The Strange Case Of Patriarchy

It started with my birth: I’m born, my family is happy and everyone who comes to know of my birth rejoices. I would never know if they were partial to me, and the same would have happened if I were a girl. I find it always intriguing how has baseless gender biases have been prevailing in the world till date; and I will be summarising my thoughts here.

Even at the time of Mahabharata, Bhishma, considered the epitome of dharma, said that Draupadi is the property of her husbands and thus they could gamble her in the game at Drithrashta’s court; he also had vowed to never raise weapon against a woman or someone who had been one, indicating he considered them weak and beneath his dignity to attack them. It would be unjust to expect him to not follow the norms of his contemporary world; but have we yet moved from that time in perspective of patriarchy?

What I find strange in this world is the hypocrisy in rigorously religious men; they would worship and adore a goddess for her might, and yet subjugate another lady trying to become independent; shaming her for trying to get above her male relatives: brother, father, and worst happens if it’s her husband. In a survey about earnings of couples, men preferred women earning less than them and divorce rates increased once the “male ego” was hurt.

What intrigues me more is the fact that no matter how much push I or someone makes to shun these societal standards, we fail at many stances because the friction caused by society and our internal instincts to be better than the sex we’ve considered lower than ourselves since inception of time.

Generally, no one takes note of the feats by girls, but they would be the first to point out their failures (due to other reasons than their gender); crude comments such as “girls are not better than boys intellectually” are common at the time of declaration of results of competitive exams. I ponder at such times that why no questions are raised when girls outperform boys; discrimination, isn’t it?

I grow immensely sorrowful when I realise I’m myself not above these; those times when I have had those sexist thoughts, “ she’s a girl, she can’t code better than me!”. It is only later that I ask on what basis I made those assertions; just because she has a vagina makes her any less of a coder, intellect, or puts her down in any other activity compared to men!

I’m ashamed that in spite of the advancements we’ve made together as humans, which would not have possible with just one gender, we still have somewhere in our hearts that we [men] are the superior sex, and it is the cause of many of crimes done against women; from trying to dictate their choices to raping them over the clothes they wear.

Disrespect of goddesses, residing in heaven, might not destroy the world, but ill-treatment of those around us will surely do!