International Women's Day

A friend asked me to make a post on International Women's Day on a Sikh Message Board and I refused because... well because I'm a male. Males who sound like feminists are probably the single-most annoying people on the planet. For real. Growing up in high school and even in university... witnessing guys who tried to stand up in class for "women's rights" was painful to watch. I never ever got a sense from them that they were genuine in what they said. They always seemed like they were trying to score points with girls. You know what? That's another topic by itself: a lot of male youths are liberal just because it's easier to meet girls that way. I've totally noticed that in university and in high school. For example, the campus young conservatives club is filled almost exclusively with guys while the young liberals club is much more gender-balanced. Like I said: a whole different topic.

So yes - I don't want to sound or look like one of those guys, the type that always seems very disingenuous in their support for "women's rights". Women should stand up for women. During the voting rights movement, women only succeeded because THEY were the activists. It was the same thing with the American Civil Right's movements, blacks only succeeded because the black community developed strong black leaders. Yes, they had many moral and good white men standing beside them, like the Reverend Billy Graham and other Christian leaders who found segregationism appalling, but blacks did not rely on whites to stand up for them. And because of that, they were successful.

I imagine it was the same in the Eastern Bloc of Europe during the Cold War and one can only hope that strong leaders will emerge in the Middle East to fight for their own freedom in the upcoming years as they rely on the Americans less and less. It's more honourable that way and that sort of freedom, equality and everything else is much more powerful.

Women in Punjabi (or Indian) society and in most societies of the world don't enjoy real and meaningful equality and that's tragic but that'll only change if the oppressed themselves stand up for what's rightfully theirs. Men should stand by them, but it's ridiculous when it seems as if men are doing most of the fighting. Equality is never achieved that way.