Survival Is Not an Ideology

If yesterday was a tornado, today is a day of resolution. I no longer have the luxury of avoidance. There is no alternative left but to face fears that should perhaps have been confronted twenty years ago. Healing, I am learning, does not arrive as a moment of peace—it arrives as a decision.

In an age where the word feminism is routinely mocked, I have realised that it is most often ridiculed by those who fear losing the comfort of dominance or the safety of submission. Choice unsettles people. I have met many women who proudly declare themselves “non-feminists,” believing that feminism has forced women into lives they never wanted—into work, into independence, into exhaustion. To them, I say this gently: nowhere in scripture does it say a woman must work. If you are fulfilled caring for a family, that is a valid and dignified choice. But fulfillment cannot be enforced as a universal rule. When one woman’s reality differs from yours, it does not threaten your way of life.

If I am capable of working, if I am the sole provider for my family, should I sit idle at home and expect sustenance to appear through prayer alone? Survival is not ideology. It is necessity.

What frustrates me is not the debate itself, but its shallowness. Social media has reduced feminism, anti-feminism, and even “meninism” into performance—reels engineered for outrage rather than understanding. The word triggered is thrown around casually, often by those least willing to examine the actions that caused harm in the first place. We live in a time where accountability is demanded from one side and evaded by the other, and this imbalance is casually explained away as attachment styles, planetary shifts, or psychological jargon. Communication, it seems, has become optional. Responsibility has not.

When responsibility traditionally assigned to men falls on the shoulders of a woman, and she does not wait for rescue or miracles, she works. She earns. She provides. Feminism, at its core, is not rebellion—it is resilience. My understanding of this came not from books but from watching my mother endure trauma within the household and rejection from her own family, all while continuing to hold the home together. I witnessed her suffering in silence long before I had language for my own. The childhood trauma I carry today was shaped by nearly every man I grew up around, which makes it almost ironic when men decades older than me now claim they can “solve” my problems. I am no longer interested in being rescued. More often than not, the rescuer is part of the wreckage.

I do not hate men. Hatred requires energy I would rather spend on clarity. What I feel, instead, is a quiet pity for those who wander through life without purpose, mistaking control for care and possession for protection. When women refuse to be saved, such men feel useless—and rather than evolve, they resent. Self-control, empathy, and accountability are not threats to masculinity; they are its foundation.

The ancient scriptures spoke of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—the world as one family. Yet today, even the idea of home feels fragile. Perhaps the storm outside reflects the chaos within us all. Still, I choose resolution. I choose responsibility. And I choose to stand, unrescued, in the eye of the storm—steady enough now to see clearly, and strong enough to move forward.