Feminism Fact Check

 Feminism Fact Check

By Swadha Rawat

Photo by Wallace Chuck via Pexels

(Alternatively this can be read with hyperlinks to my sources at: https://medium.com/@swadharawatwork/feminism-fact-check-39deda4bd6bd) 

A while ago, one of my friends forwarded a video to me which was trending all over social media. To be completely honest, when I first watched it, I didn’t think it was that big a deal simply because people can’t possibly be that ignorant. Apparently, they are. That Instagram video which was created by Divyangna Trivedi now has 1.2 million views and there’s a follow up video too. People all over India went gaga about it, praising her for ‘exposing the truth of Feminism’. No. That is not what that video is about. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, it's called ‘I AM AGAINST TODAY’s feminism’. That is the actual title, and the views illustrated in it are more questionable than the above capitalisation structure.

Now, Divyangna Trivedi is studying law. She says she’s a legal author. From these two statements, I felt like one could derive that she does have access to relevant information and resources and yet, her video is so ignorant that it seems doubtful. But it’s honestly not her fault. There is so much misinformation about what exactly feminism entails that thousands of people all over the world do not identify as feminists even if their views propagate those same beliefs. There has been a systemic slandering of what it means to be a feminist.

Divyangna Trivedi starts her video by saying that Feminism isn’t what it seems. It’s “just about demeaning men, just about supremacy of women over men.” First off, multiple people who responded to her video have said but I think it’s necessary to repeat that Feminism cannot and should not be confused with misandry which is dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men and neither should it be confused with pseudo-feminism which is lashing out at men, demeaning them and often feminism of convenience. For a definition of what feminism is, all those of you who have had CBSE board schooling need not look beyond the textbook. The grade 10th Political Science textbook defines it as “equal rights and opportunities for women and men.”

In her second video, Divyangna Trivedi addressed this argument by saying that misandry and pseudo-feminism are what comprise today’s feminism. No. That is completely false and misleading. Political terms or ideologies do not have synonyms. Why would anyone think up a new ideology and give it a new name if it wasn’t different from something that already existed? That’s like saying that jingoism is patriotism. Jingoism is extremely violent patriotism that often manifests as war-like posturing. It is not patriotism, just like misandry and pseudo-feminism are not Feminism.

She goes on to state that because one of the root words of Feminism is ‘feminine’ it can’t possibly be about equality. Once again, this argument is, in itself, extremely shaky. While Feminism was first written about way back in the Renaissance by Christine de Pizan, it was about feminizing society to create interdependent and non-hierarchical systems that provided opportunities for both women and men. The term ‘Feminism’ however didn’t come up until Charles Fourier coined it in 1837. The reason why ‘feminine’ is so important is because it works to erode the idea and subconscious bias that exists in society even today that feminine things are bad; being a woman is bad. You cannot use the same justification as the ideological theorists who came up with the term of Masculism specifically with the aim for it to be anti-feminist because being masculine is not seen as an insult in society, most men have, historically, not been as disenfranchised as women. I’ve never heard any PE teacher in movies say, “You throw like a boy.”

She even attempts to assert that some arguments regarding the patriarchal society prevalent in most countries are invalid because “Matriarchy exists in Kerala and some North-Eastern states in India.” Firstly, the system in these places is not matriarchy. Matriarchy is the very opposite of patriarchy in that it is a social system in which females hold the primary power positions in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property. Historians doubt that any ubiquitously matriarchal state has ever existed. The kind of society that actually exists in Kerala and some North-Eastern states like Meghalaya is actually a Matrilineal system which is where descent and inheritance is traced through the female line and women have pull in domestic matters like raising children. As it is right now, the influence of the Matrilineal system has also declined considerably in these states and in other parts of the world where it was followed.

When Divyangana Trivedi says, “Do you think everyone gets respect?”, the answer is: of course not. Groups of people have, historically, and even today, been robbed of basic human decency because of their birth identity. But you should respect people. You should respect their rights and their opinions just like you want yours respected. Women in business, politics, medicine, schooling and multiple other fields are talked over, devalued and not heard even when they are well versed in their fields because of their gender identity. She talks some time later about how we teach our sons to respect women but don’t teach our daughters to respect men. You’re right, no one explicitly tells their daughter to respect men but that’s because society has a pre-defined expectation that you will. In a patriarchal society, the automatic respect given to men is just customary.

Now, further elaborating on “teaching our sons to respect women”. Where? Where is the widespread respect of women that should exist if society is drilling this into little boys’ heads? I live in Delhi and I don’t see that respect when I’m catcalled on the street. I don’t see any of that supposed respect when boys create a group chat specifically to objectify girls. Even if you attempt to argue that no, that’s just some boys. Qualified, educated men don’t do that. When Donald Trump, leader of the ‘free world’ says “Grab her by the p*ssy” or the Chief Minister of Goa, Laxmikant Parsekar tells protesting nurses not to stage a hunger strike in the sun as it can “ruin their marital prospects”; where is this respect that you say is so ingrained in our society? People may have started propagating equality between the sexes but it’s far from a reality.

She’s attempted to argue that if you’re not respected then you, as woman should earn a position that forces people to respect you. The privilege in this statement is just astounding. Women are not afforded the same opportunities as men. Period. According to the 2011 Survey conducted by the Government of India, our literacy rate is 74.0 per cent. Literacy amongst men is 83.1% while literacy amongst women is 65.5 %. I, personally in good faith, could not call that equal opportunities. And this is ignoring the other challenges faced by working women in reaching a ‘respectable’ position: workplace harassment (Government data states that registered cases of sexual harassment at Indian workplaces increased 54% from 2014 to 2017), prejudice, familial pressure, societal pressure regarding marriage, pregnancy or a transferrable job.

She says that “you’ve [feminists] created social division between the genders”. That division has always existed. Just because you may have not experienced it yourself does not mean that even in the 21st century there isn’t a pre-existing division between men and women. Honour killing still happen, girls aren’t allowed to attend school, the sexual division of labour is well and truly alive, the contribution of women in STEM subjects has been continually ignored and prejudice regarding a woman’s clothes and body are ingrained so deeply in our society that perhaps you don’t notice but this is a gender division. At the same time, boys are taught not to show their emotions, not to show an interest in “girly” things and are also body shamed. This division and toxic masculinity hurts both men and women. Feminism tries to fight that.

Now coming to her next argument regarding rape and sexual assault. Firstly, she says men are raped and sexually assaulted too. Yes. They are. But do you know why men reporting rape or sexual assault by women or other men is even rarer than a woman reporting rape? It’s because in our victim shaming societies male rape survivors also suffer from a sense of shame, humiliation, and self-blame, but males are even less likely than females to report an assault. And that is because of, once again the toxic masculinity and patriarchal society we live in. A common theme that emerged in treating male rape victims is that they feel a lost sense of manliness. Male victims have voiced their concern in reconciling their masculine identity with their experience of being raped.

This is further backed up by the fact that in India, according to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code rape is “sexual intercourse with a woman against her will, without her consent, by coercion, misrepresentation or fraud or at a time when she has been intoxicated or duped, or is of unsound mental health and in any case if she is under 18 years of age.” When feminists say, “achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes” what part of this invalidates the experiences of a male survivor? Divyangna Trivedi then goes on to talk about ‘majority-minority” and suppression but ‘men get raped and molested’ should be a whole sentence. If you have to tack on the word ‘too’ then you’re using the experience of male victims to silence females instead of giving them the space in the discussion that they both deserve.

She goes on to complain about how we lack the right justice system to dismantle fake rape accusations. Now, over here I could go into the statistics of how few rapes are actually fabricated and we could have an argument about credible statistics because frankly, there are none. Because we don’t have a proper system to investigate rape. Rape and sexual misconduct cases are always, unless perchance someone has a CCTV or audio recording of the incident, “he said-she said” trials. And in most countries, a man’s word is taken in higher standing and people like Divyangna Trivedi will say, “Who knows if it’s true? She’s trying to defame him.” That’s just the way it is. There is institutionalised indifference towards victims of sexual assault except when their case is highly sensationalised or covered by the media. That system that hurts men who are victims of false allegations, hurts women who are actual victims of sexual assault a lot more.

Also, quick fact check, but the statement that “no one is using defamation lawsuits against feminists [who accused men in the #MeToo movement]” is entirely false. If you Google the term “Defamation Lawsuit” and “#MeToo”, you’ll come up with so many results that if I started listing even half here, you’d be reading this article all day. But for argument sake I will point out a particularly notable one in China, which until recently did not even have a provision for reporting sexual assault as a crime in its judicial system. Zhou Xiaoxuan who accused Zhu Jun, a notable Chinese TV anchor of groping her when she was an intern was sued by him for defamation. She counter-sued him and is now making a case for sexual harassment which only became possible in January 2019 because of the new system in place thanks to feminist efforts. If accepted, this will be the first-ever civil sexual-harassment lawsuit in the country.

Now addressing the point regarding the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. Yes, it does only apply to women but once again, it’s because society frowns down upon men who are ‘weak’ and Feminism is all about changing this. These one-sided laws and provisions that make it seem as though only women can suffer from these kinds of abuses are because of the patriarchal societal system that feminism seeks to oppose.

She comes to the end of the video, imploring people to use ‘logic’ and not to believe in the necessity of feminism. Instead, she advises for people to adopt humanism. But humanism, just because it has the root word ‘human’ isn’t about equality on the basis of your gender at all. In modern times, humanist movements are typically non-religious movements aligned with secularism, and today humanism may refer to a nontheistic life stance centred on human agency and looking to science rather than revelation from a supernatural source to understand the world. This is the literally from Wikipedia. You don’t even need to read a bunch of philosophical texts. It has nothing to do with anything we’ve discussed.

Divyangna Trivedi has attempted to argue, in her second video that we should stand with those in need and not with the gender. What part of feminism opposes helping those in need? Supporting one subset of people who have been historically suppressed does not mean that you cannot help another part of the population, whose identity is often overlapping, that’s facing another problem. They are not conflicting. Equality isn’t like pizza. Women having more, isn’t going to take away any from men; it’s not going to adversely affect the poor or the disabled or people of colour or any other group of people who are fighting for equality too.

She even goes on to say that Feminism has no place in modern society because we’ve achieved ‘basic’ equality.

Feminism is necessary. As long as there are girls who can’t go to school without the threat of death, as long as women are unsafe in the street and men can’t talk about the sexual violence they experience, as long fourteen year old girls like Romina Ashrafi are murdered by their families in honour killings, as long as women have no place in politics or sciences, as long as men aren’t allowed to be expressive about their feelings, as long as women are burnt alive for daring to sue their rapist, as long as any of these and other injustices and disparities exist between men and women, I’m going to be a feminist. And I’m going to say that feminism is necessary. And as long as you believe in equality, I’m really sorry to inform you, but you’re a feminist too.