I Respect Women. That Is Exactly Why I Am Not a Feminist.
I Respect Women. That Is Exactly Why I Am Not a Feminist.
Respect isn’t a competition, and a lot of what passes for feminism today forgets that.
I’ll start with something personal, because it’s where my views come from.
Everything I’ve done in my life rests on two women. My mother and my wife., who worked on me patiently, year after year, and gave me the strength I have.
So let me be clear about what I stand for before I say what I stand against.
I believe women deserve great respect, regard and value. What a woman does requires strength. Men need that strength to grow in their life.
I believe every woman should have the freedom and the opportunity to study, work, lead, build and become whatever she wants. I believe laws should be fair and equal, protecting every citizen regardless of gender.
If that were all feminism meant today, I would call myself a feminist without hesitation. But in its popular form, the movement has drifted a long way from that. Here are five reasons I can’t stand behind it.
1. When equality turns into contempt for men (Misandry)
Just weeks ago, Delhi saw large protests after the horrific alleged assault of a 17-year-old girl in a South Delhi park. That anger is fully justified. Whoever did this deserves the harshest punishment the law allows, and every girl deserves to walk through her city at night without fear.
But listen to the slogans that went viral:
“Ek kachori, do samosa, in mardon ka kya bharosa?”
“Ek sutta, do chai, mard jaat hai-hai.”
They’re catchy and they rhyme, and they’re all over Instagram Reels. But stop and think about what they say. They don’t say “this rapist can’t be trusted.” They say men can’t be trusted, all of them, as a group. The father who drops his daughter at college, the brother who waits at the bus stop for his sister, the husband working night shifts so his wife can study: in these chants, every one of them is a suspect.
Now flip it. Imagine men marching through Delhi chanting that women as a group can’t be trusted, after some crime committed by one woman. The country would rightly call it hateful. Contempt for a whole group because of how they were born is prejudice, whichever group it’s aimed at.
Interestingly, the protesters had a better slogan of their own: “Rapist ko andar karo, ladkiyon ko nahi.” Lock up the rapist, not the girls. I stand with that one completely. It aims at the criminal, not at half of humanity. Online, some young men answered the viral chants with “Ek idli, do dosa, har mard nahi ek jaisa.” Not every man is the same. That shouldn’t be a controversial thing to say.
When the law itself becomes a weapon
This mindset, that men are presumed guilty, doesn’t stay in slogans. It has seeped into how some laws are used.
Section 498A of the IPC (now Sections 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) and the Dowry Prohibition Act were created for a real and urgent reason: to protect women from cruelty and dowry harassment. Genuine victims deserve every protection these laws give, and I’m not asking for them to be scrapped. But India’s highest court has warned again and again about how they’re misused:
- 2005: In Sushil Kumar Sharma v. Union of India, the Supreme Court said misuse of 498A could unleash a kind of “legal terrorism.”
- 2014: In Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, the Court had to tell police to stop arresting husbands and their families automatically, just because a complaint was filed.
- May 2025: In Rajesh Chaddha v. State of UP, the Court acquitted a husband after a case that had dragged on for 26 years. It called the allegations vague and omnibus, and spoke of the “cruel misuse” of the provision. It also warned against the growing habit of roping in every relative of the husband.
- July 2025: In Shivangi Bansal v. Sahib Bansal, a husband had spent 109 days in jail and his father 103 days, over cases the Court later quashed. The Supreme Court ordered the wife and her parents to publicly apologize to his family. It also upheld safeguards, including Family Welfare Committees and a cooling-off period before arrests in 498A cases.
When the Supreme Court has to order an apology to a jailed husband and his elderly father, something has gone badly wrong. A just law protects the innocent on both sides.
Men who couldn’t take it anymore
Behind these legal debates are real men and real families.
Atul Subhash, a 34-year-old software engineer in Bengaluru, took his own life in December 2024. He left a 24-page note and an 81-minute video. He had been fighting six cases, including dowry and domestic-violence charges, and had attended around 120 hearings in three years, travelling from Bengaluru to a family court in Jaunpur. In his video, he alleged that when he mentioned suicidal thoughts in court, the judge laughed. He also alleged that a bribe was demanded to settle his case. Whatever the courts finally decide about those allegations, the picture of a man telling a courtroom he wants to die and hearing laughter should shake every one of us.
Just weeks later, on 31 December 2024, Puneet Khurana, a 40-year-old café owner in Delhi, died by suicide in the middle of a bitter divorce. He left a video of nearly an hour saying he had been tortured by his wife and in-laws.
In February 2025, Manav Sharma, a TCS employee in Agra, recorded a video before taking his life. In it he pleaded with the authorities that men need protection too.
These were allegations made by men in their last moments, and the courts will rule on the facts. But the pattern is hard to ignore. Every year in India, men make up roughly seven out of every ten recorded suicides. A society that laughs at men’s pain, assumes their guilt and calls their tears “male fragility” shouldn’t be surprised when so many of them break in silence.
Bottomline: Misandry is feminism today. Misandry is wrong.
2. Homemaking is not oppression
One of the most damaging messages of modern feminism is that a woman who looks after her home has somehow failed, as if cooking, raising children and keeping a household running were things only an uneducated or oppressed woman would do.
This is an insult to millions of women.
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The women who run our homes are not lesser. In Indian families they are the pillar of the house, honored and loved by their husbands and children. My wife’s work at home is the reason our family stands. Calling that “oppression” doesn’t free her. It belittles her.
This message also does quieter harm. A woman who simply takes care of her own space, her own cooking, her own family, starts to feel she is doing something small or shameful. Of course women should have every opportunity outside the home. But choosing the home should be honored too. Freedom that only counts when you make the “approved” choice isn’t freedom.
Bottomline: Take care of your home is strength that deserves regard and respect. It is not a sign of oppression or subjugation.
3. Let femininity and masculinity breathe
Some behaviors and qualities are naturally feminine, and some are naturally masculine. Many people enjoy living that way and feel most themselves that way.
Many women love wearing pink, being gentle and nurturing, dressing beautifully, and being cherished. Many men want to protect, provide and stand firm. These aren’t chains handed down by some oppressive system. For many people, they’re a source of joy and identity.
So why is it now treated as backward? Why should a woman feel she has to reject her softness to be taken seriously, or a man feel he has to apologize for his strength? Forcing people away from their own nature hurts them, women and men alike. If a woman wants to break every traditional mold, she should be free to. If she wants to live in a fully traditional, feminine way, she should be just as free. Real respect means accepting both.
Bottomline: Let nature breathe
4. India’s story is not the West’s story
This point is for Indian feminists in particular.
A lot of feminist language was built on Western history, and that history includes real horrors: women burned as witches, women kept out of universities, women denied the vote. Oxford didn’t grant women degrees until 1920, Cambridge not until 1948. Women in Switzerland couldn’t vote in federal elections until 1971.
India’s civilizational story is different. We worship the divine as feminine: Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Shakti herself. Women such as Ghosha and Lopamudra composed hymns in the Rig Veda. Gargi and Maitreyi debated philosophy with the greatest sages of their time. Amrapali, the celebrated nagarvadhu of Vaishali, was honored in her city and welcomed by the Buddha himself. Ahilyabai Holkar ruled with a wisdom and justice that are still remembered. Rani Lakshmibai rode into battle against an empire. When India became a republic, women got the vote on the same day as men, not decades later after a struggle.
Critics like to point to practices such as sati as proof that Indian culture is oppressive. Look closer. Sati was rare and regional, never universal. Our scriptures never required it. The Rig Veda itself tells the grieving widow to rise and return to the world of the living. Colonial-era writers played it up because it suited their claim that Indians needed ruling. And it was Indians, men like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and women like Savitribai Phule, who fought such distortions using the best of our own traditions.
Every civilization has its dark corners. But taking the rarest, ugliest corner of ours and calling it the whole of Indian culture isn’t history. It’s propaganda. It also cuts Indian women off from a rich heritage of strength that belongs to them.
5. The enemy is oppression, not structure
Every family and every organization has some kind of structure. Someone leads and someone decides. Some homes are patriarchal and some are matriarchal. Some trace lineage through the father, others through the mother (patrilineal vs matrilineal).
The Indian subcontinent has had all of these. The Khasi of Meghalaya are matrilineal. Kerala’s Nair communities long followed the matrilineal marumakkathayam system. Some Himalayan communities have practiced polyandry, and others polygyny. Even Mahabharata has both Polygamous as well as Polyandrous families mentioned.
Human societies have organized themselves in many ways, and families choose what works for them.
So why single out one structure for hatred? What’s wrong, always and everywhere, is oppression: denying a person dignity, safety or the chance to grow because of their gender. That is what we should fight, together.
Blaming every problem on “patriarchy,” and on men in general, is anger pointed at the wrong target. It doesn’t free anyone. It just divides homes and turns sons, brothers and husbands into suspects. Patriarchy is one of the systems to run a family, and there is nothing wrong with the system. someone has to lead the household. Today the word has become a derogatory remark to insult not only men but also cultures accross the globe.
Bottomline: Don’t blame the family structure or cultural values. Blame the misuse and lack of regard.
What I actually stand for
I’m not against women. I’m against hatred, wherever it comes from.
- Respect for women, their work, their wisdom and their contributions, inside and outside the home.
- Opportunity and freedom for every woman to choose her own path.
- Safety for every girl, and the harshest punishment for those who harm her.
- Equal laws that protect the innocent and punish the guilty, whatever their gender.
- No reverse hatred. “Mard jaat hai-hai” is as wrong as any slogan against women.
- No forced rules. Nobody should be pressured to give up their natural femininity or masculinity to fit an ideology.
Insulting feminine nature is wrong. Looking down on women who care for their homes is wrong. Hating women is wrong, and so is hating men.
Respect isn’t a fixed amount where honoring one gender means taking dignity from the other. The strongest families and societies aren’t the ones where men and women compete. They’re the ones where each honors the other , and each has freedom to express their nature. The Golden eras of human civilisation have been times and places where balance, fairness and mutual respect existed. I can still see glimpses of that balance in countries and cultures of Thailand, Japan and Korea. May the west and modern feminism learn from that.
Ek idli, do dosa, har mard nahi ek jaisa. That’s the world I want to help build, and it’s why I can’t call myself a feminist.
If this resonated with you, or if you disagree, I’d like to hear from you in the comments. Respectful disagreement is welcome here.
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