Someone recently gave an article for the college newsletter. It was a very basic article about how girls are not treated on par with guys on campus, and how irritating it is to be made to conform to restrictive policies with little or no sensible justification.
This got me thinking. Women have equal rights under the law and everything. But does anyone in this country really understand the concept of equality? As in equality between men and women? They think they do, and they feel we are really progressing in issues like women's liberation and so forth. The sad truth is that even in a college housing two thousand people on a campus of two and a half hundred acres, I have found hardly two people truly understand it, and practise it as well.
This can be analyzed by taking several little individual examples. Think about clothing and dressing. Men can roam about naked and women scream in embarrassment. Any sign of extra skin on a woman, forget being naked, and the men stare around, lewdly happy. In both cases, it's the woman whose 'chastity' 'stands at risk'.
Certain things are stereotyped as typically masculine or feminine. Very prominent in this list are clothes. Men's clothing with appropriate styling (I mean jeans and t-shirts) is now a part of the woman's wardrobe, but feminine styles of clothing are still common, and for some reason those are considered more 'appealing' than the masculine derived styles. No objection there, but that doesn't mean that a woman should be judged on the basis of her wardrobe. Worse than the judging is the discrimination a woman faces for being anything that's not typically feminine, be it clothes or anything else. I remember this movie that was extremely popular ten years back. I had liked it too at that time, but later I realized how it portrays what I'm talking about. The main female protagonist is a tomboy and like all humans, falls in love, but her love goes unrequited as long as she remains a tomboy. To put it in the words of a leading critic, her love is returned only when she resurfaces, "sarified and narified".
The ideology associated with this is also stereotyped, biased towards men. A statement I made today to a group of people and the response I received illustrates this perfectly. The topic under discussion was a recent beach trip we had taken, and one guy was describing somewhat merrily how I had stared at him and his abs when he had taken off his shirt to wash up. I retaliated saying that if it was okay for men to stare at women and their figures, there's no harm done if a woman looks at a man. Men will stare at women no matter what they wear or don't wear, so what's wrong if it happens vice versa? Everyone protested loudly at this, girls and guys both, and I only succeeded in furthering my reputation as being somewhat more forward in behaviour compared to the other girls who live on campus.
Next, take issues like boozing, fagging or doping. Some people associate a sort of morality (rather a lack of it) with these activities, and call them vice. I'm no stranger to the thought, since I myself once used to subscribe to it. And no issue with it; everyone is entitled to their own view. It's pretty normal for women to indulge in them the world over. Focus only on the two thousand people who live on my campus, since that's the model of the country I'm out to live in. Any woman in this college, who drinks alcohol and openly admits to it, is considered forward by any standards, in the eyes of the college public. Find out that she smokes or dopes, and she rises even 'higher' in estimation. For some strange reason, people consider it more of a vice when a woman indulges in any of these activities, than when a man does so. It's even more shocking to hear people say that it's okay or unavoidable in case of men, but that it's wrong for women.
Living in college broadens your horizons to infinite limits. You are exposed to a wider world, different ideas, different possibilities. You question this world and its rules and add your own opinion to it. And your morals and principles undergo the most drastic restructuring possible, because of such wide exposure. You get to meet so many different people, across the entire spectrum of mindset and mentality. Their company, their ideas add their influence. This being the case, it really shocks me to still know of people making statements like "Girls shouldn't compete with boys". And that came straight from one of the guys of my own college: a person who has studied in the same class as me right from my freshman year.
Consider security. Amongst crimes that are specifically targeted at women, rape is one of the nastiest and most serious. Sexual harassment is the more generic term for it, including with it everything from lewd comments and stares, upto rape. What is people's solution to this problem, apart from laws? "Don't wear provoking clothes."
Again, it's the woman who has to bear the brunt of it. Why did she get raped? Because she was wearing 'provoking' clothes and men are such beasts that they can't (and won't bother to) refrain from helping themselves to what seems a most delicious treat. So, rather than teach men that it's wrong for them to treat women like objects of pleasure, they want to teach women to be more submissive.
What does security mean? According to the chauvinists, a woman is well protected if she stays inside the house after dark, which is when she is most threatened. So to keep her safe, cage her up after dark! This is enforced by both spoken and unspoken rules everywhere. Why did she get raped? "Because she went out of the house after dark. She was asking for trouble. She deserved it."
A group of friends had a party recently. The majority were men, but there were a fair number of women as well. The party was on till late night but the women were required by rules to return strictly by a certain time. They did. The men were also required to do the same, but they didn't bother and returned well after curfew. Of course they received a yelling.
Note a few facts about this. First, the guys only got a yelling from their supervisor. Had it been the girls who were late, they'd have got a yelling, a fine imposed as punishment, and a good deal of character sludging. Next, the guys were found complaining the next day. "If it's ten-thirty for the girls, it can certainly be much later for the guys." Why should it? Why at all? I took issue with the guy who spoke the sentence, and who also happens to be a close acquaintance of mine. His defence was that girls should not stay out late, since safety could then become a problem.
That's my point exactly. Safety should not have to be a problem in the first place. It's a knotty issue, on the borderline of the realms of freedom and equality. For goodness' sake, the world is supposed to move towards equality. Not just equality of laws. I mean equality ingrained as a quality of behaviour. I mean absence of discrimination, and absence of this attitude of chauvinistic high-handedness. In all essential social terms, equality needs to become a mindset, a part of one's natural thinking. A woman should be free to walk the roads alone at night. Not just free under the law. But free from fear of being raped, from fear of being ostracized, from the persecution caused by social backbiting, from chauvinistic nastiness that's totally uncalled for. Free, and equal.
And apart from having this equality, a girl should assert her right to this equality. She needs to be strong enough to know and recognize injustice and fight it. Unfortunately, centuries of downtrodden existence have brought in a mentality of dogged submissiveness in women. Those few who fight, find themselves speaking in a land of deaf people. Like I do.
It's not an easy task. It's one thing to impose a set of rules that must be obeyed, but how do you change the mindset of an entire generation of people, let alone three generations coexisting together, who have all grown up thinking in the way of their forefathers? How do you get people to see and accept the rationality of those laws and rules? One person alone can't do anything against an army of people who together form society. But individual people waging on the war can set a precedent, which more people from coming generations can take up and follow. That is how slow and silent revolutions in social norms have come about. And that is my hope, that I too may learn, and thus teach, and play my part in this revolution.
This got me thinking. Women have equal rights under the law and everything. But does anyone in this country really understand the concept of equality? As in equality between men and women? They think they do, and they feel we are really progressing in issues like women's liberation and so forth. The sad truth is that even in a college housing two thousand people on a campus of two and a half hundred acres, I have found hardly two people truly understand it, and practise it as well.
This can be analyzed by taking several little individual examples. Think about clothing and dressing. Men can roam about naked and women scream in embarrassment. Any sign of extra skin on a woman, forget being naked, and the men stare around, lewdly happy. In both cases, it's the woman whose 'chastity' 'stands at risk'.
Certain things are stereotyped as typically masculine or feminine. Very prominent in this list are clothes. Men's clothing with appropriate styling (I mean jeans and t-shirts) is now a part of the woman's wardrobe, but feminine styles of clothing are still common, and for some reason those are considered more 'appealing' than the masculine derived styles. No objection there, but that doesn't mean that a woman should be judged on the basis of her wardrobe. Worse than the judging is the discrimination a woman faces for being anything that's not typically feminine, be it clothes or anything else. I remember this movie that was extremely popular ten years back. I had liked it too at that time, but later I realized how it portrays what I'm talking about. The main female protagonist is a tomboy and like all humans, falls in love, but her love goes unrequited as long as she remains a tomboy. To put it in the words of a leading critic, her love is returned only when she resurfaces, "sarified and narified".
The ideology associated with this is also stereotyped, biased towards men. A statement I made today to a group of people and the response I received illustrates this perfectly. The topic under discussion was a recent beach trip we had taken, and one guy was describing somewhat merrily how I had stared at him and his abs when he had taken off his shirt to wash up. I retaliated saying that if it was okay for men to stare at women and their figures, there's no harm done if a woman looks at a man. Men will stare at women no matter what they wear or don't wear, so what's wrong if it happens vice versa? Everyone protested loudly at this, girls and guys both, and I only succeeded in furthering my reputation as being somewhat more forward in behaviour compared to the other girls who live on campus.
Next, take issues like boozing, fagging or doping. Some people associate a sort of morality (rather a lack of it) with these activities, and call them vice. I'm no stranger to the thought, since I myself once used to subscribe to it. And no issue with it; everyone is entitled to their own view. It's pretty normal for women to indulge in them the world over. Focus only on the two thousand people who live on my campus, since that's the model of the country I'm out to live in. Any woman in this college, who drinks alcohol and openly admits to it, is considered forward by any standards, in the eyes of the college public. Find out that she smokes or dopes, and she rises even 'higher' in estimation. For some strange reason, people consider it more of a vice when a woman indulges in any of these activities, than when a man does so. It's even more shocking to hear people say that it's okay or unavoidable in case of men, but that it's wrong for women.
Living in college broadens your horizons to infinite limits. You are exposed to a wider world, different ideas, different possibilities. You question this world and its rules and add your own opinion to it. And your morals and principles undergo the most drastic restructuring possible, because of such wide exposure. You get to meet so many different people, across the entire spectrum of mindset and mentality. Their company, their ideas add their influence. This being the case, it really shocks me to still know of people making statements like "Girls shouldn't compete with boys". And that came straight from one of the guys of my own college: a person who has studied in the same class as me right from my freshman year.
Consider security. Amongst crimes that are specifically targeted at women, rape is one of the nastiest and most serious. Sexual harassment is the more generic term for it, including with it everything from lewd comments and stares, upto rape. What is people's solution to this problem, apart from laws? "Don't wear provoking clothes."
Again, it's the woman who has to bear the brunt of it. Why did she get raped? Because she was wearing 'provoking' clothes and men are such beasts that they can't (and won't bother to) refrain from helping themselves to what seems a most delicious treat. So, rather than teach men that it's wrong for them to treat women like objects of pleasure, they want to teach women to be more submissive.
What does security mean? According to the chauvinists, a woman is well protected if she stays inside the house after dark, which is when she is most threatened. So to keep her safe, cage her up after dark! This is enforced by both spoken and unspoken rules everywhere. Why did she get raped? "Because she went out of the house after dark. She was asking for trouble. She deserved it."
A group of friends had a party recently. The majority were men, but there were a fair number of women as well. The party was on till late night but the women were required by rules to return strictly by a certain time. They did. The men were also required to do the same, but they didn't bother and returned well after curfew. Of course they received a yelling.
Note a few facts about this. First, the guys only got a yelling from their supervisor. Had it been the girls who were late, they'd have got a yelling, a fine imposed as punishment, and a good deal of character sludging. Next, the guys were found complaining the next day. "If it's ten-thirty for the girls, it can certainly be much later for the guys." Why should it? Why at all? I took issue with the guy who spoke the sentence, and who also happens to be a close acquaintance of mine. His defence was that girls should not stay out late, since safety could then become a problem.
That's my point exactly. Safety should not have to be a problem in the first place. It's a knotty issue, on the borderline of the realms of freedom and equality. For goodness' sake, the world is supposed to move towards equality. Not just equality of laws. I mean equality ingrained as a quality of behaviour. I mean absence of discrimination, and absence of this attitude of chauvinistic high-handedness. In all essential social terms, equality needs to become a mindset, a part of one's natural thinking. A woman should be free to walk the roads alone at night. Not just free under the law. But free from fear of being raped, from fear of being ostracized, from the persecution caused by social backbiting, from chauvinistic nastiness that's totally uncalled for. Free, and equal.
And apart from having this equality, a girl should assert her right to this equality. She needs to be strong enough to know and recognize injustice and fight it. Unfortunately, centuries of downtrodden existence have brought in a mentality of dogged submissiveness in women. Those few who fight, find themselves speaking in a land of deaf people. Like I do.
It's not an easy task. It's one thing to impose a set of rules that must be obeyed, but how do you change the mindset of an entire generation of people, let alone three generations coexisting together, who have all grown up thinking in the way of their forefathers? How do you get people to see and accept the rationality of those laws and rules? One person alone can't do anything against an army of people who together form society. But individual people waging on the war can set a precedent, which more people from coming generations can take up and follow. That is how slow and silent revolutions in social norms have come about. And that is my hope, that I too may learn, and thus teach, and play my part in this revolution.
