Anjali
Posts : 111
Join date : 2013-07-08
 |  Subject: True Woman  Mon Jul 08, 2013 12:59 am | |
| . True Woman What makes a true woman? According to someone on our forum, a woman that plays the role of a “good daughter” “good wife” and “good mother” qualifies to be a true woman. The writer then goes on to give some concession to women married to “psychopaths” and unable to “bear children because of medical reasons” and says that all other women who are physically health but do not want to bear children are cruel!
Not to say I disagree with this writer. Rather it angers me that someone could just say a blanket statement like this without understanding the realities of life. I also have a personal grouse with the above statement because I was raised by someone that was neither married nor had children of her own and I think she is a much better person than the one responsible for my existence. I think every mother would agree, that giving birth does not make a mother.
I think calling unmarried women and women that do not have biological children "not smart" and "cruel" is demeaning not only my mother’s experience but also the experience of millions of women who choose to do something else rather than get married and give birth sometimes of their own will and sometimes because of circumstances. There is nothing wrong in getting married or giving birth, both are honorable deeds, but why judge a woman’s worth by it? Why is it so bad if a woman opts to be single and not become a mother? Also, does a woman become “true” only by her relationship with a man?
My closest friend, who will turn 36 this year, chose not to get married because she needs to take care of an older brother who has severe mental health defects and a father who is 80-years-old and has borderline dementia. After her mother passed away she has not only financially but also emotionally been there for her family. She is playing the role that traditionally a mother would play to these two men, but according to this writer, she is not a true woman! Because after all she is neither married nor does, she has biological children.
Sometime ago I had written a snippet about a friend of mine, who was fired because she did not know the art of kissing up and had fallen ill. At 32, she remains unmarried because she had a failed relationship and is yet to meet someone else. Meanwhile her ex married for a big fat dowry and has a daughter and wrote to my friend, asking if there was a potential for an extra marital affair. This friend is a business journalist, a field dominated largely by male writers, and a good one at that. That she supported her mother to go back to school and is the emotional rock of her dad, has not spared the awful comments she receives from family members who think that she is becoming “old and should marry lest she will be unable to bear children.” However, she chooses to stay single, because she has not met someone she likes yet and loves her career more does that make her a lesser woman? I don’t think so.
There is nothing wrong in women being home-makers or working moms, but why does hell break loose when a woman decides to stay single and focus on her career. I do not think a woman’s worth is decided by virtue of her biologically bearing children, also who and what decides if you are true woman? I am still to understand that concept - yet everyone seems to be throwing that word around as if it is something all women should aspire for....
I also think that women should possess the right to choose what happens to them and their bodies and whether they want to become mothers biologically or decide to embrace matrimony. To conclude I would like to think that as a culture, we have moved away from the mentality that a woman’s job is only to get married and birth children…. | |
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