Feminist upon my eyes

Feminist issues are such never-ending cases in this world since the word ‘emancipation’ was propagandized by some feminist figures. They have been suing the equalization in giving some roles and social identity between men and women. Liberal feminists are struggling for the right equalization between while radical feminist tend to reject in patriarchal system and give their so much rejections in symbolic order which is dominated by the men.

These studies are classified as feminist approach in literature criticism. In this approach, feminist oppose essentialism in their studies. Essentialism is a belief that things have a set of characteristic which make them what they are, or the doctrine that essence is prior to existence. They refuse this study, and point out that the property of feminine and masculine are the result of social construction, and it’s not coming from their innate quality as feminine or masculine. Extremely, Butler stated that biological differences between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ which are dichotomist are also the result of social construction. Social construction is the way people construct and judge men are considered as strong, while women are considered full of tenderness. Looking at this extreme paradigm, I have different perspective opposing the concepts. If ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ were shaped by social construction, my question will be ‘what is our existentialism’, ‘in which side we will stand’, ‘who decide what we are’. We can’t deny that since we were born, the gender has already embedded to us. It could be seen from our body construction that could distinguish our gender obviously. Scientifically, some research shows that our genes and hormonal point of views describe our characteristic that have already made ‘man’ and ‘woman’ different in many cases, not only from biological point of view, but it’s deeper than that. The ‘message’ inside our genes indirectly takes a part in shaping our characteristic, and it is then continued by ‘social construction’ mentioned by feminist. The ‘essence’ and ‘social construction’ are connected each other in distinguishing feminine and masculine. Then, how about heterosexual cases, well, I can say that, scientifically, heterosexual is the effect of genetic divergence which their body hormonal is not balance in amount, yet it still could be changed. However, it also needs some external factors as the support of the changing, which is (again) social construction. Heterosexual is not only the matter of choice of human’s life, but it is also supported by their environmental surrounding. Consequently, heterosexual is not the only reason for feminist to define ‘feminine’, ‘masculine’, or biological construction on them (man and woman) are the result of social construction because there are more complex explanations in scientific point of view and also as the matter of ‘essence’ or ‘destiny’ studied by essentialisms. In brief, what I want to say is that human characteristic whether it is ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ has already embedded as the matter of human essence since we were born, and this prepared characteristics are potentially dig and shaped by the ‘social construction’. Those procedures continue simultaneously, and we couldn’t separate one of them.

The other issue of feminist is about the equalization between man and woman, and feminists refusal in patriarchal symbolic. Well, if we talk about equalization between man and woman, we have to deal with the definition of ‘equalization’ itself, what kind of equalization do they want because it’s impossible to make man and woman definitely equal in many ways. Naturally, men were stronger enough in physical point of view; they are intelegence-animalia (metaphor for the man characteristic as an animal, but have intelligence). That’s why, they tend to be more brutal than women, and sometimes they could be uncontrollably doing something. If we take a look some years ago, the time when women were limited in many ways, and always be the object of man sexual abuse, it is because the quality of men who are born as intelegence-animalia. This historical background has led women to make some movement to destruct the gap. Since that, women could have some freedom to express themselves in many ways. I absolutely agree with statement that women should have their freedom and the right equalization as men do. However, the freedom and equalization that I support are in the case of education, jobs and etc, but they have to realize their position, their essence as the woman. We could have the highest education, we could have our dream-job, we could do man’s job, we could do everything freely, but we don’t have to forget our nature as woman. We grow in the country which gives so much respect in its custom and cultural values. We are woman couldn’t do something that violate our custom and cultural values, and so do the men. Although we are given freedom in many ways as women, but we still have to control ourselves, we have to see our nature and essence as the woman, and we can’t deny it. Consequently, if we want the equality as the man have, well we have it, but we can make it as equal as man because man and woman were born differently with also different role in this life. The only problem of this case is that, man sometimes cannot respect woman as the way they are. Men tend to use their power to manipulate the weakness of women, and this is actually what the feminist want to fight for, and sometimes feminists could be so much radical in their fight. We cannot deny that as the women we are born as weaker than man, but God has the reason for it. Women were born to control men’s brutality, and men were born stronger to protect the women, not to manipulate the women’s weakness. Well, this is actually the problem we are facing in this world. If men realize their role and give so much respect to women, there will be no more brutality in men and radical ideology in women because they have already understood their role from being different.

In brief, men and women were born to complete and control each other, not to destruct one another. Since we have our mind as the tool to solve our life problems, there is always so many ways out to make the harder to be easier. We don’t have to pretend because in fact men need women, and vice versa. This is actually life, we live in space with so many differences, but it’s the only way to shape our mental to be wiser and more respectful creatures on earth.