esha

How do you feel when someone tells you not to do something, not directly, but by repeatedly criticizing your ideas? By telling you how they would never prefer someone who does what you want to do, how they personally would never choose the life you envision for yourself. Would you feel angry or restricted? Not immediately, of course. You would not even notice it at first. You only notice it much later, when you begin shying away from your natural inclinations, from your own idea of life, until one day you sit and wonder how this even happened. How did I become reluctant to do what I wanted to do for the longest time in my life?

At first, it is just opinions. Then it becomes patterns. Then one day you realize you have edited yourself so often that the original thought does not even come to the surface anymore. You do not feel angry immediately, because anger needs a clear target. What you feel first is confusion, then hesitation, then a quiet, creeping restriction that no one ever announced out loud. That is the most dangerous part. No one told you, "Don't do this," so you cannot even point to a moment where you agreed to stop being yourself.

Repeated criticism framed as personal preference is still pressure. 

It teaches you, slowly, that your ideas are inconvenient, undesirable, or impractical, without ever saying so directly. By the time you notice, the question is no longer “Why are they limiting me?” It becomes “Why am I limiting myself?” What is really taken in this process is not a decision but your natural inclination toward your own life, your instinct, and your trust in yourself. So yes, there is anger, restriction, and disconnection. But above all, there is betrayal. Not just by others, but by the version of yourself that learned survival through silence.

When we talk highly of freedom, it’s autonomy we talk about. Being able to do what you want isn't freedom; it's autonomy. Of course, the line between them has blurred over time, but they are not interchangeable. They are fundamentally different. That difference is exactly why freedom is harder to protect. It can be taken long before anyone notices it’s gone.

Where did all this language of freedom and autonomy even come from? What do they actually mean? As superficial as it may seem, outlining the difference between them is fairly easy. Internalizing that difference, however, is far more difficult. Perhaps it is not even entirely possible. Every opinion can be challenged, but not every distinction can be ignored. 

When people glorify freedom, what they are usually defending is autonomy, the ability to make choices without immediate obstruction. Autonomy is external. It is about permission, access, and the absence of direct control. Freedom, on the other hand, is internal. You can have autonomy and still not be free. You can be allowed to choose and yet feel unable to want honestly. You can act without restriction while your desires have already been redirected. That is where the confusion sets in. Autonomy looks like freedom from the outside. The line blurs when no one is stopping you anymore, but you have already learned to stop yourself. Freedom, in that sense, is not about doing what you want. It is about being able to want without pre-emptive self-censorship.

If you still don't get a nuanced idea of what these are, I don't think you ever will. The willingness to hear or accept external ideas is, in itself, a choice, and no one can be coerced into accepting what is morally right if they are unwilling to confront it. 

Now, let's paste these fancy words into a different, far more polarizing and conveniently despised framework: feminism. 

There is a persistent belief that feminism has done its job; it has provided the right to choose whatever women want in the modern day, and therefore the movement has run its course. I won’t delve into broader structural issues such as gendered consumerism, the pink tax, or wage disparities for equal labor; those who wish to understand these realities already do. The only ones denying it are those who think feminism is out there to curb their rights, their freedom, their 'masculinity,' and their romanticized patriarchy. I make my position clear: I am a brutal supporter of feminism. Not of matriarchy, not of patriarchy, but of equality. Of dismantling pointless gender segregation that serves no purpose other than hierarchy. Yes, men and women have differences. But obsessively ranking those differences, or using them to establish superiority, has never moved society forward. Progress lies not in denial or dominance, but in acceptance.

Returning to the core argument, in most cases, women are granted autonomy, not freedom. She’s allowed a faux freedom of sorts. She can think whatever she wants, but she can't do whatever she wants. Acting on those thoughts invites scrutiny, unsolicited advice, moral policing, and relentless critique, all masked in concern. Some women internalize this pressure and bend. Others resist.

Feminism comes at the price of nonconformity. 

It means opting out of expectations that were designed to be comfortable for everyone except you. It demands the willingness to be seen as difficult, excessive, ungrateful, or “too much," labels conveniently assigned to women who refuse to perform compliance. Nonconformity is the real cost people gloss over when they say women already “have choices.” Because the moment a woman exercises those choices in ways that disrupt norms, the backlash begins. The freedom was conditional. The acceptance has always been cosmetic.

Feminism doesn’t promise ease. It promises agency. And agency, in a society built on conformity, is never free.

Let’s look at how deeply conformity and compliance are normalized, so much so that we rarely ever notice them. Popular media offers a clear example. Films frequently portray male protagonists as suffocated by their lives, trapped by responsibility, unable to express emotion. When these men choose to abandon everything in pursuit of an “Eureka” moment, leaving behind careers, relationships, and even family, it is framed as liberation. Self-discovery. Courage.

When women attempt similar departures—emotional, physical, or ideological—they are met not with admiration, but with suspicion and taunts. Their choices demand justification. Their restlessness is labeled irresponsibility; their desire for more is framed as ingratitude.

This is not an indictment of men. It is an observation of asymmetry.

What men are granted as unquestioned exploration, women must earn through resistance. 

What is celebrated as self-actualization in men is scrutinized as rebellion in women. The struggle, then, is not about permission alone; it is about the uneven cost of exercising it.

So no, criticism does not merely “exist” as harmless opinion, and this debate about whether it curbs freedom is not philosophical nitpicking; it is willful ignorance dressed up as nuance. Criticism, when repeated, normalized, and selectively enforced, is a tool of control. Calling it concern does not cleanse it. Calling it advice does not neutralize it. And pretending it is harmless because it isn’t legally binding is intellectual dishonesty at best. Freedom does not vanish only when choice is removed; it vanishes when choosing becomes socially expensive. That is the part people conveniently refuse to acknowledge. And by people, we all know who I mean.

This is exactly why feminism remains necessary, uncomfortable, and—I repeat—conveniently hated. Not because it demands dominance, but because it exposes how deeply compliance has been moralized, especially for women. Women are told they are free while being relentlessly corrected for how they exercise that freedom. Think freely, but not loudly. Choose boldly, but not visibly. Be independent, but not inconvenient. The moment a woman steps outside this narrow, approved bandwidth, criticism arrives, not to engage, but to discipline. 

And then society has the audacity to ask why she feels restricted, why she hesitates, why she grows quiet, as if erosion isn’t real unless it’s violent.

So let’s stop pretending this is about sensitivity or victimhood. It’s about power and conditioning. It’s about whose deviation is romanticized and whose is punished. It’s about how men are allowed existential crises while women are expected to call theirs gratitude. And if pointing that out makes people uncomfortable, defensive, or angry—good. 

Discomfort is often the first sign that the truth has landed where it wasn’t invited.

Criticism curbs freedom not always by force but by fatigue. By making resistance exhausting and conformity convenient.

Denying that does not make you objective; it makes you complicit. And frankly, if this still sounds exaggerated or offensive, that is not my problem. This is not a plea for agreement. It is a statement of fact. Take it or leave it.

Again, as I said, every opinion is up for debate. 

My answer to all of them remains the same.

Reality. 

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