Aditi Sharif :

 Back in 2019, I took a rickshaw to return from my university after a long tiring day. After some time,  he started talking about my physical features. I felt awkward but remained silent because he was quite aged. To my horror, I noticed that his conversation turned to the sexual relationship between males and females. So, I immediately told him to stop the rickshaw and got down from the transport. However, that doesn’t discourage him. He yelled at me and indicated the fact of how much fun I could give him on the bed.

I am not going to claim that it was the first abusive experience I had ever faced in my lifetime. As a Bangladeshi woman, I have unfortunately faced numerous harassment like this. This particular event was special to me because, at that time, I took a course named ‘Anthropology of Feminism’ which stressed a lot on diversity and differences. However, that single incident made me realize all women have a common enemy to fight and that is patriarchal oppression. That’s why, the rickshaw-puller dared to behave with me like this despite having an under-privileged background. We can’t deny the existence of other types of oppression -for example; racism, and classism- that inevitably intersect with gender-based exploitation and violence. I could imagine to what extent that rickshaw-puller would go if I were a garment worker. But what can we do to struggle against sexism while recognizing the differences in women’s experiences in terms of their socio-economic backgrounds? I think that Mona Eltahawy can provide some useful insights in this context.

Mona Eltahawy (2019) started her argument by describing the horrific experience of sexual harassment that she faced during her teenage in a ‘sacred religious place’.  After many years she decided to speak up which led her to write her famous book named ‘Headscarves and Hymen: Why The Middle East Needs A Sexual Revolution ’. Her book encourages Muslim women to share their horrific experiences about sexual harassment they faced in religious places and for this particular reason, she was humiliated by the guards of patriarchy. After 15 years, she had to face a similar incident at a Canadian bar which made him realize the fact that patriarchy exists everywhere in the world. What amazed me was how she protested against such abusive behavior. She beat the person on the spot and later shared her experience on social media which eventually created enthusiasm among women. However, that didn’t satisfy her because she wanted to invent some strategies for women belonging to different backgrounds in the world.  The book ‘The Seven Necessary Sins For Women And Girls’ is all about those pathways. She gracefully called  these techniques as sins because any attempt to disrupt patriarchy is always considered distorted endeavour (Eltahawy, 2019 ).

The first sin that we need to conduct to dismantle patriarchy is to show our rages while dealing with any kind of violence or injustice.  Anger is largely considered a masculine trait that is highly discouraged to learn for girls. According to Eltahawy, wrath can be an effective way to show our inner strengths against any kind of abuse. After anger, she mentioned attention-seeking as a useful strategy that can be used against Patriarchy. In our society, women are often considered as attention providers, not as attention seekers. Eltahawy claimed that seeking society’s attention toward their own needs can really contribute to the destruction of the overall sexist system. While patriarchal societies want to retain women as sacred and pure so that they can attack them using their filthy methods. As to her, we need to combat them using their own weapons. As Bangladeshi women, we often know the fact that ambitious women are considered threats to our society. It is true that women belonging to the middle class and high class are provided adequate education just to serve the societal purpose. She is not permitted to go beyond that limitation. If she did, she would be badly condemned. For this reason, Eltahawy considered ambition as a prerequisite for women’s emancipation from patriarchy. She also regarded using power, while breaking the gender-based hierarchy, can possibly contributing to the destruction of the system. To her, we should simply choose the path of violence when it is necessary rather than having some peaceful sacrifice (Eltahawy, 2019 ). 

And last but not least, she invites us to assert our own control over our bodies. No one, no matter who he/she is, has anything to do with our bodies and the methods by which we decide to get some sorts of physical or sexual pleasure (Eltahawy, 2019 ). 

Many women can find the ideas too radical to follow. However, while recognizing patriarchy as a universal problem faced by women despite many differences, we should identify some common strategies to dismantle it and I think that her ideas can provide us some foods for thought. 

References

Eltahawy, M. (2019 ). The Seven Necessary Sins For Women And Girls . Boston : Beacon Press .

  Biography: 

Aditi Sharif is an Anthropologist, currently working as a Research Assistant at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). Besides , she also works as a volunteer writer in Women Chapter, International.