Avantika Mandar Chavan
Introduction
In today’s time, the word ‘feminism’ has gained a lot of traction, and on any given day of time, common people come across innumerable content that talks about feminism through the way of tweets, blogs, news article, media and also some of its major supporters like TV celebrities and well-known entities that have shared their views regarding the regaled topic of the 21st century. But someone is tarnishing its spirit as we speak.
What is Pseudo- Feminism? Feminism vs Psuedo- Feminism
Feminism by the dictionary meaning is the practice that people regardless of their gender or sexual orientation shall be treated equally in a society. Now mostly people think that feminism is just about treating ‘men and women’ equally but feminism has a much wider coverage and includes the members of the queer community too who also have the right of equal treatment in the eyes of the law and demand the normalcy of being a part of the societal sphere.
Sadly, we as a society are still unable to understand the true meaning of feminism and now a false form; an imposter has been on loose which is tarnishing the pure spirit of feminism. This imposter is preaching a new theory which states that women are a higher entity i.e. superior than men, transgender and queer people and thus we must achieve our goal by vilification of the opposite gender. Pseudo-feminism spreads disinformation, dabbles in shaming and, to some degree, renders “feminism” synonymous with misandry. [1] As we speak this falsity has been rising day after day in which social media is the major culprit in spreading this misinformation.
Forms of Pseudo- Feminism
This imposter is growing its presence in the society and is leading people astray from true feminism in the form of small but impactful ways in the instances we see from our daily life. Woman travelling in a bus or metro would nowadays deliberately fight men to give up their seat so that they can sit, if it was a seat reserved for ladies then her action would have been considered fair but asking a guy to give up his seat just for the reason that she happens to be a woman is no way feminism in true sense. Feminism is demanding for equal opportunity and rights for men and women in every sphere of life; it is not a free ticket to women to arbitrarily exercise their right for tedious issues.
Another rather alarming instance of Pseudo-feminism is that young girls and women have been registering false actions against men with ill intentions and to humiliate men. An example of this is the case of a boy named Mehul from Jodhpur. One of his classmates lodged an FIR against him alleging that he has threatened to rape her. But on further investigation, it was revealed that the minor girl has made allegations with the ill motive to harass him since he had stopped interacting with her. Throughout that duration, Mehul was antagonised by his friends and family and he was even not given a fair chance to present his side of the case. The whole time Mehul was the victim of abuse but pseudo-feminists fail to see him as one. Pseudo-feminism cries out clearly that men can’t be raped, men can’t be tormented, and men who claim to have been exposed to such crimes are lying scammers.[2]As a society we have truly failed in giving justice to victims irrespective of there gender for which the credit goes to Pseudo-feminism.
Conclusion
Feminism is like a bow and arrow; bow is man and arrow is woman. Only when both are present a long range functional weapon is in place i.e solidarity of men and women happens that helps in eradicating enemies of society. Pseudo-Feminism is just an arrow which is piercing the heart of all the people and is plaguing our society with hatred towards the female gender.
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[1] Rai, Jaya, and Rajshree Mitrakaa. “Pseudo-Feminism.” Ijedr.org, 2012, www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR2004056.pdf.
[2] Rai, Jaya, and Rajshree Mitrakaa. “Pseudo-Feminism.” Ijedr.org, 2012, www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR2004056.pdf.
