Day 22 - May Challenge 2013

This post is part of BEDMC.

Day 22, Wednesday: Rant about something. Get up on your soapbox and tell us how you really feel.

Just Human Beings!

Gender discrimination and stereotyping is one thing that has to be demolished from the earth’s surface. Let the person grow up as a great human being rather than been tagged coz of their gender.  Even before a child is born he/she is differentiated based on their gender. Pink for girls and blue for boys. Dolls for girls and cars/bikes for boys. Girls are taught that they are inferior to boys from day one. If the baby is a girl, she is sweet, delicate and serene. And if it’s a boy, he’s strong and tuff. Aren’t both babies sweet and delicate and soft as a fur?

I am a girl and ‘m proud of my femininity. But hate it when it restricts me from doing/going somewhere. Depending on your sex, certain behaviors or preferences are discouraged,  as if they belong to one gender over another. There's a 13 year old guy (lil bro) at my home, who thinks domestic chores is exclusively entitled to women. Being a girl doesn’t mean all she cares about are clothes, make-up and boys or she is solely for home making. Every girl studies as hard as boy, do her best in all extra-curricular, get in to good college and gets into a profession. In a professional space, there’s no special considerations for deadlines or working hours. If you are working for them, you work as they want. There everyone is just colleagues. But once you step out of the work space, then its, men are from Mars and women from Venus.

As a child I wore frocks, skirts and adored dolls, played video games, watched WWE, climbed trees n jumped over walls, and was the handyman at home. My first friends were guys and now also guys top my friends list, but there are girls too, those I will never tradeoff for anything in life. And now i love skirts, but prefer jeans coz of its comfortability and I don’t step out of the house without the shine of lip gloss. When I go for high heels, I look for sneakers too. I wear gents’ watch and have a huge collection of bangles. I prefer chunky mobs than the sleeky ones. What we wear and like completely depends upon us, and not our gender. 

Women is considered as the most fragile and vulnerable living thing and it became so coz many people still view women as a lesser gender then men. The experts link the mistreatment and abuse of women to the social and economic reality of women’s lives—the web of discriminatory attitudes, values, behaviors, structures and institutions that undermine, isolate and marginalize women.

Many families don’t even prefer a girl child, esp. in India. A family with a girl will pay a dowry to her husband’s family when she marries.  So a girl means the family will lose money or property on the wedding day.  A boy means the family will gain those things. Males are also seen as providers who will stay with their families and be less of a burden. So instead of abolishing the dowry sys, baby girls are abolished. I personally know a couple who’s’ from a privileged, educated class and who didn’t give God a minute’s peace for a baby boy. Even now there’s a huge gender gap between boys and girls, with the fairer gender’s ratio considerably lower than the boys. So what about after a few more years?

Being girl means you are not strong, brave enough to defend yourself, provide your family, or courageous to step outside after dark. But being a man is an admonition of strength, courage and firmness. And the faintest hint of girlishness in them results in lifelong harassment. So even before they start walking, they learn to hate pink, dresses, fairy tales, dolls, dance and anything feminine.

Even in relations people expect men should always take the first step. They feel men should always pay for a date, call within the first two days, meet their beck and call, be a certain height, and always ask them out. If a woman pays for a date or proposes first does the sky falls down? In Britain and Ireland it is a tradition that women may propose marriage only in leap years. Does that mean women should keep their feelings locked until a leap year comes?

Kick out the gender stereotypes and discrimination's and live lives with all your behavioral patterns, likes, dislikes, emotions, girlishness, boyishness and just try to be good and a kind person with respect for your fellow beings. Whoever you are, man or woman, you are truly awesome and blessed. :)

P.S. Cherish all the facts that do not fit the stereotype of your gender.

God Blez.