The reason: people don’t want daughters, so they kill them. There’s sex-selective abortion (which is a criminal offence, and yet here we are), or for those who can’t access/afford it, there’s killing them after they’re born, in whichever stage of life they may be: femicide. As you can imagine, it’s a feminist issue. You want to test a foetus for whether it becomes a radfem later on, but did you know that it is a crime in India to know even the sex of the foetus before birth (people pay an arm and a leg to get it done illegally, in moving vehicles, rather than have a daughter), to discourage sex-selective abortion? Did you know that in India the debate on abortion isn’t whether it should or shouldn’t be allowed for its own sake, but on whether it should be discouraged to check sex-selective abortion? Yeah, it’s a pretty serious problem.
I know anecdotes don’t count for much, but I can’t help relating this one. I’m my parents’ second daughter. When my mother got pregnant for the third time, and the doctor told them it’s going to be a daughter, my grandparents tried to persuade my father to have it aborted. My father tried to convince my mother, who absolutely refused. Luckily, she was one of the minority of women in this country who can exercise some bodily autonomy. She carried it to term, and it was a son. There were grand celebrations, everyone congratulated my parents etc. etc., and no, this did not happen when my sister and I were born.
Most people I know have many, many such anecdotes to tell. All efforts to end this woman-hating are radical feminist. What little the women of this country have clutched away from patriarchy is due to feminism. I’m sure you understand that equality-lipstick feminism doesn’t go very far, because it never addresses any real problems. It has been, and continues to be radical feminism. (see, how radfems aren’t all white / western-centric? Good.)
Big Mean Sweaty Dyke 