Of victims and victimization

This is just a random blog post about my random thoughts. It may not be very coherent, but I wanted to "pen" it down anyway!

I've been thinking a lot about the social struggles that happen around the world, sexism, racism, casteism, religious fundamentalism, regionalism to name a few. The more I think about it, the more I see a common thread among these insidious institutions. Firstly, each one is an attempt to prove one group's superiority over another group of people. Secondly, the superiority is assumed by mere virtue of the circumstances of one's birth. One's gender, race, caste, religion, place of origin are all used to claim that one is better than someone else.

That said, I am all for people trying to be better than someone else. In fact, I think everyone should in fact compete with others and strive to do better. It makes us all better people. But claiming to be superior without having proved oneself in any way whatsoever is ridiculous at best and dangerous at worst, especially when done in an institutionalized manner and in large numbers. But if one were to think about it, its in fact the easiest way to feel good about oneself, especially if one doesn't have anything else thats going good. Whenever I am outside and some man on the road harasses me or deliberately does something to make me uncomfortable, to me, it seems like its his way of making it known that irrespective of how he compares with me on our individual value and contribution to society, he is still superior to me just by virtue of being a man. The fact that he can make me uncomfortable or harass me without retribution ratifies his belief that he has power over me. Its a rather pitiful attempt, but I see that its quite widespread and not just with sexism.

Another interesting observation that someone made and I am borrowing is the idea that every victim is for some reason noble merely because of the victimization. For example, there is a school of thought that says women are better people than men and hence should not be discriminated against. I don't like this argument for two reasons. One, I don't believe in a gender dichotomy. I think that we will achieve a gender neutral society or as close to one as possible only when we stop identifying everyone with a gender and performing artificially construed gender roles. Secondly, the reason why women should not be discriminated against and treated badly is that they are human beings just like men and deserve the same quality of life that men enjoy. That is in fact the reason why any kind of discrimination should be opposed. Claiming that women are more moral creatures is a poor argument according to me. In fact, I don't think the claim is true at all. Victimized and marginalized groups have as many good people and bad people as the oppressors.