I don't remember exactly when I first became interested in the private lives of women, but I do know that I was very curious about them from a very young age. My mind was always thinking about the issue, and I had so many questions: Why? Where? How? And when? I kept asking these questions, and the people around me eventually tired of it.
There were many things I didn't understand, and they confused me. If God had made everything, if things had been this way for centuries if this was just part of life, and if everyone knew about these things and life felt incomplete without them, then why did people talk about these things in whispers and hints?
Even back then, I started to feel that the way we lived was hypocritical.
At school, girls would blush and secretly talk to each other, shyly looking at themselves and feeling embarrassed, and I didn't understand why they were ashamed. We hadn’t created our own bodies with their curves and shapes. It's not like we girls asked God to make our chests a certain way, our waists a certain shape, and the way we walk a certain way. Since we didn't have any control over this, and our souls were put into these bodies without our choosing, why were we so embarrassed and hesitant about these bodies that we never asked for? Why did we talk about them secretly and ignore their problems? Why did we hide illnesses related to them?
These were the questions that started bothering me from a young age. Maybe these questions were the beginning of my idea of "gynecological feminism."
A woman's life, happiness, peace, rights, and responsibilities are connected to solving the problems that gynecological feminism focuses on
I often felt that maybe God hadn’t differentiated between men and women, but that the people on Earth were determined to. Why is it that they looked at girls in one way and boys in another?
When I watched the boys playing, they seemed not to care about anything. Hair was growing on their bodies, some parts were getting bigger, and no matter how they looked or acted, no one seemed to scold them. But as soon as a girl's chest started to develop even a little, people would start telling her:
Cover your head properly!
Why are your clothes so tight?
Walk with your head down, your chest shouldn't stick out.
Cover your chest, your father and brothers are home.
Honestly, even at that age, I started to dislike breasts. It felt like they turned a girl from a normal person into someone who always had to cover and protect them, even in her sleep. Protect them? From whom? From people who were supposed to be her own family? Father, uncles, cousins, brothers? Not to mention everyone else.
Why couldn't these people, around whom we were supposed to be so careful, understand that a woman's breasts are just part of her body, one that plays an important role in having children? Men have breasts too! I agree that breasts can cause some sexual feelings, but we can't control them.
I understand that a woman's body is different from a man's body, but a woman is not just a body. She also has a soul, just like any other person. She can think, understand, and feel. She has the same right to live as anyone else. Taking care of and talking about her own body is her right and responsibility, especially because she is expected to have children.
And what if you don't know the strengths and weaknesses of your own body?
I have been trying to answer these questions ever since. I want to help women stop feeling ashamed of their bodies and instead begin to understand them and feel confident and secure about them.
I believe that if men who live with women could also try to understand, know, believe, and trust, then women's lives would become easier. Women see death up close many times in their lives. Death almost touches them during every pregnancy and childbirth. If a woman's period doesn't stop, death can also be a risk. Death is always present, even in private. And death wins when men and women don't understand what happened and what could have been done.
"Gynaecological feminism" is the term we use to describe this way of thinking. I was brave enough to create this term, but I don't own it. Anyone can add to it, make it better, and show new ways of looking at it.
Feminism teaches women to stand up for their rights so that they can live with respect. But if a woman doesn't know her own body and its problems, and doesn't know how to deal with them, can she really be free and independent?
A woman's life, happiness, peace, rights, and responsibilities are connected to solving the problems that gynecological feminism focuses on.
I found the answers to many of the things I thought about as a child when I became a gynecologist. I also learned from the millions of women I have seen and met in different parts of the world over the last thirty-two years.
Finally, I am not doing all this for any reward or fame. I believe that with the little knowledge I have and my slightly different way of thinking, I should do my part. Maybe this way, the suffering that women experience in the world can be reduced a little.
Translated by Dr. Santosh Kamrani from Urdu.