Engagement with China is presented as proof of resistance against Western dominance. Good relations with India become synonymous with regional stability. Foreign policy becomes a performance of political identity rather than a framework for advancing long-term national interests.
Women are neither vessels of national honour nor laboratories of cultural experimentation. They are citizens. And the value of a citizen lies not in her clothing, but in her ideas, her voice, her political convictions, and her contributions.
When the language of subalternity becomes a resource through which those closest to power construct their own political identities, we are compelled to ask: Are we truly listening to the voices of the marginalized, or are we witnessing the moral prestige of marginality being transformed into yet another form of political capital?
A political culture that cannot imagine women as independent political actors inevitably returns to patriarchy's oldest explanation: If a woman has succeeded, she must have traded her body for power. That explanation tells us very little about women. But it tells us almost everything about the society that produces it.
Whether a PhD student in Florida or a domestic worker returning from Saudi Arabia, the principle is the same: The state must recognize, protect, and advocate for all citizens equally. We do not merely demand justice; we demand presence, accountability, and moral integrity.
Hunger rarely appears alone; it is accompanied by indebtedness, illness, labour precarity, and social exclusion.
A society in which the “honour of the huzur” matters more than a child’s cry has not yet learned justice. A state in which poor families are afraid to seek justice has not yet learned equal protection.
If belief is so fragile that papier-mâché masks and symbolic animals can threaten it, the problem lies not with the procession, but with the insecurity of that belief.
Women were not mere supporters; they were shapers of conditions, bearers of risk, and, in many cases, decisive actors. The war cannot be imagined without them, but its written history has often proceeded as though it could.
Bangladesh does not lack visible women, women in campaigns, women in commemorative posters, women seated at consultation tables, women repeatedly invoked in speeches. But visibility without authority is not empowerment; it is performance.
The masculinity crisis in Bangladesh is not a psychological issue alone. Young men possess smartphones but lack jobs, security, or agency. Powerless in real life, they become powerful on screens. Their remaining sense of control is exercised through digital domination of women’s bodies.