Monday, October 28, 2013

From freedom to slavery



Recently, my all inner world was constantly pondering women's situation in their family context, considering only women from post-soviet countries, such as Baltic States, Balkan region and the rest of Eastern Europe. This blog post has spent over three weeks in 'draft' section, because I kept hoping I will arrive in some kind of a conclusion. Nevertheless, this question stays open and doesn't leave my mind. Maybe because I can't find the nerve to keep searching for an answer even though I'm interested in the idea of finding it. What puts me down the most is the absolute downfall of the idea of two young people being desperately in love with each other and willing to do anything for each other. It seems like something that can only happen if the society ceases to remain humane.

So what I've been pondering is women taking up the role of a husband-slave, or, worse, a family-slave. As this post-soviet period was not too long ago, this is still to to be seen in the environment of where I am from. I find it impossible for myself to understand why women choose to not change it and not do anything to make it stop. The majority of middle-aged and old men of this generation seem to be very fond of consuming enormous amounts of alcohol, especially vodka. This leads to alcohol addiction. These men not only disrespect their children, but usually as well humiliate their wives,and spend most of their family's money on alcohol. There are also cases when women take up this role, I'm not a sexist, but most often it IS men. What adds to never ending family quarrels, women having to earn money for the whole family and look after the children and the household, and men showing their children the worst family life example possible, is quite often physical violence, humiliation of women in front of their children, or even sexual violence within the family.

It is, of course, terrible and hard to perceive as something that is still happening in our modern society, but what worries me the most is how women accept it as something 'natural' (it's hard to even use this word in a context like this) and do nothing to change it. It might, of course, be so because of never ending hope that one day it will change without doing anything, or fear of big changes, or maybe even taking children away from their father, but if you think about it.. This is a change for good, and it is also a good thing to do regarding children's wealth. When you think about it, women's fear to escape is the only power supply for this kind of men. They have power over someone, they are given money, they have someone to clean for them, and cook for them. They have a servant. But only if women in this situation treat themselves as servants. But the truth is, everyone's free, regardless of their gender, marital status or number of children. It isn't a choice to make, it isn't even a choice of whether to make this change or not. However, the problem is - wait, there is no problem. And then, after choosing to be repressed instead of being free, women think they have the right to get offended by the usage of term 'women logic'.

The only thing I am sure of after thinking over it and writing it down is that I will be relieved if this won't become a tradition. The idea of free and open-minded society is taking over my generation, and it looks like we will have to be the ones to give it a form and make it a tradition, something to pass on to other generations as a model of general wealth. We will have to be the ones to resist the bad example we have been shown, take up the good bits from the exceptions in it and create something new for ourselves to make our lives better. To cheer you up, I think we will do just fine :)

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