“My mom is the best in the world! I love her! She has given me good values and has taught me manners!”
Well, that’s true, but that’s also a cliché. On mother’s day, we must express our love towards our mothers. Nah, all this is stupidity. For me, every day is Mother’s Day and every day is Father’s Day. I respect them, ALWAYS, and hence I don’t believe in ‘celebrating’ these specific days and doing something ‘special’ for them on just one day.
Frankly speaking, feminism and my mother never went hand in hand. She was neutral on the feminism issue and taught me (and continues to teach – I’m still a teenager) values that she, as a person, felt were right, based on her experiences in life and in the society.
Now, before you get mad at me, let me tell you that I respect women – that’s something that takes a priority over all my values. A woman or a girl must be given the due respect and opportunities that she deserves. I harshly oppose atrocities against women or young girls, as you can read in one of my articles here.
One very important thing about my mom’s belief on gender equality was that “women can empower themselves, you don’t need to help them, they are not weak, they are strong and can accomplish everything that a man can.”
This is perhaps one of the most valuable things that have got hardwired in my head. Now that I am mature enough to understand it, I find it absolutely beautiful. Come to think of it, movements of ‘women empowerment’ have only led to people believing that women need help and have thus come to a conclusion that we are the ‘weaker sex’. All this is hogwash. Someone had once rightly said, “Men and women are different, they are not unequal.”