What is the essence of being a woman?

Jaydeep Sharangi: What is the essence of being a woman?

Me.: Many times I have stated that I differed from Simon de Beauvoir in her 'Other' theory where she says “one is not born but rather, becomes a woman.” I think a woman is born as a woman. There are inherent physical, behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences between men and women and we affirm and celebrate these differences as wonderful and complementary. These differences do not evidence the superiority of one sex over the other but rather, serve to show that each sex is complemented and made stronger by the presence of the other. As a different unit, similar to man, the female mass has their right for equity as well.

The real essence of women I think lies with femininity, which has often been misquoted by our feminists. For many feminist thinkers, after marriage a family breeds patriarchy. Happily married women are considered false and double-crossing. The titles of popular feminist books from the early movement highlight the split between gender feminists and women who chose domesticity. Jill Johnston in her Lesbian Nation (1973), called the married women are heterosexual females 'traitors'; Kate Millett in her Sexual Politics (1970), redefined heterosexual sex as a power struggle; whereas in Kathrin Perutz's Marriage is Hell (1972); and Ellen Peck's The Baby Trap (1971), argued that motherhood blocks liberation of a woman. These feminists always try to paint the marriage as legalized prostitution; heterosexual intercourse as rape; and they come to the decision that men are the enemy; families are prisons.

Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer were against marriage in their earlier thoughts. But they tried to skip from their anti marriage ideas in later period. Marriage is a three-sided arrangement between a husband, a wife and the society. That is, the society legally defines what a marriage is and how it can be dissolved. But marriage is, on the other hand, for partners of marriage; it is more of an individual relationship than a social matter. This is the main reason of crisis. Individually, I think marriage must be taken out of the social realm and fully back into the private one. The society should withdraw from marriage and allow the adults involved to work out their own definition of justice in the privacy of their own homes.

Our feminist thinker always tries to skip the idea that offspring begging is a natural instinct of a woman and it is related to our ecological and environmental situation. Anything against it may resulted to disaster. We find a woman has to pass through a different stage in her life span and there is a phase where a woman feels an intense need of her own offspring. Feminists of second wave feminism have always tried to pursue a woman against the natural law because it is seemed to them that motherhood is barricade for the freedom of a woman. But if the woman has her own working field, doesn’t have it mean that her working assignments would demand more of her time, of her sincerity and of course of her freedom? If a woman can adjust herself and can sacrifice her freedom for her own identity at outside her home, then why she shouldn’t sacrifice some of her freedom for parenting when parenting is also a part of one of her social identity? And it could also be solved by rejecting the patriarchal role of parenting. We have to insist the idea of the division of labor in parenting. This equally shared parenting is now common in Western, but still in South Asian countries we find it as a taboo factor rather because of economic inequality between men and women, our crazy work culture, and the constrictions that are placed on us by traditional gender roles.

The conflict between American mother-daughter feminists Alice Walker and Rebecca Walker is well-known chapter for Western feminism. Alice Walker, the mother, the second-wave feminist, obviously had anti-motherhood ideas as the other western feminists of her time. But Rebecca Walker, her daughter and a feminist of third wave discussed in her book Baby Love about how motherhood freed women like herself from their roles as daughters, and how this provided the much-needed perspective to heal themselves from damaged mother-daughter relationships and claim their full adulthood. What happened? This latest article is mired in unresolved childish hurt and anger (especially in the chapter “How my mother’s fanatical views tore us apart”), which would be all well and good except that she strikes out at her mother by striking out at feminism. I personally think the bitterness between her and her mother, as any woman who has ever fallen out with her mother knows, is a very painful experience and note to self, one that probably shouldn’t be written about too much in public.

In her book Baby Love, Rebecca Walker writes directly about unadulterated excitement and pride about becoming a mother. Rebecca argues that motherhood frees us from childhood. It is the most important step a woman can take because it creates another human being and because it makes a woman an adult. I found this to be true for myself. In one of my stories, ‘Waiting for Manna ‘(1989), published much more before Baby Love, where I want to discuss the queries after a lifetime of wondering whether to have children, wondering if the sacrifices are worth it, wondering if life is full to bursting enough already -- how does our generation of women decide to have children?

So, for me the essence of being a woman lies with the real femininity she possesses.

< An excerpt from my conversation with Jaydeep, recently published in the book ‘Portrayal of Women in Media & Literature’ (ISBN:978-93-82647-01-0), edited by Arvind M. Nawale, Shivani Vashist and Pinaki Roy and published by ACCESS (an imprint of Authors Press, Delhi))>