This is a very ubiquitous fact that our society is male dominant and we have talked about it so much.

Or
at least we must have felt it around us. Here, I wish to put it in an organized way from its roots. First of
all let’s build an understanding on the very abstract reasons and for which we need to accept few very
basic facts.

In almost every living being male are physically stronger. Being physically stronger is strongly correlated
or helps with being emotionally stronger. Also every civilization required law and order for development
and this law and order can’t be maintained without physical power. This is first basic reason of sexual
discrimination.

When the basic requirement for survival is fulfilled, human being is able to desire of something. Since
the evolution, after a constant supply food (a basic need) women are the first desire of men. And also
not to forget that women are the bearer of child. Later when we became civilized, clothing and shelter
also gained importance as basic needs.

Every living being is selfish, and the only question to it is how much? For Homo sapiens we can add
ambitions to its inherent characteristics.

Above three are like primary colours/roots of society and can explain each and every characteristics of
it. And in the order of occurrence lies their importance. With the progress of civilization, the above three
factors gave rise to some more like pride, honour, fidelity, war etc.

We got our definition of honour etched in our minds. And this is also our good reason to fight. Since
weak sex can’t do any harm like a man and is also a subject of desire. Beauty has become the first and
only power of female over male. And due to the reasons explained later, chastity and virginity as virtue
of her have come in picture. She was required to maintain it. Since she is not self sufficient in this, a
man should help her in this. That man will even wage war or die for this. It is matter of his honour. The
physical power, desire and ambition gave rise to this honour. He feels pride in protecting it and its
growth. Even in such a modern society, impact of this association of honour with fairer sex is so much
that sexual assault to her is considered greater crime than murder. That’s why we have/had capital
punishment for rape in most parts of the word. A man’s honour that of his wife, his family or his
beloved, formed an all-important issue. A man gradually became a “man of honour”. This is all just
because everything then was controlled by physical power and driven by desire and ambition. Human
being in order to achieve something may even assault the bearer of it. Since sexual assaults aren’t equal
to physical assaults because these are associated with our honour and they lead to pregnancy of female
and even the baby. And that child may get humiliation from society because this society thrives on
honour. So, this association Honour with female is the second basic reason of sexual discrimination
which is developed from the first two root causes.

With the rise of civilizations in different geographical parts, some groups also came into existence like
clan, tribe, village, community, religion, caste and nation and so on which are collections of in some
means similar individuals, which are approximately developed in sequence with civilization. So they also
will have the same property. So, our honour which was developed naturally also became associated with
these groups but in order of priority which depends upon individuals. Now, the above explained
association of honour with female also became the means to dishonour the rival groups, which was
reflected in abduction, sexual assaults, and war rapes on women of these groups. This also gave rise to
some practices like “Jauhar” in India among pride ruler clans like Rajpoots. This was also the reason of
shaved head of Hindu widows in West Bengal, the contemporary Sati practice and even for early
marriages. These groups felt a crucial need of it in contemporary prevailing situation. It was like honour
is above everything. But continuing it without any need wasn’t required and making it a religious law has
roots in priest’s selfishness. Here, this is also to be noted at that religion was developed after the human
discovery of honour. And you must agree that in such a primitive society where it was difficult to
maintain law and order by king; it was needed to associate some rules with religion. Things like sin, self-
conscience and guilt are promoted by religion. And we accept even now that without these we are
savages. We will explore religions later!!! But need to mention this fact that Religion is a thing which is
more or less static and was developed by primitive and enlightened people. It was developing and
changing and even evolving with the rise of civilizations but didn’t develop much after it. And also it
acted as an ancient mean of maintaining law and order and does so even now. It also distracted people
from their animal instincts.

Since the beauty of women enticed men and this has most of the times detrimental effect in the form
of fights between groups and so on. Also this leads to teenage pregnancies by the way. So, people in
some part of world like in Cameroon even practised breast ironing in the name of honour. There had
been so many wars in all over the world which had the root cause of “woman”. And none of them was
avoidable because when we fight for our honour, we know and feel that our fight is legitimate one.
Nothing stops us.

If we see those honour killings in India which are because of inter caste marriage, we can see that
killings happen more when the girl is of upper caste. And in the vice versa case, higher caste parents
mostly expel their son. Which can be again be explained by the fact that honour is strongly associated
with female and honour of caste adds to it.

After discussing this much we can assure ourselves that sexual discrimination was unavoidable because
it was time when survival of the fittest was the first rule. And women were not the fittest but were a
natural/needed/desired part of human race. This whole thing naturally and artificially in an unavoidable
way put women in different situation and gave her different responsibilities of society. But things should
change because society is developing with the help of education, which doesn’t require physical power.
Education is spreading, but some facts never changed and people are also not too much adaptive of
change. Let’s talk about these things in next post.