DAY 263 (The intolerable generalisations)
I am NOT a feminist. Because I don't really believe in generalisations. I might be a certain kind of female and someone else might be someone really different than me. So basically, when there is something wrong going on, I would rarely go up to stand "for women". I might just stand up for a person and most of the times I believe in advocating just myself.
But there are people who just believe in a lot of generalisations and want to impose them at you or pass a comment at you because according to them you belong to that "general category". Those are asses really ! I don't want to hide behind asterisks to describe them.
Just today a colleague comments at me saying "only women can afford iPhones because they get gifts". Can you believe it? I told him that this is a very wrong statement and he should take it back. But he kept on repeating the statement again and again with rolling eyes and a dumb smile. Now, he has this mentality because his wife is a housewife (which is not demeaning and is a much harder job) and also because he might have been brought up with this thinking. But that does not mean that I will pamper his disgusting and derogatory thoughts and just shrug it away. Would he pamper my personal thinking about his category (if I had any?)
This happens time and again. You tell someone (man or woman), that you were stalked or eve-teased last night. They don't ask you the vehicle number or did I report it? They ask me which area you were in, what time it was, why did I decide to be out so late in a dress. These are ridiculous chain of thinking which I just can't get over with. And I am not ready to excuse it with a universal answer "Because we are in India". Because again....there is a generalisation! Not all Indians think like this and neither it is that as soon as an Indian settles abroad, his/her thinking changes.
We just can't blame it on the society or "log kya kahenge" either. We just can't keep getting away with it. And this is for both men and women. Women also do not have any right to make generic comments on men.
I guess we need to raise our children in an unbiased thinking environment and let them have their own thoughts by experience rather than generalisations. Those few sentences that you hear in your childhood about a certain gender or caste gets engraved deep down in your memory. The only difference is some people start believing those engravings even when they grow up and some are just matured enough to let them stale there. So ... to all the logical ones: Let us not engrave things to younger generations and let the world be a better place than it is.
But there are people who just believe in a lot of generalisations and want to impose them at you or pass a comment at you because according to them you belong to that "general category". Those are asses really ! I don't want to hide behind asterisks to describe them.
Just today a colleague comments at me saying "only women can afford iPhones because they get gifts". Can you believe it? I told him that this is a very wrong statement and he should take it back. But he kept on repeating the statement again and again with rolling eyes and a dumb smile. Now, he has this mentality because his wife is a housewife (which is not demeaning and is a much harder job) and also because he might have been brought up with this thinking. But that does not mean that I will pamper his disgusting and derogatory thoughts and just shrug it away. Would he pamper my personal thinking about his category (if I had any?)
This happens time and again. You tell someone (man or woman), that you were stalked or eve-teased last night. They don't ask you the vehicle number or did I report it? They ask me which area you were in, what time it was, why did I decide to be out so late in a dress. These are ridiculous chain of thinking which I just can't get over with. And I am not ready to excuse it with a universal answer "Because we are in India". Because again....there is a generalisation! Not all Indians think like this and neither it is that as soon as an Indian settles abroad, his/her thinking changes.
We just can't blame it on the society or "log kya kahenge" either. We just can't keep getting away with it. And this is for both men and women. Women also do not have any right to make generic comments on men.
I guess we need to raise our children in an unbiased thinking environment and let them have their own thoughts by experience rather than generalisations. Those few sentences that you hear in your childhood about a certain gender or caste gets engraved deep down in your memory. The only difference is some people start believing those engravings even when they grow up and some are just matured enough to let them stale there. So ... to all the logical ones: Let us not engrave things to younger generations and let the world be a better place than it is.
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