“You must never ever hurt a girl”, I dutifully explained to my 8year old son as part of my ongoing effort as a self-proclaimed feminist to raise my son to be the perfect gentlemen.
I also, as all mums should, show him the public service messages that the ad world routinely creates such as the more recent and very powerful:
“Ladke rulate nahin“
As an urban woman, and a stay-at-home mom by choice, I know I would feel like an utter failure if my son was ever disrespectful to any girl at any point in his life, especially in light of the crimes against women in today’s dismal scenario. But in this homemade version of my crusade for gender equality, I, like every other urban Indian seem to have overlooked one vital development.
The girl child that I struggle to ensure is safe and protected and equal in every way, in fact, is NOT!!!!
Yes you read right, and I will say it again! I have two children, a boy and a girl, and my daughter is NOT equal to my son.
It seems, somewhere between my generation’s struggle to point out the glaring flaws of our grandmothers’ rituals and superstitions, the very aim of which seemed to be to captivate a girl’s spirit…..and our candle marches for every girl who continues to be brutalised by men who honestly do not even qualify as human….at some point when I wasn’t looking, my daughter, like seemingly every other girl in Urban India Version 2000+ has been born into a generation where girls are clearly on TOP!!
And I realised this the moment I turned my back, post my social service message to my son, only to hear my daughter playfully punch her older brother, stick her tongue out and say, “you can’t hit me. Mom just said so!”, leaving the poor boy helpless and confused. After all, in the core of his being, he knew mom is right. Boys maybe born physically stronger, but that is because women have supreme internal strength which empowers them to create another human life from within them. And so they must be respected and assisted in every other aspect of life that men possibly can.
I admit I grew up enjoying every single male-bashing joke in the book, simply because my generation seemed to be bang in the middle of many things revolutionary. While I was growing up, my father, always emphatically told both his daughters, “girls are the best!!” He was truly grateful he had been blessed with two. So much so that I remember him saying to anyone who openly and shamelessly asked why he didn’t try to have a son, (and may I add, only in our great country is belittling a daughter’s existence in her very presence, considered acceptable small talk). But just as my shoulders would involuntarily slump a little I would hear him say it like he meant it, shutting up the other person for good and making me feel so proud for being who I am,
“Even if I had to adopt another child, I would bring home another girl.”
I was part of the generation when women were starting to be told that they could do anything they wanted to. They worked, they studied, they travelled the world, salwar kameez and saris were shed in favour of fashion from the west and for the better.
Yes we hemmed our uniform lengths above the acceptable length the school prescribed, yes we walked into a pharmacy and proudly purchased condoms and sanitary napkins, yes being a virgin on your wedding night became an exception rather than the norm, yes we partied, yes we drank, we even smoked in public, and we no longer passed off every boy we knew as a ‘Rakhi brother’ in order to protect an unreasonable society-ordained ‘good girl image’. Yes we broke every shackle, restraint and constraint that generations before us had struggled within. My generation did everything that today’s social networking instructs us to. And we were bloody successful at it all. But you know what….in retrospect, almost all men in our lives helped rather than hindered us in the process.
We were told good girls don’t drink, don’t party, don’t smoke, don’t stay out until late and the boys who party with you now are never going to marry you!! But guess what….they did! And they did so because they wanted to….they did it with respect.
Today, men are our friends, they are our colleagues, our bosses, our subordinates. Yes, today our society is also more sick than it ever has been, merciless psychopaths roaming the streets, women are being raped, murdered, tortured….but I suspect they always were. Today possibly more crimes are being reported because more women are willing to come out and talk about it. And it boils my blood to think of myself, my friend, my sister and especially my daughter as being vulnerable to their attacks. Hell, even our grandmothers today aren’t safe. But if I may borrow from another similar slogan, ‘all men are not rapists’.
Yes they break our hearts more often than not. They aren’t always chivalrous. They never pick up after themselves and the internet is flooded with jokes on putting the toilet seat down. This Mars-Venus war is a never ending one.
And while I do like, share and post every feminist slogan or article I read on autopilot, and will continue to do so, yet I can’t help but wonder. Why does being a girl today mean you have to constantly be ready for some imaginary battle that we are fighting…mostly with ourselves.
I think today, most men and women alike have wholeheartedly accepted women as a liberated individual. I do believe that this generation of girls in modern urban India really doesn’t feel unequal to anyone in anyway and more importantly neither does anyone want them to be. For every deranged beast out there, there are thousands of men who love and respect us for what we are, they accept our choices of Birkins, bikinis, and bindis and have stopped dictating over us a long time ago.
Maybe it’s about time we stop this reverse chauvinism and accept that we really are equal. Maybe it’s time we accept they are are allies and stop showing them our feminist pangs every chance we get.
The other day I happened to come across a socially relevant superhit film of the 80’s on TV, which when seen today highlights how regressive Indian society has been. A young Indian widow in a white sari being ill treated by her mother-in-law for being a widow. My daughter immediately had a lot of questions that I tried patiently to explain….and then gave up trying. She has been more exposed to movies where girls, firstly insist on passing off bras as tops and then completely boss around and dominate the poor hero. Her mind was accepting the concept of a woman agreeing to spend her entire life in a white sari, shunned by her family, as it would accept that the sun had turned green.
“But why doesn’t she just leave?”
“Or complain to the police?”
“Or post it on Facebook”
“Or call her friend from her mobile (what????? There used to be none??? Gasp. How could that possibly be??)”
I finally gave up when she thought it was best if she killed her mother-in-law while she was asleep!!!!?
Today’s girl is already empowered! She knows what she’s capable of achieving, she is fully aware of her equal rights and how to get what she deserves. Today’s urban Indian girl is born into her home and country when equality is the reality. Yes, of course she needs to be sheltered from the perverts of the world, but then so do little boys. But believe me today’s urban girl is no damsel in distress.
In fact I’m actually starting to worry just a little bit now, that if we keep up the way we are we may need motivational videos for our sons very soon titled “ladkiyan rulati nahin”.
P.S. — Today my father is blessed with two grandsons and a grand-daughter. And truth be told he is, as expected, definitely biased and partial…. towards the girl.
#parenting #genderequality #genderbias #rolereversal #feminism #chauvenism #reversechauvenism
Sunset Effect - Nitya Satyani 