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Posts Tagged ‘responsibility’

  1. Gender bullshit, do we really need it?

    September 27, 2013 by Sunit Nandi

    We often come across boys saying, girls are hard to understand, and conversely, girls saying boys are hard to understand. Deep down within, I feel this has nothing to do with our gender at all. It all comes down to our mindset and our upbringing.

    From the very birth of a baby, the gender determines how it’ll be treated by the parents. This begins with what clothes to wear and what toys to play with. Slowly, as the child grows, the distinction begins to harden in and kids of two genders are treated differently. While some of the distinctions are indeed necessary, most just end up to be an unnecessary barrier.

    No, I won’t be discussing in detail about gender distinctions, as my point of this post is entirely different.

    My point is how boys and girls see each other. Though the walls have almost crumbled between the opposites, still, there are some things that remain, some things that constantly remind me that most do not and will never accept anyone from the other gender, to be one of their own. And those people who do, usually don’t receive the same acceptance from others.

    Then there is another set of people who take gender stereotypes too seriously, and in my opinion, they are the ones who actually continue spreading the stereotypes. See them passing sexist comments at others, blocking equal access, ridiculing emotions and activities and more nonsense. Don’t call me a feminist or a chauvinist here. I have noticed people from either gender doing it, usually tagging anyone not conforming to the stereotypes to be sort of an “outcast”.

    My parents have always told me that gender doesn’t define a person’s personality or ability. It only defines a person’s biological responsibility, nothing more, nothing less. Yet, I keep hearing my elders (my parents included too) comment “as a man you should…” or “as a woman you need to…”, sometimes even “are you a man/woman ?” (depending on the case), so much that I actually get a headache. Call me a maniac, but I think about things that people around me usually take for granted.

    Romantic relationships are supposed to unite two individuals (usually of opposite gender), right? It is supposed to encourage love, companionship and understanding (and to optionally extend the generation and family lineage), right? What I actually see today is that most of such relationships are nothing more than heaps of over-hyped rubbish. Most people just get dragged along by their feelings and care less about understanding their partner. Add to that, tons of gender-related stereotypes, and BOOM, we have relationship problems when we have ACTUALLY no problem. 😉

    Coming to another side of the entire problem, is crimes. We have crimes against women (which gets really good attention), and crimes against men too (they just don’t get the required attention), adding to the muddle. Who and what to blame and rectify is again a twisted case here, and often always is somehow traced back to people’s mentalities and upbringing. The Indian government is so wacky, that the lawmakers try to get good mileage out of them instead of actually solving the cases, by making the situation more unequal and worse. The general public is even wackier and gives me amazingly good heartbreaks.

    The thing is, how long are we going to suffer over all this? How long are we going to forcibly divide ourselves, when we are actually meant to discover unity?

    I dream of a world, where each one is a person, and individual, and not a representative of a gender, where everything is transparent, where there is true union and acceptance. A world, where people actually try to understand each other, rather than seeing their opposite’s reaction compared with a set of rules. Once we get to that point, I hope most of our gender related problems will be minimized. We’ll also have a place for our “special cases” LGBT community as well.

    This is something that will take a great deal of time to happen, and I do not have high hopes of seeing it occur in my lifetime, but then? We can always dream, right?

    We only need to change our thinking and our mentality and see the world in a whole new light, and then that day we’ve always dreamt of will not be very far away.

    What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to drop a comment and let me know.