India's Daughters, India's Sons - Part 2

The BBC Documentary ‘India’s Daughter’s’ has come out 2 years after Jyoti ‘Nirbhaya’s bestial rape and subsequent death. The perpetrators of the crime have been brought to book. All 6 of them. One of them, Ram Singh, Mukesh Singh’s brother, committed suicide in jail. One other, the juvenile, will probably walk free in Dec 2015. The others, Mukesh Singh included, will likely get the death penalty. At the very least, they will spend the rest of their lives in confinement.

They have already spent 2 years in there. They have had enough time to reflect, to come to terms with their actions.

And yet, when Mukesh spoke, there was no hint of remorse. Or shame.  

‘A woman is more responsible for rape than a man’. He justified. ‘Only 20% of women are good’. The other 80% were deserving candidates for rape.  Jyoti had qualified, by being in a bus with a man who was not her brother or her husband. 

The woman, a perpetual prisoner to notions of propriety. Her every move, subject to societal scrutiny. A man, perpetually inured from it, even after a grisly depravity.

‘A woman is like a flower, a precious diamond’ Mukesh’s educated lawyer said. ‘You bring her outside, and she will be crushed’. A woman’s rightful place was inside the home. A man’s place – outside it.

‘If my daughter engaged in pre-marital activities, I would take her to my farm house and set her aflame’ the other college educated lawyer said. She was his family reputation. He, the upholder of it.

Deep rooted notions of womanhood, entangled inevitably, with notions about manhood. Untouched, in spite of education. Unchanged, (in the case of Mukesh) even when his very life depended on it.  

Patriarchal attitudes exist along a continuum. Most countries in the world stay patriarchal in varying degrees. But, since we speak in the context of ‘India’s daughters’, let’s keep our sight on India.

At the very violent extreme of that spectrum falls female infant/foetal death. Denying a girl the right to live, even before she is born. Her gender, her only fault.  

Dowry related murders come pretty close. Killing your wife because her family can no longer pay you to stay married to her.

Rape and domestic violence come somewhere after. Hitting, slapping, and kicking your wife. Snatching sex by force, without consent. 

But these are just the most visible and violent representations of a doctrine that stays deeply ingrained in our psyche.

A social code that defines with rigidity, rules, rights and roles for men and women. One that makes women the sole symbols of family shame and men the sole owners of the family name. One that limits the role women outside the home and of men inside it. One that assigns men the label of ‘breadwinners’, ‘earners’ and women the tag of ‘homemakers’, ‘spenders’. One that rewards violence, retaliation, libidinous behaviour in a man as symbols of masculinity, but chastises women for impropriety when they choose the same. One that pigeonholes emotion, vulnerability, restraint, forgiveness as strengths in a woman but as weaknesses in a man. One that uses clothing to flaunt female modesty, accessories to signal her accessibility, but liberates men from the onus of reciprocity. One that implies that sex is something women must give as a duty and that a man must take as a right. Notions that permeate across large tracts of all social and economic strata.  Philosophies both men and women perpetrate.  

I consider myself privileged to have been exposed to a basket of ideas, commonly categorised as ‘feminism’, almost two decades ago.  Feminism, an organised movement of women, by women, for women. Feminism, also a word with enormous baggage, one that scares men and women alike, but in truth, a simple idea. That men and women deserve equality. That women have equal access, equal privilege and equal responsibilities as men in all arenas of public life- boardrooms, government, military, judiciary, etc. That women have the same opportunities as men to aspire, to dream, to achieve. That women have freedom to express their individuality by dressing as they please. That women give themselves the same sexual rights as men – to pursue, not just be pursued, to seek pleasure as much as give it, to own the prerogative to say ‘yes’  to be firm when they want to say ‘no’.

Those of us whom feminism touched, have seen our lives transformed by it. Monochromic definitions of womanhood, all replaced by a rich palette of choices. And yet, despite the obvious benefits accrued to women, traditional thinking has been hard to breach. The ideas taking eons to expand their reach.

Maybe because you can’t transform the lives of women, without simultaneously transforming those of the men in their lives as well? Women and men are the Yin and Yang of society. The two wheels that keep society moving smoothly. We have had decades of disproportionate chatter about liberating women. We have lived with centuries of deafening silence about unshackling men. Trying to free one wheel, while keeping the other tightly fettered.

Even as more and more women aspire to adopt the multi-hued female identity, male identity largely exists in a monotone. Male power stays tied to being a breadwinner, male success to external validation of money or social success, male dressing straight jacketed into a narrow definition of acceptable patterns and colours, male sexuality tied to the notion of being overly libidinous, male relevance linked to perpetuating the family name, masculine potency entwined with violence, aggression, retaliation.

Even as men find that they must adapt to accommodate the changing face of women around them, they struggle to hold on to the accepted male identity. Even women who want and chase liberation for themselves, often find themselves unable to free men of all their gender expectations.

How can you truly empower women with multiple ways to be woman, without endowing men with an array options as well?  

Can India truly allow all its daughters the opportunity to venture out of their homes and achieve successes in the public arena, unless it also allows all its sons the openings to venture inside the homes and experience the joys of domestic achievement?

Unless we allow men to expand the definition of success to include inner, private victories, will they be able to support their women who seek large, public ones?

How can we expect leniency towards a wide array of female fashion and self-expression, without allowing men to break free from relatively rigid patterns of dress and appearance? 

How can we hope to expand the vocabulary of ladylike behaviour to include retaliation, aggressiveness, muscular strength, unless we embrace forgiveness, vulnerability, restraint and inner mettle as symbols of male potency?

How can we end rape by just removing the victim’s notion of humiliation, without erasing the abuser’s sense of elation, and replacing it with a sense of embarrassment, shame?

How can we impress that snatching sex without consent is unlawful, without asserting that sex with consent is more pleasurable?  

How can we end violence against women, without associating cowardice with aggression and bravery with resistance?

How can we end patriarchy without letting daughters share the responsibility of carrying forward the family name, and divvy equally the onus of the family shame?  

 Feminism and masculinism, two sides to one coin. Yin and Yang. Two wheels of society’s bicycle.

Decades ago, feminism started as a movement by women, for women, of women, to free women from their confined identity.

Masculinism’s time is now.