For the past few years, in March a slogan of “Aurat march”, marched in the cities of Pakistan.
The most defamed slogan of this march is “My body my will” which is ridiculed by the “radicals” of the society, either they are feminist or not.
Let us understand the actual concept of this slogan.
The actual slogan is “My body my right” not “My body my will”.
This slogan is accepted by international bodies not only for women but also for men. It gives rights to the people that you are not the slave of others you have the right to use your body to accomplish the task or the goal that you want or you set for yourself, others won’t dictate you because they don’t know about your will but you do!! It also says that everyone (including men and women) has the right to protect their body from being beaten, disrespected, raped, or sexually harassed.
This slogan held the doer responsible for his/her deeds. This way people become answerable for their thoughts and deeds and not for the dictation of others and I think when people feel the responsibility, they avoid blunders and this can help our society prosper in a better way.
There is a term in psychology “Dialectics” . The basic concept of dialectics says that to understand something, we need to go through the opposite of that particular concept.
Using the spectacles of dialectics one can understand that the opposite of “My body my right” is “My body other’s right” would people like to be ruled by others regarding their rights??
It is not about becoming commercial but about being free to decide and understand your worth.
Now talking about the “Aurat march” it is considered that the most slogans raised in this march are lagging behind the real manifesto of the march and came out to be unrealistic. For that matter, here is a suggestion, those worthless slogans should not be discussed to avoid their further promotion and our focus should be on the real and required rights of the women.
Now coming to the real point. All the march is taking place under the umbrella of feminism. Feminism is a range of social movements, political movements, and ideologies that aim to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes(Wikipedia). Feminism emerged out of four waves. The first wave goal was to open up opportunities for women, with a focus on suffrage. The second wave focused on the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing social equality regardless of sex. Third-wave feminists sought to question, reclaim, and redefine the ideas, words, and media that have transmitted ideas about womanhood, gender, beauty, sexuality, femininity, and masculinity, among other things. The fourth wave of feminism is still a captivating silhouette. Here the focus is to sort out in which category this “Aurat march” lies. For some people, all of the waves of feminism are not acceptable as few of those waves promote extremism. To have a balanced approach the thing that needs to be discussed or investigated is “what are the real issues of the women and how to solve them?”
For that matter, UN bodies introduced SDGs (sustainable development goals) to improve the living standards of mankind all around the world. In SDGs, “Gender equality” is placed at the 5th number which shows the importance and need for this goal’s achievement.
Let us see the main issues faced by women in Pakistan.
-Health care
-Education.
-Early marriage.
-Childbirth issues
- Employment.
A large number of women in Pakistan are deprived of these basic needs and rights and the most affected women are from the lower class.
Now, what we see in “Aurat march” are demands that are different than these basic rights mentioned above. The reason is that the march is conducted by the Radical feminists (an extreme form of feminism). Which contains a large number of women belonging to the elite class. A sagacious person can easily interpret that the issues of the elite class women are different from that of the lower class women and won’t be addressed till the class difference exists.
The women belonging to the lower class are held back of the basic “rights”. On the other hand, elite class women have all those opportunities that a poor class woman is deprived of.
Here comes the debate of “rights” and the “will”.
Elite women have their “rights” fulfilled to a greater extent and she wants her “will” to make much of.
And the lower class lady strives to get her “basic rights”. Maybe this is the reason for the change of slogan from “My body my right” to “my body my will”.(representing elites only)
My mentor, Sir Naeem Khan taught us about the “Will power” and “Will to power”
He explained that “Will power” is increasing the capacity for pressure taking, that in turn, takes us to “will to power” which means to become a powerful person.
The need of the hour is to boost the “will power” of the real deprived women of the society to make them powerful. Marches must be meaningful and result-oriented. The main focus of any march related to the women must be the achievement of basic requirements which they by themselves think are deprived of. Similar is for the men, if they feel discriminated at any point, they should raise their voice against injustice because “My body my right” is more about equal treatment and opportunities for all genders. It should be propagated respectfully. Nobody can predict the outcome of this march but it will surely raise consciousness among the society to think and talk about the rights.
Our society needs metamorphosis of mass psychology (mental revolution) to understand and propagate such concepts and to achieve implicative outcomes.