What is it about this whole feminism thing?

I have wondered for long, and I am voicing it now, why do people talk of "women's rights" as though it is a separate issue, as though all women are victims of all men. I find it a little biased, when there is a problem in life, it is not just the women who suffer, even the guys (whether father, brother, husband or son) who love that woman suffer. And it is not like all problems are caused by men, the women in the guy's life (be it his mother, sister, wife or daughter) too support such men & goad them on. So the net effect is, everything is family centric. When one member is sad, the entire family suffers. When one member wants to do something, the entire family supports/abets him/her. So it is not like all women are universal victims and all men are universal oppressors. That is a very "horse" or "ostrich" way of looking at things. (Horse sees only straight on, and ostrich simply buries its head in the sand). I am writing this after just having freshly read a blog on dowry. The whole thing tries to only show how the bride suffers, as though all men of the world are to blame.

Real life is very different, somebody should some day blog about how in India, there are so many married women who don't think it their duty to support their parents , there are parents who sell their last piece of land & raise loans to get their daughter married, there are brothers who take up all responsibilities on their own head. 
The story is a little biased, because there are cases where daughters demand more property from their parents, there are cases where women say to their parents, "what did you do for me?", there are cases where sisters call up brothers and request for more money in their husband's name! Life is not all black & white, it is not like all women are pure as milk, and the poison is all men.

It was some men with revolutionary ideas who first thought of abolishing sati, allowing child widow remarriages, greater rights for widows, etc. Whereas some women strongly opposed those reforms and encouraged torture of widows. How come noone talks of the men who suffer with money-minded women, and the women who torture other women.

Society is made up of different kinds of people, they may be born as a girl or a boy, vice or virtue are distributed evenly through people irrespective of their gender. And I have realized in life, that to earn respect, we need to take up duties in life. Then our parents will definitely treat us as precious as sons. I am totally brought up in educated circles, so I was pretty shocked that in India, there are still parents who hold onto feelings like they can't take help from their daughters, they can take help from sons. If daughters conveniently enjoy such privileges instead of offering to help, we can't then wonder why they are not treated as equals. Also, helping parents is not a charity, it is as much our duty as a boys'. Many a times, I have noticed women who help their parents, behaving as though they have gone out of their way & done some great charity! We women are also responsible for our status in society, because we are part of it. If we think we have no duties, we should not expect too many rights! In this respect, I admire some women around me, like my cousin, my mother, a few friends from college, my sister-in-law. These women have taken up equal share of family responsibility as the son, never thought of self as a privileged girl, but as a human being who has duties & rights in a family. Women who live like that don't need to fight for their self-respect, they earn it through their deeds, by winning the admiration of like-minded men & women. They don't beg at the feet of men or society, nice men worship them while the baddies need to fear them.

If I support my parents as much as a son would, naturally I'll be treated as equal. In the educated India, girls & boys are brought up as equals, so they live life as equals. By education, I refer to family culture, it may be a rural or urban family. In the uneducated (sometimes even very literate city bred people show amazing lack of culture) parallel India, girls & boys are not brought up as equals, they won't live life as equals, the girl is either neglected as a burden (so the son gets all the attention), or she is pampered as a princess who has no duties (so the son inherits all the responsibilities).

I am not trying to brush away the whole gender bias in society, my heart goes out to the women who suffer domestic violence. But I don't like to paint it as "all men are bad, all women are victims", because the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. How come we women bring up our sons with such low ethics, how can we then blame the men, somewhere someplace, we have compromised & made wrong choices, because of which some other girl suffers. And we like to see our son make another girl suffer, we only care about our own daughter (though there are people who don't even care about their own daughter's welfare). In that case, who is the victim, who is the oppressor? I think I see a girl on both ends!!

On a personal note, my parents have two girl children. I know they trusted us to take care of them. They were so nice that they didn't plan for a third child (I have seen people who have upto 7 children in the quest for a son!), they brought us up giving us everything that we ever needed. I was an observant child, I always realized that there are parents in this world who feel more happy if they had a son rather than a daughter. Early on in life, I promised myself, that if my parents bring me up with so much culture, I should never let them down, I should always stand by them every moment, like a son would (I have seen most, in fact all, sons support their parents at any cost), so that they never feel at any moment, that a daughter let them down/didn't give them priority in her life.

It is humbling how life is, right after I posted this entry, I get to talk to one of my friends who is a post-doctoral fellow at one of the prestigious universities in US. Then I have this desire to delete this silly blog which talks of women's rights/equality etc, which feels so irrelevant just now , an utter time waste :-) But then again, it is an eye opener, or thought provoking, for another person who lives another life in another parallel society! I have expressed my views to two different acquaintances exposed to grass root level social work/reform, and they said they couldn't agree more.