Recently, when the conflict between Pakistan and India was going on, there was the discourse observed on social media and in public places. That discourse, apart from being nationalistic was also patriarchal. Different jokes and memes were made in which women of both countries were bashed. In the past, when wars were waged, women were enslaved and taken as bounty. This historical consciousness still exists in the minds of many people. That is why, knowing that, war brings destructions and death, many men were appealing to wage war and so that they could take the other sides women as bounty.
Language is never neutral, passive and apolitical. Language and power has a relationship. Language serves those who possess power and helps them in representation and construction of gender discrimination. To sustain patriarchy, not only is a coercive apparatus used, but it is also sustained through consent. In the words of Gramsci, that is the ‘Cultural-Hegemony’. Discursive power is used in textbooks, media, and verbal communication through which gender discrimination continues.
On March 8, International Womens Day was celebrated in Pakistan. It also included the Aurat March. It was celebrated in many cities of Pakistan. Women from different classes participated. With the launch of the march, a debated began. The whole event was belittled, bashed and stigmatized. Many men saw only those posters which according to them were too ‘bold’. And no doubt, there were dozens of posters, speeches, talks, manifestos, which were pro working class. But these were not observed and this showed our society patriarchal bias.
It is not the men who will free women and give them emancipation from patriarchy. It is the women who have to resist, revolt and fight and liberate both themselves and men
Why many progressive people belittled the March can be answered here:
1. Many leftists in Pakistan are not familiar with the vast literature on the feminist question which ultimately leads them to see events like the Women’s March as capitalistic propaganda.
2. The classical leftists didn’t address the national and feminist question. They believed with the change of the system, the feminist question will be resolved itself. The tradition continues, only class struggle is a solution, no feminist question till the revolution.
3. The March was diverse, it was not well researched, and without investigating, many leftists gave their conclusions.
4. In the words of Paulo Friere, the oppressor has the “fear of freedom” (freedom to oppress) which he doesn’t want to lose.
Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed offers a technical study of the oppressed classes. For our purposes, I take women as the oppressed and man as the oppressor within patriarchal frameworks built on feudalism and capitalism, in apparent ideological paradox. And I also argue that both parties are dehumanised by this social construct. There is no doubt in the fact that in the late feudal society man has the dominant power which is further strengthened by global capitalism. This is the capitalist system which has begotten working class exploitation, exploitation of nations, and gender discrimination. Man is the dominant character in patriarchal society and uses his power against woman. When women talk about freedom, justice and equal rights men start to resist it. That is why, many a man, after looking at the Women’s March, started questioning it as the patriarch still dwells in men’s minds.
It is not the men who will free women and give them emancipation from patriarchy. It is the women who have to resist, revolt and fight and liberate both themselves and men. Man can only join them in their struggle against patriarchy. The oppressed have to liberate themselves. It is the capitalist system which has made men patriarchs and has a ‘sadistic love’. For as Freire notes: “The pleasure in complete dominance over other person is the very essence of sadistic drive . . . Sadistic love is a perverted love – a love of death, not of life.”
Ayyaz Malick, a Marxist thinker, puts intelligently, “We must understand liberalism and its epistemology as being produced organically from within the workings of capital. Therefore, while liberalism is often associated with particular social class or classes, it is also true that capitalism’s immanent tendencies also produces surface forms of practice and understanding such as liberalism. Dissatisfaction from the system is also initially expressed through surface-level perceptions and language, but these can also be a departure point for wider critique. These surface manifestations of systemic tendencies can be in forms of gender or ethnic oppression, and most often in the form of class exploitation. Plus, it is also not true that Marxism can be reduced to simple class question alone. Emphasis on the class question is, of course, the fundamental heuristic of Marxism, but it also includes analyses of the commodity form, imperialist expansion and oppression, and associated tendencies of objective and subjective perception (including gender question).”
Women make up 52 percent of the population in Pakistan. This cannot be neglected. Marxism without the feminist question cannot be achieved. Women are exploited through class and patriarchy. That needs to be revisited. If a working-class revolution occurs in Pakistan, will man still not be a patriarch? What time will it take to eradicate patriarchy from Pakistani minds? It is a process, the feminist question needs to be addressed along with class question.
Alain Badiou in his book The Rebirth of History says, “It (Marxism) is , let us reiterate, the organised knowledge of the political means required to undo existing society and finally realize an egalitarian, rational figure of collective organization for which the name is ‘Communism’. Marxism is a framework to undo existing society and in order to that man needs to critically engage with feminists.
The writer is studying for a Masters degree in International Studies