Patriarchally Yours

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January 14, 2014 by thejalebichronicles

Life, OK Please: A pit stop for those of you hurtling through life at break neck speed.

Hello, Indians! Are you sitting comfortably in your sofas sipping cutting chai served to you by your obeisant wife while your daughters burn their fingers in the kitchen cooking and your sons play cricket in the yard? Then this post is dedicated to you, who know nothing of the word ‘feminism.’

No, feminism is not allowing your daughters to study till they receive their degree and then instructing them to wait for a rishta to appear around the corner. It is allowing them to do what they want with their lives, (gasp!) remain unmarried if they choose to, (nahin!) and work (breaks bangles in horror.) Not treating women like dirt isn’t the aim; it’s treating them as equals. This is all very new and different for you, I understand, especially since we’ve spent years burning our women on their husbands’ funeral pyres and killing them for birthing girls, but maybe it’s time to open your eyes to some of the subtler signs of patriarchal attitudes in and around you, like these:

#5: Women at the workplace should wear suits and pants.

Yes, women need to wear masculine attire to be taken seriously when at the job. Attire has always defined how much you work. Those naked slaves in Egypt could only just build the Pyramids, after all. Wake up and smell the roses; work isn’t a man’s job, and working women don’t need to wear their clothes to be considered worthy of a pay cheque.

#4: Men don’t need to know how to cook:

Yes, this holds true because women are like collapsible restaurants; pack them on holiday and then open them up when you need them for a full three course meal. And they’re always around anyway, (especially since the sex ratio is so even in our country,) so why take the trouble to learn a skill necessary for survival?

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#3: You don’t believe in gay rights:

Homosexuality is unnatural, abhorrent and certainly isn’t part of our Indian culture. Imagine what would happen if men started marrying men. Who would make roti aur sabji for them every day? Or worse; if WOMEN STARTED DATING WOMEN. Who would tell them what to do, how to live their lives and how much they should work? Who would control them?

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#2: Your performance as a parent is dependent on your child’s percentage alone

Not improper sentence construction, surely?

It’s fine if your kid’s having a migraine, fighting TB or even suicidal. As long as they’re getting above 90%, you’ve been a brilliant parent so far. And ‘handling’ children is a woman’s task anyway! The happiness of your flesh and blood really doesn’t matter.

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#1: Your arsenal of abuses is limited to females and their anatomy

Think about it for a second. All yours c’s, b’s, w’s, s’s PERTAIN TO WOMEN. Why? Obviously, because women are terrible, loathsome creatures who deserve to be downtrodden and them, along with every part of them is abuse-worthy.

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So, if you still think you’re quite the feminist after reading this, send us a memo so that we can congratulate you on disillusioning yourself and your entire family.

Cheers,

Alaric Moras