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WOMEN ARE WAKING UP
"Women are not born, they are made," Simon de Beauvoir wrote in her book "The Second Sex". She was describing woman's sacred role of motherhood, being a subordinate person, her faint personality and her urge to live like a parasite.
The Vatican immediately blacklisted the book. It described how women are the "other" in a gender regime where men are at the center, the ambivalence between master and slave, self and other, and woman and man.
While strongly criticizing that biological difference cannot be a reason for subordination, she underlined that women, on the other hand, use their fertility as a means to realize their own existence, and especially think that giving birth to a son is a privilege of existence in a male-dominated world. This has always been the case from the moment society began to live in contract. Society was forced to be patriarchal. A woman could only take part in society through her fertility and motherhood. She was only expected to marry and have children. In order to take part in social life, she had to have children. A woman who was first the daughter of so-and-so gentleman was doomed to become the wife of so-and-so.
In the East, tiny girls who are still playing with babies are forced into marriage, while the number of women who are victims of honor killings by their own fathers, brothers, husbands or even lovers is increasing day by day. Women who are subjected to domestic violence are still forced to hide it, either out of fear or to protect their pride. Harassment and rape do not stop. Even women who are victims of rape are condemned to honor killings. If these men had love for their own mothers and sisters, would they do these things to other women?
Women still cannot walk the streets in peace, without feeling uneasy. They cannot go out at the time they want. They are subjected to disturbing looks and verbal harassment from men at all hours of the day. In traffic, they are squeezed because they are women, and they are forced to dodge cars while walking. They are subjected to double standards at work, they are paid less than men doing the same job, and they have no chance of promotion, advancement and progress against men. We even know that they are subjected to serious mobbing.
Even in the most developed countries of the world, women fought for the right to vote. Even in England, they chained themselves and set fire to public buildings. One woman activist even jumped in front of the king's horse and died. They were all imprisoned. Women who went on hunger strike in prisons were force-fed. It is not possible to understand how voting can only be a man's right! Until the end of the 19th century, women lacked many of the rights they have now. They could not own property, engage in commerce, sign contracts and enjoy inheritance rights. In Europe, property owners who did not have sons left their property to their male nephews instead of daughters, or if they did not have sons, to their closest male relatives. I find it hard to understand what kind of tragic comedy this is. Even today, what is the fact that only 1% of women in the world and 8% in Turkey own a house, if not an expression of the prevalence of sexist cultural practices? Women now work under the same harsh conditions as men, but they still cannot own property.
In most societies, culture and traditions still affirm men, not women, as political actors. As children, girls are cut off from politics through various learning processes, reward and punishment methods. They are taught that politics is not for them. Motherhood, childcare, cooking and cleaning are encouraged. Boys are encouraged to play with toys full of cars, guns and technical devices. While the public sphere, the sphere where politics and political processes take place, belongs exclusively to men, the private sphere, the sphere within the household and the sphere where the daily needs of daily life are met, belongs to women. Therefore, issues such as unequal relations within the family, domestic labor, childcare and domestic violence are always excluded from the discussion and regulation of political will. What an oxymoron that it is a woman who raises, educates and trains murderers, terrorists, dictators and all these harsh and selfish patriarchal men!
I am not hopeless... Women are waking up... Women have realized other women... Women are no longer alone! Those who wake up will wake up those who don't!
Mukaddes Pekin Başdil
Researcher-Author