The Injustice of Equality

If half a century down the line a book is ever written on the wars that had been fought fifty years back, then the war-cry that must be featured in the book has to be ‘Equality’. No matter what battle is being fought, be it at the macroscopic global level or the microscopic societal level, it is based on one and only one war-cry and that is ‘Equality’. The global villagers are up in arms demanding equality in the workplace, in educational institutions, in boardrooms of multi-national conglomerates, in parliaments across nations and most importantly amongst themselves.

The most controversial demands for equality being made today are perhaps in the context of gender and sexuality. Now to start off, the very concept of ‘Gender Equality’ baffles me – it is confusing in its very core because it tries to equate to unequal entities which as anyone with basic knowledge of Mathematics will tell you, is not possible unless there is a ‘division by 0’ involved somewhere. Man and woman were created (by God or by a fusion of sperm and ova, depending on your religious inclinations) to be different in many respects. If you had paid attention to the Biology lectures in secondary school, you would have realized that men and women are physically different and are wired differently internally – both in terms of internal plumbing and mental acuity. Men and women react differently to different situations and think differently and beyond the similarity of white bones and red flesh barely any similarities exist. Having established, for the sake of the people incapable of complete use of their perceptive powers despite existence of all necessary senses, the fact that men and women are different, we can now focus on the second part of the problem.

The concept of ‘Gender Equality’ is absurd for the simple reason that it is not possible. Actions supporting ‘Gender Equality’ tend to me reactions against a patriarchal society which defeats its purpose completely. The present concept of ‘Gender Equality’ goes something like this –“If my husband cheats on me , it means I now have the right to cheat on him and he cannot say a thing about it” or “If a man molests and physically assaults a woman it is a crime but if a woman does the same to a man , he probably deserved it” or “If a man lecherously gazes at a woman it is derogatory yet if a woman does the same then it is unrequited love”. I can go on and on about such examples but that is not the point – the point is that equality is a utopic dream of a fool, not a possibility which can be successfully translated into reality. The aim of ‘gender activists’ seems to be projecting ‘women as the new men’ which is absurd and completely detrimental for society. Women don’t need to be men-like for them to be taken seriously or for them to deserve a place in society – they don’t need to smoke cigarettes to prove that they can, they don’t need to sleep around to prove that they can, they don’t need to be molesters and assaulters to prove that they can.

Men have made mistakes in the past and society has suffered because of those mistakes. It makes no sense for women to repeat the same mistakes in the name of ‘woman empowerment’ or ‘feminism’ – the concept of ‘If a man can do it, a woman can’ has to be done away with because I am sure a man can never do what a woman can. Women must be able to be comfortable in their own space, as women knowing that the monthly torture that they go through cannot be survived by an average male (“Mard ko dard hota hain”), as women knowing that they , only they, have been entrusted with the power to bring new life onto the planet. The ability of a woman to be a woman, who menstruates, who can give birth is not her weakness- It is her power.

If society is to truly move forward with both men and women leading from the front, then our aim should be towards ‘Gender Justice’, not ‘Gender Equality’ because in a country of over a billion and a world of over a hundred billion- where diversity is the be-all and end-all – equality cannot be achieved but justice can be extended. The steps must be pro-active rather than re-active and if any semblance of progress is to be achieved then serious efforts must be made to save the girl child, not to allow her a life amidst household chores and servitude but a life where she is educated, not merely schooled, allowed to love, not merely married off and allowed to be proud to be a woman, not merely ordered to look up to men. There must not be reservations for women in education or service but instead the ability of women to prove themselves as women amongst men must be respected. Women must be given every service made available to men, nothing more, nothing less because when two unequal beings are placed on an equal footing to start with then justice has not been denied.

Men and women can never be equal. They should never be equal because they, in their own way, shape our global village and in their diversity, their difference lies their strength. However, men and women can be given a just opportunity to prove their mettle, can be placed at the same starting line with none advantaged unfairly and to be placed at the same starting line, to be given the same opportunities to perform it is not necessary for women to lower themselves to the level of fallen men or for men to be pulled down from their pedestals but instead it is necessary for women to rise in their own eyes as women.

It is the collective duty of all men to ensure that justice is not denied because in a society where women aspire to be the ‘new’ men, there can be no place for us. Hence it is our duty to make us see women for what they really and truly are because without women, men will become extinct eventually. The society needs women and men of character, not pretenders and characters.