Facing Gender Daily – A Female Perspective

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I get ready to go out, wearing a strappy top and a relative tells me to cover up with a jacket.

 

"Your bra strap is showing."

"You don't know how these boys' minds work!" 

"Why do you want to show so much?"

are some things I hear on the regular.

 

Walking out of my house, I'm met with the ogling eyes of the public as I tend to hold my bag closer to me, phone in hand in case I need to call someone urgently. I have seen my college berate girls on the basis of what they wear and in school I've been a victim of it. Every time my mother constantly pesters me with my location, the numbers of who I'm out with and keeps calling me if I don't message back, reminds me of the one basic fact that my life seems to revolve around. The fact that I'm a female in a male dominated world stuck in the deep embedded institution of patriarchy.

You fight for something, you're triggered. You express emotions, you're hormonal and it's "that time of the month." Something I noticed very recently was when a woman said she was interested in football or celebrated Argentina's win, she was relentlessly interrogated with questions like “name 10 players” or “explain the offside rule.” People were just unable to come to terms with the fact that women watch and are interested in sports like football.

On the daily, at each step of the way, women are perpetually faced with hurdles in the form of stereotypes and notions manifested in the form of institutions and mindsets. Gayle Rubin has talked about how society has modernized oppression and patriarchy instead of eradicating it. This is an accurate description of what happens when a woman goes through the monotonous process of judgement, institutional oppression and stereotypes on a daily basis.

For people who believe that such oppression and judgement doesn't exist and that feminism is a farce and women are "hormonal", the next time you make a snap decision of going out of town at night with your group of friends, ask a girl you know how many questions she had to answer, how many precautions she had to take, how people and society judged her for it and what all went on in her mind before she could even think of going and then ask a guy the same.

The reality is in front of us. Turning a blind eye to it is never the answer, but it seems to be the preferred mode of living. Talking about changing people's mindset and eradicating the institution of patriarchy is a far-reaching task which can only even be considered once people actually acknowledge that society is not equal because only once you acknowledge and accept a mistake, can you correct it.


Written by: Tanushree Midha 

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