around yourself. Understand that we are different for a reason. If the human race were meant to be 7.7 billion exact bronze statues, then things would have been shaped that way; but we aren’t.

She wears it first as a daughter

When father refuses to enter the maternal ward

On discovering that his first child is female

When father says a girl’s education is a waste

And contributes zilch to her formal training

Societal perception of working women, inadequate recognition, ignorance to opportunities, and limited mobility, are blockades in integrating women in developmental roles, making women passive observers in the country’s economic sector.

This world deserves so much better than what actually is happening right now. Our people need love, kindness, and a reminder that whoever they are, wherever they live, whatever they believe in, they should learn to own their identity, their body, their origin, and learn to love themselves. 

Smoking is injurious to health”. Like everyone else, I believed it to be true but I often questioned myself that “why did they always show men smoking in the ad and not women?” Or “is smoking gender specific?”. I did not dare ask this question from my parents because some things do not have room for discussion in brown culture, especially coming from a girl.

You show this world that you care by saying "shame on you RAPIST" but you have no shame for yourself for making and sharing videos of the girl, who was unconscious just after being raped. Is it what proves you pious? Is it what proves that you have taken a step for the girl?

Sleep dawned unto like the bright morning star glooming in the east

What I was expecting from sleep was a few hours to relax

But the dusk by my pillows had altered the plans way before I knew

I could be a she, I could be a he,
I could be anyone I believe to be, 
because gender is not my reality…

Since I was a little girl, I was taught to behave in a specific way because I'm a girl, to dream specific dreams that are only allowed for girls, such as taking a good degree - not to make a successful career, but to marry a good rich man with a high position in society, so I can live happily ever after.

Why is that that in spite of sharing the same sky, the same sun rays, and the same air, we remain indifferent of one another? What makes it more unbelievable is that we hate some people just for a simple reason which is not even their fault! Why do we think that we are superior to others just because we are from a major religion and the other is not; or because we are straight and they are from LGBTQ+ community; or just for the silliest reason - for you being a man and the other a woman!

We live in a time where female friendships are expected to be toxic, bitchy and/or competitive. That is the power the media has in shaping perceptions, something I think they take very lightly, or not? I do not mean that some women are not bitchy or toxic or competitive sometimes BUT these characteristics are not the defining factor of what female friendships should be like.

I deserve to get equal education rights as any boy, and I deserve to get equal wages as my male counterparts. It is about receiving equal status and social respect as any other fellow. Sadly, many women in different parts of the world aren’t getting those rights. Feminism isn’t about man-hating, and if you think “why do we need feminism?”, then look at our community where girls are sexually harassed, a three year old girl is getting raped, a wife is suffering acid attacks from her husband because he didn’t like her face.

At first we thought we found a mole,
Something had given our plan away.
We had a goal in mind to close the hole;
In the heart of these mortal men each day,
With our soft curves and swaying hips,…

I always see people passing judgment on the lady and holding her responsible for the broken marriage. I can't keep quiet because it literally breaks my heart why everyone thinks that it's only the girl who is at fault and is responsible for not managing the relationship well. And then they compare today's women to those who have been through hell, been exploited and finished in their abusive marriages…

Because at the end of the day when a woman cries it is not because she is unable to undo the handcuffs. It’s only because she was brought up in a vicinity where each and every person, and tree, and shade, and pet, and book, and every breath she takes, gave their extra best to mould her up in someone who just doesn't know how to come off the cuffs of liability.

My femininity
Does not lie
In the size of my breasts
Or in the curve of my hips

Unknowingly like little boy Isaac going to be sacrificed, I deafly followed their words
Little did I know I would one day be at my worst
Where I’d feel nothing but pain through my chest
Lost in my character I changed men like clothes…