Boys don’t cry! Go and play outside! She will never be able to do it like men do! Be a man! These are gender roles that society instills into each one of us. The idea of the ideal man is to be a man who thinks of himself as superior to the opposite sex. He must see them as the weaker and more vulnerable ones who need protection all the time. Is that so?
I grew up seeing my mother beat up men on the streets. She often told me she was being mugged or “disturbed.” Never understood it though. I grew up with a fair idea of gender “inequality.” However, I never saw it through the eyes of women.
I always thought of every woman to be like my mother, who can fight back and slap strangers. Why? I don’t know. I always thought women in the South Asian culture were enslaved by society and hence became vulnerable. However, it took me years to understand their agony and pain; the trauma women go through in public places.
They say charity begins at home. So does child sexual abuse. Why does our society teach us to be so oblivious to this act? While both sexes are at risk, boys don’t dare speak up, and girls are told by their mothers (so I hear) to cover themselves up.
Yes, it is always the victim’s fault. After all, an eight-year-old will surely be making a sexual pass at a teenage cousin, 30-year-old uncle, or 40-year-old neighbour.
Where is our sense of morality? It is an utter shame that we often say women are not doing purdah, hence they get raped. Is it that simple? Islam does not tell men to be barbarians who can walk in and grope women or rape them, and then blame them for being a part of the mundane world, being out and about, working.
During the time of our Prophet (pbuh), Muslim women were involved in various kinds of work such as trade, agriculture, horticulture, social work, etc. A woman enjoys the same freedom as a man in Islam. Religious literature articulates the contributions of many women who played a highly creative role in society. How about revisiting those teachings too, rather than selective learning?
Blame it on the women, as they are out to lure men all the time. Recently, I read a compilation of interviews done by One Billion Rising on comments heard from eve-teasers. It doesn’t matter what you wear or where you are, a girl in burqa gets to hear how she is a “sex bomb hidden under purdah,” and the girl in a T-shirt seems to have an “open invitation written on the tee.”
You can justify the slapping of Gauhar Khan or accuse Sakib’s wife of not dressing “decently,” but no one really slaps Salman Khan, or footballers who take off their jerseys post-victory. Obviously, it is just men who are allowed to get sexually aroused, and women are not allowed to have that feeling ever.
Why do we really do this? Is there an underlying hated towards women? Is it sexual frustration, or were we just taught to treat women that way? Obviously, the demeaning sense of the media and how women are objectified is a whole new dimension.
I don’t write this out of sympathy, I empathise. In spite of being half of global population, we think of women as the minority. Even when women form 88% of the $24bn RMG export industry in Bangladesh, they are still a minority. A woman does not need your sympathy, she needs your respect. They don’t need you to create opportunities, but treat her as an equal.
Maybe we, the men, suffered from an inferiority complex and hence built this wall of gender disparity, imposing our physical strength to establish ourselves as the abuser. We have been abusing our power and exploiting the rights of someone else. I wish, instead of teaching boys in their childhood about what it is to be a man, maybe we should teach them what it is not to be a man.
A man does not see anyone else as inferior, a man does not stand by and watch anyone else being humiliated, and a man stands up to injustices. I am not a feminist, because equality is about being human.
