“It was only after we broke through the feminine mystique and said women are people, no more no less, and therefore demanded our human right to participate in the mainstream of society, to equal opportunity to earn and be trained and to have our own voice in the big decisions of our destiny, that the problems of women themselves became visible, and women began to take their own experience seriously.”

- Betty Friedan, in the introduction to “The Feminine Mystique”

I am reluctant to call feminism a philosophy – it has no structure and should not have, for that would defeat its purpose. It is an idea, an expression of freedom, of a birthright denied generation after generation. It breaks out of all structure, all those things that keep our ideas imprisoned in the cells of “what should be”. As Madhuri, who writes on this webzine, so eloquently put it, “feminism is humanism”. It is being.

Feminism means to stand up for oneself, to assert that one is capable of using one’s faculties to make life’s decisions. It is the clear declaration of the fact that birth as “male” or “female” entitles no one to particular preferences, rights or forms of behaviour.

Feminism seeks to liberate women, not from men, but from norms that have held the lives of women prisoner to forms of dress, behaviour, speech and sexual expression that have, for years, stripped women of all self-worth and confidence and socialized them into believing, on the one hand, that they are indeed “the weaker sex”, and on the other hand, ostracizing any woman who dared break out of this mould to express herself freely. Feminism is freedom of self-expression.

As a movement, Feminism began years ago, but still retains its relevance for several reasons. Look around you. How many women do you see who have never been snubbed for their “unfeminine” ways at some point in life? How many do you know who can truthfully tell you they have never been molested? How many can say with pride that they have never been discriminated against, on account of their sex, at school or in the workplace? How many have never had their sexual integrity questioned at the slightest chance? How many are ashamed of the fact that they are women?

Not all women are feminists. Not all feminists are women. There is no “how to”, in being a feminist. As a professor once told me, the day you first thought “they can’t do that to me (or her) just because I am (or she is) a woman”, you became a feminist. After all, feminism is no more than respect for life and liberty, regardless of sex.

Ultimately, feminism is a celebration of womanhood. It calls women, not to rally against men or society, but stand together and proudly, be.