Choices, their exercising and their limitations

Every decision in life involves making choices. If one were a woman, making choices to take decisions not only become important, but also become a catalyst for reflection. 

There are a lot of boundaries that are involved, with the differentiating line between right and wrong getting thinner when it comes to women and their presence in our society. But there are some aspects that are common – right as well as wrong – between choices that women and men take, or need to take. 

As necessary and relevant as it is to be a women’s rightist in a patriarchal society, it’s also equally relevant to not substitute feminism with misandry. To quote a cliché, the world is two halves composed of yin and yang, unimaginable as an entity in the absence of one or the other. As such, while it’s perfectly justified to clamour for equality for women, it doesn’t have to be that equality for women is substituted for pulling men down. Society doesn’t need such glaringly ironic contradictions. 

In continuance with this facet, it also needs to be reminded that cheating, whether a man cheats on a woman or whether a woman cheats on a man is wrong; any which way one looks at it, or prefers to look at it. It’s not a display of modern thought process or stepping away from expected practices, but a sheer disrespect of one party towards the other, not to mention an abject abusing of trust. 

The existing state-of-affairs is such that a man’s treated as scum when his wandering eye becomes obvious. If truly there has to be empowerment, there has to be acceptance of a man’s choice to have a physical relationship outside marriage instead of coming at him with all guns blazing. 

Likewise, with regard to man engaging in a physical relationship before marriage, feminism also means extending a simple courtesy of not gagging the man in question and holding him to marriage or worse yet, labelling him as a sexual offender. For, having a physical relationship before marriage was his choice as much as it a woman’s to accept it at that time and enter into it, with her eyes wide open. And unequivocally, the same rationale applies – and needs to apply – to women as well.

But having said so, in utmost truth, a deprecatory attitude towards women vis-à-vis men is largely prevalent in any society – be it progressive or traditional. And as regards empowerment is concerned, the trait isn’t about choosing to cheat or adopting an attitude of superiority over any relationship practice, distinguishing men and women. But is rather about taking a decisive stance against the person who chooses to cheat in case of the former, and not judging the ones who choose to lead their personal lives in a particular way in case of the latter.