How the system breaks women
Updated On: 09 August, 2024 06:42 AM IST | Mumbai | Rosalyn D`mello
Living amid patriarchy compels us to spend as much as possible of our bodily resources until there is nothing left. What wonders would be wrought if we were empowered instead of bogged down
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It’s hard not to see wrestler Vinesh Phogat’s defeat as enabled by a system. Pic/AFP
I know I am not alone in the disappointment around wrestler Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification from the Olympic tournament, after making it to the finals. The message she posted announcing her retirement feels gutting, because her frustration is so real and palpable. The truth is, while most other athletes around the world were busy practising, Phogat, along with Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, was raising her fists against the administrators of the Wrestling Federation of India, then led by long-term president and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who had allegedly been functioning with a sense of impunity and entitlement that had gone unchecked.
It’s hard not to see her defeat as enabled by a system. Reports said that Phogat had been forced to compete in the 50 kg category, because a player had already been decided for the more suitable 53 kg category. The sense of defeat that permeates her message about retirement feels devastating because it is obvious that she feels broken by the system. This is what living in a toxic, patriarchal environment does to brilliant women, it fails us consistently and unsparingly. It pushes us to spend as much as is humanly possible of our own bodily resources until there is nothing left, until the last drop of blood or sweat has been drawn out and we collapse because we are dehydrated.
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