Contemporary Feminist Wave — The Satanic Nemesis of Liberty and Equality

To friends and foes alike, I would entreat that they not judge the content that is constituent of this essay merely by means of the title. I inveigh against not the noble principles which characterized the older forms of feminism — which commenced an exemplary struggle that sought equal treatment for women as is their right and in consonance with their dignity — but the contemporary waves of feminist thought. Characterized as they often are with pathological contempt towards men, their prepotence has incubated a public discourse often inimical to the dignity of men. This has greatly amplified men’s fears, for the slightest of comment could be construed as misogynistic, and the power of the contemporary feminist movement would ineluctably result in a life of perdition for the man.

Insofar as India is concerned, the pernicious prepotence can be witnessed in the very thoughts of innumerable “modern” girls. It was but a few days ago that an abhorrent attack on a girl, also allegedly raped in Hathras city in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, evoked a sense of fury across the nation. This essay shall not concern itself with the sanctimony of the Indian intelligentsia — that while acting as conscience-keepers of the nation, they choose rather malevolently to ignore rapes in such states as are governed by the national opposition while raising pandemonium only on rapes in such states as are governed by the BJP that commands the national government. For the turpitude concomitant with politics manifests itself in far speedier a measure and more conspicuous a manner than the positive aspects do, and such turpitude often afflicts the disposition of even organizations that have little to do with conventional politics, marked though they inevitably are with their own intra-organizational politics.

Instead, this essay concerns itself with the prevalent mode of thought with regard to societal response towards rape incidents. Repugnantly, the public discourse on rape is oriented, albeit not in whole yet very substantially, around female victims. Rare are the intellectuals who concern themselves with male victims in an equal measure, but rarer still is the discourse oriented thereabout. It was but a day or two in the temporal vicinity of the Hathras case that a seventeen-year-old boy was subjected to horrendous rape. I do not deem it fit to include the minutiae of the incident as narrated by the boy, but do deem it fit to include that the incident was also recorded. An author on Quora, the famed question-answer site, shared the specifics of that incident and emphasized the need to engender awareness with regard to crimes against boys.

In the comments section, one of the commenters noted that boys were more prone to abuse than girls, for they were easy targets in India. In order to lend credence to his argument, he pointed to the societal disposition that was biased against boys, in that both in school and at home, boys were conventionally subjected to harsher and physically more enduring punishments in events of indiscipline. A fifteen-year-old girl forthwith became furious reading the comment and proclaimed that boys were not abused more than girls and that one merely needed to pay attention to rape cases, sexual harassment reports and so forth.

Few topics enrage me more than the dilution of the narrative that seeks to cultivate awareness with regard to victimized men, being a male myself, and I thus launched a furious censure. I grant that the essay of mine may transmogrify into a ponderous tract, but I deem it necessary to include the comments. My response went as follows:

Your ludicrous point is bereft of even a semblance of sense. Registered rape cases alone do not suffice to prove that girls are abused more than boys. There is a very strong societal disposition against boys. “Mard ban!” remains prevalent. Rohan’s points are also valid to quite a degree if not throughout India. I can second his observations and so can many of my friends. In schools, boys are more prone to receiving physically more enduring punishment than girls.

Furthermore, the nation erupts in rage as it did in Nirbhaya and the recent Hathras case — in general, when the victim is a woman. One does not see even a city-level demonstration when a victim is a man. Therefore, I absolutely do not see where your point comes from.

I know my words shall be distorted, for to be Indian is to be a hypocrite. I know it shall be depicted as if my point contends that women suffer less than men. That is absolutely not my stance, and that shall never be my stance. My contention is that society is not sensitized towards the trauma faced by boys and men.

Our ossified legal system does not recognize rape against men even today, so I am not sure you would find many cases pertinent to victimized men in the first place.

Watch the interview of the director of Section 375 with Vivek Agnihotri. Prior to making this film, he had made rounds of several sessions courts in the country and found to his horror that the percentage of false rape cases lodged by women ranged from 50% to 80%.

Assuming he is lying, here: https://ccs.in/indias-law-should-recognise-men-can-be-raped-too

As I expected, the incipiently illogical feminist warrior within her launched into a harangue against my points. Her inane response went as follows (I have corrected her umpteen formatting errors in order to make it more readable; pardon her relatively poor and social-media-level English):

My point is ludicrous? Of course, registered rape cases do not suffice to confirm that. There are more cases that haven’t been reported than that have been. Guess what, the rape victims that happen to be boys are also raped by boys. About the disposition “mard ban”, it’s high time this stops. You agree to Rohan’s point that girls are not sent to the market at night instead the boys are right? Why do you think? Because there are these types of men who are everything but a “mard” who rape her. How many boys do you know that got catcalled, body shamed, sexualised and objectified even in broad daylight? I personally know about 17–18 girls all who happen to be my classmates. That’s only the no. Of my classmates (one section) and we live in Hyderabad btw (big city, nice education, blah blah)

It’s not a competition on who gets more punishment in schools be it be boys or girls. Here the point is violence in general shouldn’t be associated with children or any person of any age group for that matter.

About the cases that boys don’t report because society will think they are not “manly” enough and got raped, we can’t do anything until they raise a voice. About those cases not being reported do you really blame girls? How are we supposed to know? We can’t be in every place at one particular time, right? Now who’s to be blamed here? Indian media. They have all the time to talk about Bollywood and drugs. Who else to be blamed? The entire political system and the current government. They have the time to talk about Binod but haven’t made an effort to talk about the Hathras rape case or any rape case for that matter. These incidents are only a matter of politics to them.

I think I know what your stance is when you say society doesn’t recognise the oppression faced by men.

To start off, boys seriously need to stop saying what about the fake rape cases lodged by women like you said every time a real rape case pops up. It’s not a freaking competition. You guys don’t get it. We aren’t competing in who is more oppressed, gets raped more sexually or physically harassed. What needs to stop in general is rape and any kind of violence.

Moreover, I don’t think this is new but are you sure 50–80% rape cases are false? What if the person in the interview is another patriarch or rapist what if the interviewer is one? Like the girl in the Hathras rape case who was burned by the police (who are supposed to protect us btw) against the will of her family. What if people didn’t record her video that claimed she was raped and made it viral? People would never know she was raped and burned by the police. In the same way you never know if those 50–80% of the so called “fake cases” were not fabricated. Don’t say something you aren’t sure of. You never know what happened with someone. You were not in their shoes. Don’t you dare judge them. Every time something happens with a girl don’t you dare ask “what about the boys who…” we are talking about something in particular and let it stay about that Something particular while raising a voice against what’s wrong with society.

I could bear her drivel no more, and launched into a comprehensive and furious admonition:

Just as I thought. To be an Indian is to be a hypocrite; assuming one is not already incompetent with regard to understanding the most rudimentary arguments. Then, one becomes a true Indian — mediocre to one’s very core. On an unrelated note, my comments about Indian-ness must singe the hearts of nationalists, but that is how we are; incapable of truly understanding the other’s arguments, making unwarranted extrapolations and yet entering into uproarious debates as if we were experts on every issue under the sun.

Given that you are a teenager, you are prone to sensationalist comments. I was a teenager but a few years ago, so I thoroughly understand this mindset. With their half-formed prefrontal cortices, teenagers fail to put forth cogent arguments. I thoroughly understand that, but I also feel that is something that must not continue, for it would be detrimental to our nation.

Let me highlight some of your fanfaronade-esque preaching to me, and demonstrate the sheer inanity of those arguments.

(1) Your argument: “How many boys do you know that got catcalled, body shamed, sexualised and objectified even in broad daylight?”
My response: The mere fact that you do not see it does not mean it does not happen. Perhaps the numbers are low, and I can concede that. However, my point pertained not to numbers, but societal disposition. They may not get shamed as much as girls do, but that is negatively compensated by having to bear stricter punishments, automatically judged as an offender once grown prior to the complete story being known. Had you truly understood my earlier comment, you would have also understood that the central theme was about bias against boys — not the number of assaults on boys; an observation that was merely in repudiation of your ludicrous comment earlier which said and I quote verbatim: “Boys are not abused more than girls look at the rape cases, sexual harassment reports, domestic reports and many more “reports” that aren’t even being made”

(2) Your argument: “It’s not a competition on who gets more punishment in schools be it be boys or girls.”
My response: It must never be a competition, for that is what gender equality is about. Unfortunately, we know that there is no gender equality in India. What is worse is that you spun it into something incongruous with your contention that boys are not abused more than girls. I quoted you verbatim there, so, that’s that.

(3) Your argument: “To start off, boys seriously need to stop saying what about the fake rape cases lodged by women like you said every time a real rape case pops up. It’s not a freaking competition. You guys don’t get it. We aren’t competing in who is more oppressed, gets raped more sexually or physically harassed. What needs to stop in general is rape and any kind of violence.”
My response: Why? Why must boys stop referring to fake rape cases? Have you any idea how a mere allegation ruins their lives, however unsubstantiated that allegation may be? Have you any idea how biased laws are against men? Have you any idea how the society ostracizes them? Did I not highlight how victimized men receive no support from the public? Whoever in one’s right mind would say that boys needed to stop raising those issues? Those are highly significant issues. They must not merely be raised, but boomed from the rooftops — stories of the system and the society failing them! Coming to your point as regards it not being a competition, my response would be the same as in (2).

(4) Your argument: “About the cases that boys don’t report because society will think they are not “manly” enough and got raped, we can’t do anything until they raise a voice. About those cases not being reported do you really blame girls? How are we supposed to know? We can’t be in every place at one particular time, right?”
My response: How benighted do you have to be to make such hollow arguments? Did I ever say anything about blaming girls? Why did you just suppose that? I shall agree with the remainder of the paragraph. Media and government indeed are to blame, and men indeed need raise their voice.

(5) Your argument: “Moreover I don’t think this is new but are you sure 50–80% rape cases are false? What if the person in the interview is another patriarch or rapist what if the interviewer is one?”
My response: Okay, this is very annoying right now. How many more arguments do I have to make before it dawns on you that statistics do not form the central theme of my argument? That societal notions of what being a man must be, is the central argument? Have you become acclimatized to going off track? Or is it deliberate? Also, did you not go through another highly significant point I made, specifically beginning with “Assuming he is lying”? The legal system in a substantial measure does not recognize male victims of sexual assault? Furthermore, did you not go through the link I included?

(6) Your argument: “Don’t say something you aren’t sure of. You never know what happened with someone. You were not in their shoes. Don’t you dare judge them. Every time something happens with a girl don’t you dare ask “what about the boys who…” we are talking about something in particular and let it stay about that Something particular while raising a voice against what’s wrong with society.”
My response: And don’t you dare contort my arguments to your whims. None of my previous comment ever constitutes a judgment about girls or women in particular. It is purely an observation of society as a whole. Don’t you dare insult me by accusing me of engaging in something I never did. Yes, we are talking about something in particular: the theme of justice. The incident against this man and the Hathras case happened in the span of a few days. Yet, there was no media outrage against the man’s loss. Why? Why must we men be exempt from media coverage every single time? Why cannot Hathras evolve into a common theme of justice for every victim regardless of gender; the theme of reforms in the legal system? Why can society not simultaneously keep sharp focus on ensuring justice for the Hathras victim as well as on the broader theme of major legal and social reforms? Why is it necessary for a broader theme to be prejudicial to the case of the Hathras victim? How is that even remotely in consonance with the realm of reason?

One may contend that it is not worth one’s time to pay attention to benighted teenagers online and that this is not an academic discourse. I do concede that Her Majestic Sanctimony was merely a teenager. Perhaps it is but a natural phase in teenage years to think of oneself as an expert, and therefore present arguments in an arrogant manner, but these do not have so much as a semblance of courtesy and humility in their discussions despite their ignorance. A few exceptions aside, schoolchildren and college-going kids show a vexing propensity to misconstrue and distort the other’s arguments, think of themselves as highly intelligent beings and barely admit when they are mistaken. They lack rudimentary comprehension and debate skills. Ignoramuses in a rather substantial measure as they are, they understand rudiments of but a few topics, consider themselves experts and when assaulted with logic, they either play victim or take recourse to topic-changing tactics.

But the issue is more profound than philistine teenagers ranting on social media platforms. This baneful predilection is not restricted to keyboard crusaders on social media, but also finds presence in popular discourse. The nation bays for the blood of the perpetrators should the victim be a woman. There is then no dearth of the public discourse circumgyrant around “toxic masculinity”, “patriarchal society”, “all men are evil” and so forth. Irksomely, some men themselves support such drivel, more so in western nations. Yet, should the victim be a male, the public discourse changes to, “Please don’t make it a gender issue”.

Professor Svetlana Voreskova notes in an article for the IKON London Magazine:

Feminism has been teaching girls and women that they deserve to have it all. That if they are not blissfully happy then they should bail out; that they should never have to compromise in any way to attract or keep a man; that it is men who should make all the compromises. When a man makes the decision to opt out of this one-sided deal, it is, we are told, because he is selfish or immature; he cannot “man up”. He is a “man-child”. Many men are simply walking away. Many are avoiding the toxic, over-entitled, parasitical products of decades of feminism altogether and looking for suitable matches overseas. Women are left wondering “where have all the good men gone?” Well the answer dear, is that they have run away from you because you see, a man wants a partner. He wants a lover, companion, friend and comrade and he wants that partner to be female. He doesn’t want some gender-neutral humanoid, and he certainly doesn’t want some whiny, judgmental entitlement princess who will take him to the cleaners at the first sign of trouble.

Feminists have lobbied, mostly successfully, for rape shield laws which do nothing to increase the likelihood of a rapist being convicted, but have dangerously increased the likelihood of innocent men being sent to prison. Feminists are also lobbying against a current UK suggestion to grant anonymity to accused men just as it is granted to his accuser.

Given that Indians are conventionally given to an inferiority complex with reference to the western world, any movement in the west deemed worthy by the syndicate of liberals is forthwith brought to India and disseminated galore. This was seen during the #MeToo agitation. While the intention behind the agitation was perfectly commendable, it was soon marred with false allegations.

Writing for The American Conservative, Joanna Williams notes:

The success of #MeToo is less about real justice than the common experience of suffering and validation. It is a perfect social media vehicle to drive the fourth-wave agenda into another generation. Hollywood stars and baristas may have little in common but all women can lay claim to having experienced male violence and sexual harassment — or, failing that, potentially experiencing abuse at some indeterminate point in the future. Statistics on domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are used to shore up the narrative that women, as a class, suffer at the hands of men.

But scratch the surface and often these statistics are questionable. In recent years, at the hands of femocrats, definitions of violence and sexual harassment have been expanded. On campus, all kinds of behaviors, from touching through clothes to non-consensual sex, are grouped together to prove the existence of a rape culture. When sexual harassment is redefined as unwanted behavior it can encompass anything from winking, to whistling, to staring, to catcalling. There is little objectively wrong with the action — it is simply the fact that it is unwanted that makes it abusive. Today, we are encouraged to see violence, especially violence against women and girls, everywhere: in words that wound, personified in a boorish president, in our economic and legal systems. This is violence as metaphor rather than violence as a physical blow. Yet it is a metaphor that serves a powerful purpose — allowing all women to share in a common experience of victimhood, and, as such, justifying the continued need for elite feminism.

Fourth-wave feminism is increasingly authoritarian and illiberal, impacting speech and behavior for men and women. Campaigns around “rape culture” and #MeToo police women just as much as men, telling them how to talk about these issues. When The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood had the effrontery to advocate for due process for men accused of sex crimes, her normally adoring feminist fans turned on her. She referred to it in a Globe and Mail essay in January entitled “Am I a Bad Feminist?” “In times of extremes, extremists win,” she wrote. “Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn’t puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated.”

The fact is, men are publicly shamed every day, their livelihoods and reputations teetering on destruction, before they even enter a courtroom.

Williams also associates the movement with the regressive left — a very influential faction of the Left-wing across the world that adheres to such views as are in conflict with the principles of liberalism. In particular, this faction is characterized with tolerance for Islamism. The term “regressive left” has been used by a spectrum of people; from activists like Maajid Nawaz (formerly an Islamist who renounced his radicalism in favour of secular Islam) to highly influential writers such as Richard Dawkins. Thus, contemporary feminism, or at least the more vocal section of it, is rather stupefying in its paradigm given that an archetypal Islamist would always seek to render women to a subservient position in society.

This is a result of a theory called “intersectionality” whereby oppressed communities regardless of the ground of exploitation — religion, gender, caste, race, language — agitate jointly, thus forming an alliance. Kushal Mehra of The Cārvāka Podcast has often chastised intersectionality, for it unites such factions as would in principle be inimical to one another, merely in an endeavour to overthrow a common threat that is often hyperbolized. Across the world, this threat is that of the national conservative factions, which, it would be safe to contend, are no longer as parochial as they may have been in the past ages, save only for a few insignificant factions which are opposed by other conservatives themselves. Indeed, it is the self-proclaimed liberal wing that has become dogmatic and sympathetic to Marxist-Islamist paradigms of the world.

Philip Carl Salzman writing for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy notes:

Feminism classifies all men, with the exception of gays, into three categories: rapists, sexual harassers, and potential rapists and harassers. Feminism does not explain this male criminality in biological terms, because feminists reject the biological basis of sex, so that women cannot be seen to be limited by biological influences. Rather, male sexual brutality is explained as a result of our so-called misogynist “rape culture.” This is an incoherent and false idea, because our culture forbids and punishes rape.

Another unfortunate example of the feminist approach is the debate about child custody after the breakdown of a marriage. After a long-standing policy in Canada and the U.S. of favouring mothers for custody and fathers for child support payments, more recent discussion has focused on joint custody and its advantages. Most scientific studies show that the best interests of children are served by joint custody. Children without fathers in their lives suffer a wide range of ill effects. Citing a host of North American studies, Kruk’s report points to the long-term dangers: Some 85 percent of youth in prison are fatherless; 71 percent of high school dropouts grew up without fathers, as did 90 percent of runaway children. Fatherless youth are also more prone to depression, suicide, delinquency, promiscuity, drug abuse, behavioural problems and teen pregnancy, warns the 84-page report, a compilation of dozens of studies around divorce and custody, including some of his own research over the past 20 years.

But whenever legislation supporting joint custody is being considered, feminist groups such as the National Organization of Women, the League of Women Voters, Breastfeeding Coalition, National Council of Jewish Women, and UniteWomen FL, lobby and demonstrate against it. In Canada, feminist lawyers have argued against joint custody In both Canada and the U.S., feminists, disregarding the best interest of children, have energetically opposed joint custody as the default arrangement for children in broken marriages. Feminists prefer to support the best interests of mothers rather than those of children. For feminists, once again, gender trumps all other values, even the well-being of children.

With regard to India, the issue is that while such problems may not be as pronounced given the comparatively low literacy rate and the population not having been sensitized enough with political science, as in the United States, they do exist in a diluted measure. Ironically, though not in a reproving sense, the most prominent voice of equal rights and ergo someone who undertakes the ardour of cultivating awareness in re men’s rights, is an activist and documentary filmmaker named Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj — a woman. One cannot be certain whether Indian men are scared, clueless or too engaged with work; there is a conspicuous absence of male activists agitating for men’s rights and male dignity.

With a spate of dowry-related deaths across the nation and protests by activists and female parliamentarians, section 498A was introduced to the Indian Penal Code. In the words of Ms. Bhardwaj, it was a law made with very noble intentions, but from a law meant to save lives, it morphed into a law that took many lives. Over the years, Section 498A has acquired the reputation of being the “most abused law in the history of Indian jurisprudence”. It is noted in a 2017 article on BBC, “As the law prescribes the immediate arrest of those named in a complaint, 2.7 million people, including 650,000 women and 7,700 children, were arrested between 1998 and 2015. The accused in some of the cases were as young as two years old and, in a particularly bizarre case, a two-month-old baby was hauled into a police station.”

Ms. Bhardwaj has filmed a documentary titled, “The Martyrs of Marriage” which has harrowing first-person accounts from men falsely accused under section 498A. from husbands who spent years in jail only to be acquitted later by courts; from the parents of young men who killed themselves unable to bear the harassment and ignominy of being labelled wife-abusers; a tearful video message from a husband recorded minutes before he hanged himself; and a suicide note from a young banker questioning the “one-sided law”. A retired judge of the Delhi High Court and a former Union Minister of Law and Justice themselves make appearances in the documentary and admit the misuse of the law by disgruntled women and failure of governments to deal with the abuse of the said law. The Delhi Commission for Women itself found that 53.2% of the cases filed between April 2013 and July 2014 were found to be false. Ms. Bhardwaj is often subjected to uncivil opprobria from feminists and women’s rights activists.

It is not merely the prerogative but the duty of a conscientious nation to be indignant in the event of such crimes against a woman. However, it is equally of the essence to guide such public umbrage in order that it may not be malignant towards a larger community — men as of present. Simultaneously, it must evolve into a comprehensive discourse aimed at establishing justice for men and women alike. For there exist deep interstitial voids in our legal system besides its infamous monumental lethargy, and while it may feel pleasing to call for capital punishment, it does not offer protracted solutions that would have psychosomatic changes among the masses. As opposed to extremity of punishment, the province of State institutions must be the reduction of such crimes.

Prolonged supereminence of hyper-liberal paradigms would be detrimental to nations in the long run. Society must pivotally find its equilibrium with regard to public discourse.