The need for Challenging Traditional Worldviews
Dr. Asangba Tzüdir
Throughout the course of human history women has been condemned as the ‘inferior’ and ‘weaker sex’ or the ‘undesirable sex’. The history of ideas and discourses especially from the west has categorized women as the “Second Sex”. The idea of women is constructed in male centric discourses both oral and written, which privilege male as essential, adequate and complete while women are considered inessential, inadequate and incomplete as compared to men. The man Aristotle who propounded that “man is a political animal” too follows a similar strain on his stand on women as the ‘defect of man’ or women as the ‘defective male’. Thereby man is the ultimate being, the complete model, while woman is the ‘other’ of being.
Women’s social position is defined in the discourses, which only delegitimizes the position of women. Simone De Beauvior’s “the second sex” is one of the earliest attempts that confronts human history from a feminist perspective where men fundamentally oppress women by characterizing them on every level, as the ‘other’ and thereby there is a never ending production of cultural binaries or dichotomies starting with men as the self while women as the ‘other’, and it is upon such binaries that dominant discourses are built and legitimated. Under the feudal, the birth of a girl was considered a misfortune; from pre-natal selection to female infanticide to genital mutilation in the name of virginity and virtue, women as the ‘other’ has been further ‘othered’. Today, the many forms of violence inflicted on women only casts their life throughout on both mental as well as physical strain. Religion has subjugated and oppressed women; culture and oral traditions did more damage to the women as a ‘being’; media particularly the film industry keeps portraying women as an ‘object of pleasure’ for the ‘entertainment’ of man besides making her vulnerable.
Discourses have been built on violence, which has hijacked women’s spaces. One can take the Indian Sati practice and widow suicide. Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak sees the practice of sati as a discourse and space through which women can assert themselves from layers of subjugation. Beyond the act of burning herself to death due to the death of her husband, there is another layer of female oppression that this practice further subjugates women. Burning herself is seen as a form of liberation from desire for sex which otherwise might lead to committing ‘sin’. The understanding is that in being ‘clean’ and ‘sinless’ she can attain Moksa. In a similar strain, the coming of western education to our land became a ‘heroic’ project under the “white man’s burden” of saving the brown women from the brown men. Mary Mead Clark opening an ‘informal school’ for girls is one parameter. What then followed was that ‘spaces’ belonging to women through which women can assert their status and identity were ‘hijacked’. Thereby the point of reference shifts from cultural assertion to western education.
Such hegemonic discourses needs counter discourses that attempts to deconstruct male centric oral traditions and worldviews and voice out women concerns against unjustified control, domination, subjugation, injustices, misrepresentation and denial in political participation. In standing up against violence on women through oppressive cultural practices, a Somalian girl, Waris Dirie who was forced to undergo female circumcision as a young girl, which is a very brute process involving genital mutilation because an uncut women is considered as unclean and a whore. She stood up against the practice and later became a United Nations spokeswomen against the practice.
The challenges confronting gender parity today, is to interrogate and dismantle the phallocentric or male centric discourses legitimated by our oral traditions that have institutionalized patriarchy. This has lead to the production of gendered spaces that are politically, socially, culturally and morally justified thereby producing stereotyped spaces like ‘private’, ‘domestic’, ‘public’ which further legitimates patriarchal power and control and thus accorded an inferior status on women as the ‘weaker sex’ and subordinate to men and women becomes a victim of domestic and sexual violence.
Thus, in positing Naga women, towards assertive constituting, oral traditions and Naga worldviews need to be interrogated and countered starting from the family and impact a change beginning with mindsets. This countering will lend impetus to the various issues and challenges confronting women today. On another level, Naga women should create their own spaces beyond the bounds of patriarchy. This can be a way forward in giving a new outlook and identity to the ‘new Naga woman’. Only when there is liberation of the women selves, our society will see progress.
(Dr. Asangba Tzüdir is an Editor with Heritage Publishing House. He contributes a weekly guest editorial to the Morung Express. Comments can be mailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
