By Amia Kharthomi
I propose that Gender Equality is a Myth or at least, just a vision. Governments are formulating policies, enacting laws and investing money to implement gender equality. But more than that, we have the media promoting and encouraging life choices that move society towards their goal of gender equality. And I believe it is a myth, not because women cannot compete with men in specific areas where they have the aptitude to compete and even be better than men, such as medicine and pharmaceutical and healthcare. It is a myth because there will never be an organic gender equality. It has to be manufactured in a social laboratory. And such an inorganic social structure can only be achieved through government regulation of human interaction, choices and behaviours, i.e., via a totalitarian state.
When the biological man, and trans woman athlete, Lia Thomas, defeated the female swimmers, society cried foul. How could biological women compete with a biological man in sports? Or when Trans woman (biological man) MMA fighter Fallon Fox broke her female opponent Tamika Brents’ skull, it was obvious that there is no such thing as gender equality. But now someone will say, “That is stupid. Gender equality is not about making women compete with men in physical sports. It is about giving women the ability to compete in those areas where they have the aptitude to compete.” Then why call it Gender Equality? Why not just call it equal opportunity for every individual?
The reason may be that, the term Gender Equality is primarily used to insinuate that WOMEN are getting unfair treatment, even in areas where they naturally have not been able to compete with men. Gender Equality has primarily meant equality for women and by extension, equality for those biological men who identify as women, i.e., transgenders, such as the above mentioned athletes. So, Gender Equality has nothing to do with affording equal and fair opportunity to every individual to compete, but more to do with regulating human behaviour and choices, to move society towards a state where women are compelled and encouraged to embrace masculine roles and traits, and where men are encouraged to embrace the idea that masculinity is not an inherent quality of manhood, but that men can become women and even compete with women in areas where biological women are not naturally capable of competing with biological men. Such expectation from women is counter-productive to the development of their natural aptitude, traits and happiness. Thus, it is a social structure sustained by policy and regulation, and not an organic social structure shaped by normal human interaction, and the interplay of natural masculine and feminine traits between men and women.
But what about places like Meghalaya that have institutionalised feminism and matrilineality? Feminism is not just a tradition, and a trait, but a law of the land. If a woman marries a dkhar (outsider) or a phareng (foreigner), the children will be identified as Khasi via the matrilineal system. But even if a Khasi man marries a fellow Khasi woman, and they do not follow the matrilineal nomenclature, their children will be deprived of their Khasi status, according to section 10(1)(c) of the existing Khasi Hills Autonomous District (Khasi Social Custom of Lineage) Act, 1997, even though both their parents are Khasi.
But when the KHADC, led by the former CEM, (L) H. S. Shylla, passed the Khasi Social Custom of Lineage (Amendment) Bill, 2018 to deprive the children of inter-racial marriages of their Khasi status, the intellectuals and the women folk cried foul. “It is unjust,” they say, “to deprive the children of a Khasi mother of their Khasi status.” And rightly so. I support the right of everyone to marry whomever they want. And it would be an unjust law to deprive the children of a Khasi mother, their Khasi status. That is common sense. BUT, the rejection of Shylla’s Amendment Bill highlighted the double standards and true gender inequality present in our community, where it is on the other hand accepted as a just law for children of two Khasi parents to be deprived of their Khasi status, just because they fail to follow the matrilineal nomenclature.
And now, the KHADC under the present CEM has advocated the idea of depriving Scheduled Tribe status to children of Khasi parents if they do not follow the matrilineal nomenclature.
And based on all of this institutionalised feminism, we are still increasingly fighting for the myth of Gender Equality by debating whether women should be allowed to hold offices in Dorbar Shnong and even to contest for the office of Rangbah Shnong, thereby diluting the last patriarchal aspect of our traditions.
The proposition is that there can never be an organic Gender Equality across the board. You either live in a Patriarchal society, within which you have a broad range of social structures like Islamic society, traditional Christian Western civilization, etc. which affords differing levels of individual freedom for both men and women, or you live in a Feminised society like Meghalaya and others, which also affords differing levels of individual freedom. Society will either be male centric or women centric, and the extent of individual freedom will vary for women or men depending on it being patriarchal or women centric, as we have seen from our society.
And what about Scandinavia and America, where it seems probable or at least possible to build a truly gender equal society, which leans neither to Patriarchal society nor to Feminised society, where the lines between natural masculine traits and feminine traits are blurred? Well, they are a recent social experiment on gender equality, and they are still in transition. Their equality is also not organic, but sustained by a vast bureaucracy, and in doing so, their societies tend to become totalitarian.
Thus, we have to choose, whether a Patriarchal society will ensure our survival or whether we can continue as a Feminist society, under the threat of other patriarchal cultures that surround us. But I believe that the principle which should be our ideal principle, independent of whether we are a patriarchal or feminist society, is the principle of individual freedom, and non-intrusion of the state into regulating human choices and behaviour. The State must not actively impose gender equality. Even the media must not actively promote choices and lifestyles that are counter intuitive to organic human traits in men and women. If you want Equality, provide Equality across the board, and let the free market of ideas determine the outcome, according to the vision and convictions of our people.
And if old age traditions are to be questioned, such as whether women should be allowed to hold offices in Dorbar Shnongs or even the office of Rangbah Shnong, then there should be an equal introspection into whether the Tradition and KHADC clause that deprives the children of two Khasi parents of their Khasi status just because they do not follow the matrilineal nomenclature, is a just and equitable law, or whether it seriously infringes on their rights as per the same principles of fairness and individual liberty, with which the community rejected the Khasi Social Custom Lineage Amendment Bill, 2018.