Frankly speaking, I wasn't aware of International Women's Day until about a few years ago. Only when I started seeing a lot of offers, discounts and schemes being announced by businesses about the same and then a thought occurred to me -- Is it about the women's cause or is it about the business? Time, and again, the answer kept coming back to me that it is all about business under the guise of women's cause.



Today, also being International Women's Day, while I was driving to work, I saw poor women on roads, struggling and working hard to make ends meet and I thought, instinctively, where is celebration of women's day contributing for the upliftment of such women. And not only, women, even poor men have a tough life or I would say tougher life.



What I feel is that celebrating International Women's Day is all about educated women getting one more excuse not to work, to wear fancy clothes and get pampered without reason. And the thought of giving women a day off is gaining ground; what with even Prime Minister Narendra Modi mulling the thought of declaring 8th March as a national holiday. If that happens, that would be preposterous.



Since, I work with abused, victimized and distressed men and run a community center called Confidare to help them, often people ask me - Do you think celebrating women's day affects men adversely?



I have thought a lot about this and the more I think about it, Uncle Ben from the superhero series - Spiderman keeps coming to me with his classic one liner - "With great power comes great responsibility"



We all keep hearing a lot of discourse about women's rights but where do we hear any discourse about women's responsibilities. When, we don't remind women of their responsibilities we end up eulogizing and pampering undeserving women who are abusive and at the same time we trivialize the issues faced by men.



Very recently, the famous case of Rohtak Sisters of November 2014 was in news once again as the girls lost the case since the boys were acquitted by the court based on lack of evidence and eye witness statements. For starters, in November 2014, two girls (sisters) from Rohtak shot to instant fame after they publicly assaulted 3 boys with belts accusing them of molestation but in reality, the fight was over seats.



The boys had asked the girls to vacate seat for an elderly woman upon which the girls got infuriated. One of the girls started creating a ruckus that she was molested by the boys and the other one started filming a video of the boys getting beaten up. In no time, the innocent boys were criminals. Their appointments in army were canceled immediately and they were defamed across the country. And now, after almost 2.5 years, the boys are declared innocent.



So, the moot question remains is, how to reinstate the life of the young boys ruined by these two girls and what punishment are these girls going to get for their heinous act of publicly assaulting innocent boys and making a criminal out of them. And the other important question is, what are we doing on women's day to contain the devastation caused by such abusive and criminal minded women?



When we celebrate women's day and only talk about the greatness of women, we are sparing such women who not only take advantage of being a woman but also ruin other men's lives for the sake of pampering their fragile ego and vulnerable insecurities.



Celebrating women's day and highlighting issues faced by women trivialises similar issues faced by men because men go through domestic violence, sexual violence, economic violence and the worst part is, there is no recognition of the problem itself from the social perspective, let alone a remedy being there.



Since, feminism claims itself to be a movement of gender equality, true equality will be achieved only when International Men's Day is also celebrated with equal zeal and we hear the Prime Minister talking about declaring that as a national holiday as well.



Till then, celebration of International Women's Day is all about validating male bashing.

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