Down with women chauvinism!

"Why can't a man be more like a woman" asks a friend of mine, as she whines about how her ex-boy friend has the emotional intelligence of a door knob. I sit back, and continue to sip tea. She then blabbers something about men being hyper sexual- emotionally retarded -hairy imbeciles. This irritates me "Okay, that's it girlie, you've gone too far! I will not sit back and see you stereotype my gender is such an unfair and ridiculous manner. Your generalization is pathetic!" I want to say, but don't. It wasn't the right time.

So, in an ironic twist of things I find myself writing about the criminalization of manliness for a women special issue of this magazine. But it is a discussion that needs to be had.

Any reasonable person will agree that women empowerment is vital to a healthy society. Statistics on how educated mothers have a positive multiplier effect on the community is no longer debatable. You cannot 'make the world a better place' by unjustly limiting half its population from fulfilling their potential. The need to appreciate women for their personhood has taken gigantic steps worldwide, yet more needs to be done. Child marriage, gender discrimination in the workplace, lack of access to health and violence are but few of the problems that ail women and need to be addressed with all seriousness. No arguments there.

The feminist movement has done miracles in empowering women and demanding equality with men. Over the last couple of decades (with arrival of 'third wave feminism') women have been striving to be assertive about their own sexuality-take ownership of it. Advice that tells women to act like men and not be so stereotypically girly is archaic. There is a growing re-acknowledgement of the differences between men and women, and an understanding that difference does not mean unequal. Women are taking ownership of stereotypes to celebrate their womanhood. And more power to them. However, my beef with the feminist movement is- intentionally or unintentionally- it stays silent during the persecution of men. It gives a pseudo-authorization for harassing masculinity. Its narrative of gender issue is so one-sided that women take what they want and leave men short-changed. I shall elaborate.

If generalization is wrong then it must to be wrong for both sexes. Yet, it's a social blasphemy to herd women into the shed of generalization, but it's okay to do so with men. Say "Women are such bitches" in public and radical feminists will call for your castration. Say "Men are such assholes" and you get nodding heads and laughter. Does that sound fair?

Women are encouraged to celebrate their sexuality but when men do the same evolution is questioned and concerns about our hidden animalistic nature are expressed. Men suffer from the contradictory roles society expects. On one hand men are expected to act calm under stress, not be afraid of danger, kill wanton insects, and act chivalrous while on the other, manly things are to be avoided. Male camaraderie through aggressive competition is discouraged. What was once a noble exercise of wit and passion is shunned for the fear of being mistaken for a fight. If a man chooses to keep his emotions to himself, make light-hearted quip about romance or spend a day watching a football game with his mates he's branded as an emotional retard who has no feelings what so ever.

Society is far more lenient towards women who do the stereotypically manly things when compared to when men do the stereotypically female activities. The roles society has heaped on us can be flaunted by women under thunderous applause, but it's a big no-no for men to do so. Women have a choice in defining their sexuality while men are bound by their gender- and here lies all the difference. Society comes to the defense of the woman's right to choose. The options for men are disposable.

Another contradiction in the roles assigned to men is that we are expected, in times of adversity, to act like heroes, while simultaneously being branded as 'potential rapists'. We (speaking on behalf of most of my sex) find this accusation disgusting!  We will not we treated as creatures to be wary off, something to avoid at night. We put our foot down. And if this continues start killing your own damned cockroaches!

At the institutional level as well, men continue to be discriminated against. Adoption rights, divorce laws, laws regarding domestic violence are all tilted in favor of women. Domestic violence against women when brought to the limelight gets all the deserved sympathy and legal protection; domestic violence against men (yes, it exists) is dismissed as a joke.

While rape is a horrendous crime and deserves to be punished by the most severe of laws, cases of false accusation don't do society any favors. A man who has been accused of rape is shunned by society and there are no laws protecting him from discrimination. Take the recent example of the former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. O how the mighty fell!

Society needs to re-think some of the gender issues. I don't support women empowerment because I want to replace men chauvinism with women chauvinism; I support it because we can create a better world for both girls and boys by teaching them the truth about being a woman and being a man.

Having strong, independent and intelligent women in society, necessary though it is, cannot replace strong, independent and intelligent men. They must complement each other. Let's emphasize femininity for its own sake, and not as a revenge for masculinity.

Written for March Issue of Wave magazine

Thoughts on Valentines Day!

Romantic love is perhaps the greatest reward of human evolution. It is one of the finer survival mechanisms we have developed as a species. Scientific research into how our mind transforms when we are “in love” has helped luminate the chemical complexity behind it all. Love is made possible by a romantic coordination of the visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and neurochemical processes. Contrary to the insufferable saying “Love is blind” love it seems has a wonderful eyesight and is far from being deaf or crazy or mute.

Whatever your presumed reason for falling in love maybe, it derives its motivation by the human instincts to procreate. The true tragedy of human love is that even though we have an insatiable desire to mate, we want to mate with only those partners we think will give us genetically strong offspring. Therefore begins the process of sniffing, tasting, and eyeing our partners out. You are not with your partner for no reason; there is a fascinating evolutionary story that’s took millions of year to perfect that has led you two to hook up.

Since the early Homo sapiens love has been part of our societal interactions. We have relied of the same chemicals to produce the same emotion to fulfill some of the same tasks regardless of the time and space of our existence. Love over millenniums has not altered, however the ways in which we express it have.

Human have always relied on symbols. Symbols help us express the intangible. Look around, you are surrounded by symbols: symbols of God, of bravery, of good old times. We do the same with love. The way people symbolize love has differentiated along cultural and chronological lines but all ages and all races have done so. When Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built he was symbolizing love. Writing extravagant poetry for your partner is an expression of love. Buying diamonds- that last forever- is also a symbol of love.

The symbols and the ways of expressing love are dynamic. In the past lovers had to be creative in conveying their feelings. They could not rely on mass produced goods to come to their aid. The select few who could write wrote poems, letters, and songs for the sake of amour. And the many that couldn’t, used subtle ways of expressing it. Over the years the symbolisms altered- alas for the worse. In our economic age love became commodified. The symbols were hijacked. The urge to be creative stifled by mass production. The subtle art of expressing love tattered by the constant bombardment of images that told us we must do something or give something when in love.

The mundane nature of modern life finds relief in the magic of mass communication. Movies and advertisements that provide an escape also tell us how to feel and what to do with those feelings. People in love are forced to undergo what sociologist Arlie Hochschild termed “emotional labor”: a form of emotional regulation wherein people are expected to display certain emotions in certain circumstances. The necessity to act a certain way when in love had gripped our thinking. But how do we act this love out?

We know we have to express love but we find ourselves caught between the unexciting expressions our economic age and the clichéd expressions of a past era. So most of us raise our hands in surrender to corporation and ask them to convey our most private yearnings through mass produced symbols. We give cards, and gifts and go out for drives and dates because that is what lover do. And if you don’t, well then there must be something wrong with you.

Isn’t that sad? Does that not make you angry? A thousand years from now when people look back at our time and ask how we expressed love, they’ll find that all of us gave teddy bears to each other and went to eat in a fancy restaurant on the February 14 every year. How boring is that!

I am no love guru to give advice on how to go about your intimate life but as a matter of common sense I can say this: Even though love is grand its best expressed with humility. You don’t need to be a poet to tell your partner how much they are appreciated. Neither do you need Valentine’s Day nor songs or chocolates or hearts or stuffed animals or cards or dates or movies or even words. If your chemicals are working then love can be expressed through the most basic of human actions on the most ordinary of days.

So don’t let a chubby Roman God flying half naked with a bow and arrow dictate your reaction to this fundamental human emotion. If you don’t get a gift this Valentine’s don’t despair, maybe your partner is trying express it in a more subtle ways. After all, humans have expressed love without commercializing it for millenniums and I am certain we are capable of doing the same this Valentines.

Written for Wave Magazine's February, 2012 issue.