WHERE IS MY PLACE IN FEMINISM

I think I must state in the beginning itself that the essence of this article or the issues or

questions which I'm going to raise has been predominantly influenced by my own

experiences.

My experience of patriarchal social oppression was not just about being a woman because patriarchy is more harsher on me for being classified as "physically disabled Indian women", who according to the society rather needs sympathy and special care than political and social representation.

Recognizing my sociocultural and political positioning in a patriarchal society like ours is a

much more difficult task for me because the already intolerant society is more intolerant

towards me. Initially, I thought having supportive parents is enough to be able to led an easy or you can say a " good" life but after some time when i started pushing my limits to reach the goal of living a normal life just like others then i realized that life will going to be a much more difficult task to pull off than i thought and this becomes a 'new normal' for me in a very initial stages of my life and the most common instance of this was that the patriarchal structure of our society has titled many normal things in life as a privilege for me like "travelling alone"..." "Getting your work done by yourself"... more specifically i should say that this structure has resisted me a lot from becoming a normal independent woman. And this whole oppressive scenario is incomplete without those offensive comments which I need to bear on a daily basis which also need to get the credit for increasing my emotional enduring capacity to some other level.

But the purpose of this article was not to brag about my life difficulties for being physically disabled but the much greater reason for my disappointment was the ignorance and exclusion of this area of women suppression within the feminist agenda of modern day society. It was painful and disillusioning realization to recognize that patriarchal suppression of disabled women occupy a multifarious and marginalized position especially in Indian feminist discourse. Plural identity crises of exploitation make our experience of societal oppression blurred in a modern feminist discourse and my purpose of writing this article is to make a urge to make this specific arena of women oppression within this patriarchal setup more inclusive and addressable in a popular feminist agenda of the 21st century.

- Nisha Hussain, is a political science final year student, who firmly believes in the vision of making equality a normal public recognition.