Many of you must have heard, maybe in your house or at the time when you were young or you must have even said it to your younger brother that “Aree tu ladka hai, ladke rote nahi!” or even better “Aree mard bann mard, jaa uss ladki ko propose kar de!” or “Ladke strong hote hai, unhe kabhi dard nahi hota!”
Well, these are just lines and everyday ‘statements’ that we make while we try to console our younger brother or we push our best friend to propose or are we just caged in our boundaries to term the men of our society as ‘strong’! On the contrary, this is the same society that terms the same men as ‘weak’ when they shed a tear or they try to express emotions.
This is the same society that will consider a woman strong if she has a strong built, and she won’t be considered ‘weak’ if she sheds a tear or if she tries to express.
This thinking of men being physically strong and emotionally weak, vice versa for the women – has been deep rooted in our system. We have been taught these ‘gender terms and conditions’/ ‘gender tags’ since we are out of the womb.
If this would not have been the case since our childhood, maybe we could have more women wrestlers, maybe we could have more women boxers, maybe we could have more women cricketers and we could have more male teachers and so on!
The cage is so huge that even though we are living in the modern era, we have this thought at the back of our minds where we get surprised if we see the ‘man of the house’ handling chores and cooking – watching the woman of the house coming back from work! So, why is this surprise factor at all when it is the responsibility of both to handle their share of the house.
Why do we have statements like “Aree wah, iska pati toh ghar ka kaam karta hai, khana banata hai, bachho ko sambhalta hai!” “Aur aurat ko toh dekho, subah subah kaam par jaati hai aur ghar utna hi late aati hai!”
Why is this surprising when it should be normal if you watch a man or a woman of the house handling any chores, or is being at the office workfront! Why are we assigning roles to particular gender?
This is the society where some women of some house will have no other job but to be the camera women of the society and scan every other person who walks in!
These types of misogynist statements should urge everyone to think that if both – men and women don’t change, if both don’t respect their individual spaces and genders, then nothing will change at all! NOTHING AT ALL!
The next time you hear these kinds of statements, or if you tell someone that “Aree mard ko dard nahi hota”, decide which kind of a MARD you want to be or which kind of MARDAANI do you want to be, because we are at such a point, as a generation jaha Mard ko bhi dard hota hai aur aurat ko Mardaani banne ki zaroorat hai!
Emotions and Strengths do not look at genders, so who are we to assign emotions and strength to a particular gender!
