Way to an Equal End

 How many times have you been denied your basic prospects and picks just

because you belonged to an outnumbered lot? Almost on every step of

your growth, I suppose.

How many times have you went ahead and overlooked a very lewd sexist

remark by one of your colleagues, friends or family member just because

speaking up would have been deemed as disrespect ? Hundreds of times,

maybe. It is not unusual for everyone to go through general bias in their

day to day lives regardless of the gender they belong to. From young girls

being told to dress appropriately even before they’ve developed mentally to

young boys being taught that pink is not the ideal colour for them to dress

or be in, we have all allowed patriarchal norms like these to seep into our

skins and reside there since eons. The confinement of these norms along

with the overpowered stigma of opening up to someone over the years has

caused the topic of equality to putrefy altogether. When I see people talking

about modern day feminism today as misandry it comes as a surprise to

me in so many ways than one. Not because the thought feels utterly ill-

judged but because the ideal impression that the word meant to portray has

now been buried deep under years of contempt and obloquy. Hence,

women speaking out their experiences are berated and called out whereas

men speaking in favour of the topic are smacked with gender phobic slurs.

Imagine the amount of efforts our predecessors took for the progress only

to let it all wash down the drain every day, bit-by-bit.

I remember walking in the corridors of my school around seven years back,

without a care in the world, with a happy temperament. The day had been

going unexpectedly well which was a very rare occurrence for me at the

time. Before I can walk past the principal who was taking rounds, I felt her

call me in a high pitched voice which made me still immediately. When I

turned back and wished her she looked very disinterested in the warm

respect I had greeted her with and asked me “In which class are you?” to

which I replied “Eighth-C”. Over the years I’ve tried to erase the look that

she gave me which practically reeked of disapproval but it has stuck with

me somehow. The words she uttered next overruled the disapproval and

paved the way for extreme insecurity that will reside within me for many

upcoming years, “Please ask your mother to get your legs waxed ! Look

how horrible your legs look. It isn’t proper for you to roam around like this.”

(We had skirts for uniform)

For a minute I felt myself staring aimlessly at the ground and my trance

broke only after I felt a tap on my shoulder by my class teacher who had

somehow walked by at the scene. It was humiliating not to mention a

complete breach of how I address my choices in my regular living and yet

all I did was nod and tread back slowly to my classroom because somehow

despite being vindictive her words didn’t feel wrong back then. After

depriving myself for a good seven years from any sort of dresses and skirts

since then (not that I wore the garment so often before the incident

anyway), now when I look back at the occurrence the only emotion I feel is

anger, not on her but specifically over my own foolishness for being silent

and not deciphering any quick response to her atrocious remark about my

hair growth. I cannot even begin to imagine how many more girls would

have gone through some similar instances before and after me without

raising any voice because that would have been considered an insolence

and furthermore punishable. Isn’t it awfully convenient for someone holding

a superiority in age from you, to forbid any sort of questioning that may

come their way, just to make you succumb to an age-old notion and keep

up the bias going in the name of tradition ?

When an act of inquisitiveness is deemed as disrespect it makes you

question your own definition of right and wrong, which I believe happened

to me. Her words made me feel insecure about the choices I made back in

the day and at times I think what would have happened if I had actually

said something? How different would I have turned out to be?

We have all had instances of casual reprimanding from our teachers once

in a while and I strongly believe for it to have impacted our thought

processes as an adult. What might have felt like an insult to you as a child

is being supposedly passed off as an expediency from years. These

pronouncements against women have been moulding the shape of our

thoughts since so long that erasing the regulations they entail , from our

system feels like a tough chore to do.

When you’re told a specific fact continually, like any other normal being it

becomes more of a trait to you. And getting rid of a trait, which you’ve come

to have faith in as a flaw makes you rigid in ways you cannot imagine.

When your thought process has been sculpted in a certain way irrespective

of it’s nature you’re bound to accept it as a truth, without question. It took

me years to realise that what I choose to do with my body hair should be a

decision of my own, not of any third party and it wouldn’t have hurt to

realise this sooner.

In order to erase the years long misconceptions from the minds of people, it

would need so much more than plain and simple arguments from our side.

For achieving the results that would show I believe all of us (minus the hate

) really need to converse and take a ‘make do and mend’ approach to it

rather than a savage ‘force to be reckoned with’ way. To decapitate the

norms that are etched in our psyches it would need a little more than mere

plain arguments. There are and would be no crosscuts to the goal we’re

trying to achieve. So we need to look of how the things have been going on

and try to make amends by taking the lead on bringing a change because

ultimately to remove the predicament (that has been built into everyone’s

system) you’ll have to walk past a river of resistance. Which would not be a

rosy path to be precise but the end result would be nothing less than a gift

for our upcoming generations.

Therefore, the only way to an equal end is through that resistance, not over

it.

- Rituparna