Gloria Steinem said that a “Woman without a man, is like a fish without a bicycle” I repeat, “Woman without a man, is like a fish without a bicycle” and so dear people, I assure you, though it is fun and pleasurable to ride one, I surely do not need one. And it’s very important that we, as women remember this, because while growing under the care of this patriarchal society we have been raised to believe that a woman is definitely “in-need” of a man.
We have been raised believing that men are our savior and our own kind is our enemy. Cinderella couldn’t have had a better life had the prince not married her and it was obviously the step mother and the step sisters who tortured her. Snow-white needed the seven dwarfs to survive and she was driven away by obviously the cruel insecure queen. Sleeping beauty only needed that perfect man to wake up as if to prove to the world that my awakening is possible only by your assistance.
I have been successfully and single-handedly raised by a single mother who I definitely do not blame for my lack of penis (refer Freud). Over the years I have been defined by a sex that has mastered to look at me through their narrow vision of convenience. I have lived with their definition of me by accepting their false perception of me as the facts of my life. But I have had enough. They have been selling pamphlets of my inadequacy right outside the shrine of my womanhood and I have been letting them. But not anymore.
At twenty one I am more shocked to see the acceptance by women of their treatment by men rather than the treatment itself by men. This patriarchal society has handed us shit and we have turned it into a shrine. They sewed lies and we engraved them in stones. They have screamed at us and we have swallowed it with our silence. Time and again they have made us pay a price for being a woman, and we have paid it with our flesh and bones but for how long? How long will we open ourselves and then blame them for robbing us?
Now do not get me wrong, I am aware that this is easier said than done. They might break through the door if you don’t keep it open but then, let them. You better be ready with your sword and armour. You might die anyway but then I would rather die a martyr than a victim. I would rather bloody my hands than raise them up in defeat. I would struggle and wage a war than accept and bow. I would scratch and squirm on the floor as you pull me by my hair, I will spit blood through my split lips right on your face and screech on top of my lungs but I will not give in easily, I will make it hard. I will fight for my rights than accept your backhand treatment of me. And tell me my fellow women, won’t you too?
We, dear women, are not a stepney (spare tires) and they are not the steering, we are equals, we are the wheels that move together to take this world forward and it’s important that we stay equally aligned, lest the world would crash and fall apart.