By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
Gender justice demands something, which the feminists are not seeking. If women can wear micro or mini-skirts in educational institutions, offices and public places why not they ask men to wear half-pants in all public places. Instead of walking in bare-minimum clothes all over the world in protest against what a Canadian police officer Michael Sanguinetti said four months back these, Slut Walkers should instead ask Barack Husain Obama, David Cameron, Manmohan Singh, Vladmir Putin, Asif Zardari, Hu Jintao and millions and billions of men all over the world to abandon all these ‘cumbersome’ clothes around their bodies and wear shorts while going to office or any public place. They will look more ‘smart’ in their fleshy bare-legs.
Since these girls are now wearing men’s clothes like jeans, shirts, sleeveless vests etc men should also be asked to imitate them and wear women clothes. They must wear sari, lehenga, choli, frock, skirt, blouse, petticoat, slack etc.
But sadly these so-called liberated women are insisting on imitating men and not asking the latter to copy them, thus exposing their own inferiority.
The latest global storm on dress––or under-dress––started when Michael Sanguinetti, a Canadian police officer while delivering a talk in an American university four months back said that if women did not want to be victimized, they “should avoid dressing like sluts”.
On April 3 feminists took to streets in Toronto and named their march as Slut Walks. Dressed in bare-minimum they took to the streets of most western capitals and big cities. In India too they organized a similar show to argue that there is nothing like provocative dress and that wearing too much cloth is a feudal concept. Though the police officer was forced to apologize the truth is that he had not said anything blasphemous. A similar view by the then Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court, Cyriac Joseph, on February 9, 2009 created a storm in India. Part-time modern Indian girls and women dubbed him as backward looking man, who in one way or the other has become apologist for rapist.
But these two guys are not Taliban of Afghanistan or Ayatollahs of Iran as they are being made out, nor are they feudals. They are perhaps no less educated than the so-called liberal thinkers and Slut Walkers who are ever-ready to throw away their clothes at the drop of a hat.
The bitter truth the women group will have to understand is that they are indulging in gender injustice so far dress code is concerned. Some years back, a Supreme Court judge had directed a woman secretarial staff at his office to stop wearing jeans at work. She complained to a local women’s NGO. The moment the NGO went up in arms against the diktat, the judge corrected his remark and said it was ‘suggestive’ and not ‘prescriptive.’
Women groups openly highlight this case to claim that they earned a great gender battle. But are they aware of the case of young Arvind who went to appear in an interview for Coast Guard. He was scolded by the interview board members and asked to get lost. Reason: he was wearing a T-shirt and he was not aware that it was not a prescribed dress for this occasion.
Boys wearing Nike, Adidas or other sports shoes are often turned out from the interview boardrooms simply because of this reason. Not a single feminist ever protested against this dress code for boys. When a college or coaching institute bans girls from wearing skin-tight jeans and sleeveless vest it becomes a big news item. But when the same order is imposed on boys nobody shed tears.
Liberated ladies, if you do want to visit those colleges or coaching institutes, which impose strict dress code on boys, please contact me and I would certainly lead you to those institutes. But then, they will have to raise their voice against dress-code for boys too. There are umpteen number of profession in which there are dress code and one has to follow it.
Similarly decent and proper dressing is a part of a civilized world. However, if anyone wants to remain naked like animals, they are free to do so. But they must make distinction between human being and animal.
They should not behave like reactionary forces and need to read history of dresses rationally. If they do not want to sound religious do not read any scripture or Holy Book. They must read what Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital (Part-I). He quoted his friend Frederick Engels and other scholars and writers of his time to highlight the “moral degradation” caused by the feudal and capitalist forces, who recruited women and children in industries and agriculture land for their own ends. They are those who imposed abbreviated dress and cowboy jeans for their slaves or employees and did not thrust too much clothes as the feminists accuse them of.