Enter liberal feminism, a ‘patriarchy lite’ version of feminism that has manipulated women into believing that their oppression is, in fact, ‘empowering,’ cornering them into ‘choosing’ it for individual ‘empowerment.’ It is industry-driven, gaslighting propaganda that, in effect, shames an individual woman for not ‘choosing’ to ‘empower’ herself out of being oppressed on the basis of her sex.

At first, I was so taken by the liberal movement when it talked about caste injustice and religious oppression, but, then, I found a huge problem with the liberal model: Men erased women, and, worse, women happily helped erase themselves at the whims of men. We see the same with groups that claim to espouse critical thinking and freethought – until a woman calls out a porn-sick man. Liberal feminism often becomes their excuse, their refuge.

My experience in and exit from liberal feminist groups felt so Orwellian, because women tried to be ‘not like other girls,’ alienating themselves as individuals from women and girls collectively. And, then, men held opinions supporting pornography and prostitution, even supporting the erasure of female-only, single-sex spaces, none of which concern these men’s own rights as a sex class, but which further disempower all women subject to all men.

The rabid manner in which men have marketed pornography as ‘empowering’ for women, as if it can act as a means for boosting sexual expression and self-confidence among women, has been lost on me. I wonder if such men would be willing to have their bodies penetrated, over and over, every night, by random members of their sex, where the sum of their entire bodily existence, what ‘womanhood’ is in men’s eyes, horrifically becomes limited to holes.

Liberal feminists follow this same approach, in trying to prioritize any group of males over all females, debating how trans-identified males strangely face oppression so awful that being a ‘cis’ woman, that is, being female, has become itself perceived as a ‘privilege.’ Now, women have become a subclass of our own sex class. Against reality, the authoritarian demands for ‘validation’ over ‘feelings’ and ‘identities’ often tread a very dangerous path, far beyond the original, clinical and psychiatric concerns pertaining to individual cases of gender dysphoria.

It is 2020, and Indian women belonging to the ‘lower caste’ still work as manual scavengers, picking among feces and other garbage with their bare hands. This is after the government ruled manual scavenging to be unconstitutional. Women have a long way to go before we can be free from the shackles of patriarchy. And I strongly refuse to support any social movement that continues disempowering women to serve men in the name of women’s ‘empowerment.’