How Women Should Live
By: Maulida Fulky Fauziati
Tags: Feminism, Womanism, Gender Identity, Equal Rights, Gender Equality

Photo by Antonino Visalli on Unsplash

When you hear the word “woman” what do you think in the first place? beauty? elegant? perfection? or anything else which is nonsense? As time went by, I realized that being a woman is not easy. Many things make it absurd and tiresome unless they live in the right sphere. The thing that makes me curious is why those sexist people try to make up the rules for other women who they don’t even know. They say women have to be like this and that as if women have no value if they do different things. Many of the sexists even came from among women, some people said that “Women lift each other.” but it is just bullshit for those sexist people. They feel more empowered to overthrow their fellow women because they think they are luckier.

What I write here is based on my experiences, my friends, or other people I have met who comes from the Asian family. It is very often that people from Asian families, ask personal questions that have nothing to do with them. especially this type of question “when are you getting married?” to a woman in her twenties or nearing thirty, and if you are thirty or past that number and you are not married then the moment of gathering with your ‘big’ family might feel like a hell. Because if you are in your late twenties or your thirties you will be considered an unsold spinster then they will say “don’t be so picky.” Hello? excuse me? I even rolled my eyes when I heard it.

Why women can’t be picky to choose their partner? They have the right to be selective because they choose a partner for life and other people will not be responsible for that and when a woman is married, many people will ask “when do you have children?” “Why don’t you have children?” “How many children do you want to have?” Hey that woman will discuss those domestic matters with her husband, not with you who is no one. After all, children are the gift from God. They must have tried if they wanted to, why should they be asked too often? it will actually hurt the couple. After all, not everyone who gets married wants to have children or is ready to have children right away, why is it so difficult for them to understand that everyone’s process is different.

In the case of married couples who have not had children even though they have been married for a long time, people tend to blame the woman and say that the woman is not healthy enough and often even asks the man to remarry (with different woman) so that they have a child. Don’t they think that men also have reproductive organs that can have problems? Why do women have to be told to see a doctor and seek treatment? why don’t both of them go to a doctor so that there is no need for patriarchal and sexist unreasonable assumptions.

In most of the Asian families I have met, women are not formed and encouraged to be independent, but they are always identified with weak creatures who are always dependent on others. When a woman chooses to have a career there is always a gap for other people to drop her down. They value a woman’s worth only from their own point of view and tend to impose their annoying opinions. They always tell what is lady like, including things that should be general for all mankind. Even in cases of sexual harassment where women are the victims, there are still many people who blame women even from fellow women. Those patriarchal people say that the victim of sexual harassment wears clothes that are too short and revealing, then what about people who have covered almost their entire body but are still sexually harassed? What else is the reason? the clothes were too loose and long so it makes people curious to touch them? very stupid right? maybe those women feel safe and privileged because they have never been sexually harassed so, it is very easy for them to blame the victim who is also a woman. I don’t know, a lot of things don’t make sense in this world.

A lot of people said woman is special and glorified but woman also cannot show her face and her voice is silenced. They also said that women are disgrace and slander, this really confuses me. But I think people should really stop regulating or setting the standard of living for women because it is none of their business. We cannot equate everyone’s life with our standards because indeed we all live with different circumstances. You can’t equate your opinion with your friends whose life values ​​are different, because forcing your opinion and saying how a woman should live is really annoying and useless. Besides that they all have different life goals, living in different years and times, I think it is normal to have different standards from the past. Because of advances in science and technology, the situation is also getting harder so things in the past that made sense were often irrelevant for now.

Let a woman choose her own way of life that she thinks suitable for her and make her happy, give her the opportunity as men in this world who are free to choose their way of life. Don’t set unreasonable standards for them. They live lifes and as long as they don’t hurt or harm you, leave them alone.