The He-She Pigeonhole

Did you know that babies upto three months of their age do not develop the sense to identify colours? So even if you dress up a baby boy in pink or a baby girl in blue, they wouldn’t mind! Also, they do not start to identify genders until two years of their age. So it wouldn’t matter to them if you give them a Barbie to play with or a monster truck. They would accept them with the same compassion. So, not only infants are much cuter than the rest of the people but they also are more impartial and better social citizen than the rest of the so called literate, cultured, well informed grown up adults!

Our society is upgrading day by day, minute by minute. But just like a computer virus disrupts the functioning of a computer, gender stereotypes disrupt the society. And what is even more dangerous is that these have been amalgamated in our society so deeply that most of the times we do not even realise that we are being stereotyped. Its “normal” when a woman cooks in a kitchen but strange if a man does the same. But, hey! The top five star restaurants would prefer hiring male chefs over females because you know; a female’s priority would always be her family and never the job. Teaching your sons more than your daughters is again “normal” but almost all school teachers would be females because it’s a women-job, it would be odd if a male teaches in schools. A woman taking charge is bossy but when a man does the same he has leadership skills.

And these aren’t exclusive to females, no! Males are supposed to be the alphas of the society. “A man doesn’t cry”, they say. Well, do you want to know the reality? “A man is not let to cry”. We have started to raise our daughters the way we used to raise our sons, to some extent at least. Teaching them to be brave and to speak up. But when would we start raising our sons the way we raise our daughters? When would we teach them to cry out? When would we teach them to validate and express their emotions?

This is the reason the feminists demand gender equality, because it will not only liberate women but also men from the prescribed gender stereotypes. “Because you are a girl” or “because you are a boy” never justifies the unfairness. If you are girl who wants to wear pink and talk about politics of the country, do it! If you are a boy who likes to drive a motor bike and wants to wear makeup, do it! Just do not worry to live upto to someone else’s expectations.

When we assign strength and weakness to either gender, we cut the power of human race in half.

~ Manya Srivastava

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