Burn The Patriarchy, But Keep The Ashes

Patriarchy is a strange conundrum

A dichotomy that's an absolute autocracy for most parts

But then every now and then, as per crooked conveniences

As and when it profits, 

or plays a leash you could hold to control another of your own skin

Patriarchy becomes a silent saviour; gets the job done, no questions asked, no pat on the back

When your lifelong activism is all about dismantling the very bones of a system

It is rather audacious of you to stand there and feed off it, 

whenever it suits your appetite

For starters, that's not activism, 

that's not a fight for a cause, 

that's not revolution, 

not a movement

That's selling personal interests disguised in the burqa of feminism

I know you're wondering why would I ever refer to feminism as a burqa

But then, when you reduce feminism to an unquestionable faith 

to further your agendas and your unresolved issues from bad decisions 

you in all your glory are guilty of

How's it any different from a religion

You tell me dowry is wrong, and hey I agree

You tell me dowry is about men looting a woman's mother's gold, 

and I wish I could agree, 

but then who do you think paid for the mother's gold

You'll tell me it's gold that's been passed on through generations, 

and my question still remains

Who do you think paid for the gold, 

or even looted it off another man, wasn't it a man

A man of your lineage but now you call it inheritance, 

isn't that funny

You in the very same breath, tell me, 

alimony is justified, because a woman cooked and washed and fucked and fed the man

And I wish I could be as oblivious to the reality of money-making

Just how a man doesn't own a woman, not in full, not even in halves

What a man makes, 

you cannot feel entitled to own even a portion of it 

because you feel he owes it to you

Imagine your parents asking you for paychecks

in the name of maintenance, 

because they chose to cook and wash, and feed and sponsor your education, growing up

You'll tell me them birthing you was their choice, 

you marrying him wasn't yours

But then, is that his problem or yours

Is he to suffer 

because your parents were convinced this is a marriage acceptable to their ideas of the world

How do you explain feeling entitled to the fruits he bear 

but never to the years and decades of being fucked over and peeled off his skin from every inch of his existence

If a relationship is a transaction, it ends the minute the relationship does

You will tell me how a man raping a woman or killing his wife over an affair, is all on patriarchy, and hey I agree

But then you'll never mention all the women who have used patriarchy as a leash to control other women, 

how mothers have leashed daughters because grandmothers leashed mothers, how this too has been passed on like family heirloom

And then, you'll tell me, in the same breath, that a woman murdering her husband in cold blood isn't really on her, 

but on patriarchy, 

because patriarchy didn't let her choose

And I'll wish, I could sledgehammer your brain cells into their sensibilities

Because then you'd see, 

if you couldn't fight your family, 

it's a battle between you and your blood, and spilling the blood of someone who was there in the search of a companion, 

who didn't hold you at gunpoint or emotionally manipulate you into marrying them, 

is not a problem of the system, 

it's a problem of your blood, 

for they are the fucking system

You'll tell me how gender roles are messed up 

and how a woman should be everything she wants to be

While expecting men to be everything she wants him to be 

like a man's existence had suddenly become limited to a woman's wet dream

It's autocratic to expect one gender to adhere to their gender roles 

because it benefits the other gender who's busy crying victim and screaming queenhood in the same breath

It's autocratic to blame an entire system a thousand years old on one gender, 

like the other gender was asleep all this while, and has suddenly woken off a coma

And yet, your lifelong activism was about dismantling an autocratic system

In the bargain to be a revolutionary, we often become what we despise the most.