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| “Gender normative in society” | | |
Dr. SUMIT GUPTA
Gender is a reality that is all pervasive. Gender identity figures centrally in an individual’s life. In society, gender has always existed in a binary glass. The ‘male’ and the ‘female’ that paves way to the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’. The transcendence of this division, sadly, remains, a utopian dream state. Right from infants are born, they are marked and separated, the mother having internalised gendered societal mores, clothes her male infant in ‘blue’ and her female infant in ‘pink’. Both the male and female baby are steadily moulded according to gender roles.
The male child is given toys and exposed to cartoons that bring out the male machismo, while the female child is given soft toys mostly consisting of dolls yielding towards cultivating feminine demureness and fragility. Their interaction in the school environment mirrors that of the home where clearcut gender binaries dominate.
The son looks up his father as he grows up and the daughter eventually takes on the mantle of her mother.The subtle and profound ways in which gender operates is quite intriguing.
One never questions the habits of families where the son and father are mostly always given the first pick in all matters. The mother and the daughter meekly submit to the second hand goods. Such a neat arrangement patriarchy has conferred that one doesn’t even feel the need to introspect.
The fact that grave crimes against women continue to happen is because of the strong gender normative operating in our societies that is predatory and deeply offensive. A very endearing, and powerful portrayal of the exploitative culture of patriarchy and in contrast the unfailing will of the human spirit is essayed in the lines echoed by a black mother’s response to her feminist daughter’s angst, the mother says, “ I was taken by your father, then by our landlord and then by our master.....All your aunts, your grandmothers suffered like me.
One thing I learnt, Men always take....and Women always give.....I always held my head high knowing that the giver is greater and not all have the heart to give”.
How long the female will have to endure this injustice is a question that hasn’t availed any definite anwers even in the twenty-first century. Right from the ownership of the women’s womb to the ownership of her individuality, patriarchal warlords have always pinned down ‘their’ women.
As often played out feminism is not patriarchy’s opponent....it is a class apart, women did not come on the streets to fight against men or mindsets. The revolution led by women simply extolled gender equality in all matters. Feminists or anyone displaying an egalitarian perspective is jeered and resisted by male and female chauvinists who revel in a powerplay nexus.
Most theories conclude that gender relationships are mostly based on the power principle that patriarchy wields.
The struggle for power corrodes minds, gender binaries makes way towards polarisation that pits one gender against the other. Patriarchy festers a culture that victimised both men and women. Men’s sensitive attributes are suppressed, a male child find of Barbie dolls is seen as a ‘sissy’ , a ‘-pasy boy’, and, a girl fond of little toy trucks and having male buddies is typified as a ‘tomboy’ or her ‘character’ is questioned.
A dream for a harmonious, amorphous and ameliorating gender normative is quite distant but society has also witnessed positive changes with respect to its understanding of gender.
Women and other marginalised communities comprising the ‘THIRD GENDER’ have achieved a certain degree of independence that wasn’t accorded to them in the past. Today, women are thriving alongside men in the workplace while churning out their ‘domestic duties’.There is also a greater degree of awareness in men about the pitfalls of a rigid dichotomous gender structure.
Gender discourses also register a greater presence of women in economic, political,cultural and social affairs. A due society of complex gender meanings and translations is underway .The representation of multiple gender identities are also being debated and discussed in public and private spaces.
Though it’s a long and hard road towards gender neutrality, still the effort counts in the end. To conclude, as we say, “ to anything good there is a lot of resistance”. |
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