G for Gender: Life lessons and the Cost of Coffee

                                          http://www.brussels.info/peeing-boy/

You are on a long road trip with your child (when you are travelling with a child, even a trip down the street can be a 'long road trip' of course!) Despite multiple warnings to 'go' before you left the house, the youngster needs to 'go'. Right now. You pull over and undo his shorts for him. Junior relieves himself by the side of the road taking in the sights and sounds and if he is the gregarious sort, waving and smiling at cars passing by. Congratulations - you have just introduced your son to the world of male privilege - that vibrant, green grassland where everything is structured to suit his needs and is his for the taking.

Now picture this scenario with a girl child. You first yell at her for not obeying your instruction to 'go' before leaving the house. You watch her squirm in her seat in cowed silence and wonder how many kilometers you can make it before she starts up again. Finally you concede that she has been punished enough for her thoughtlessness and look for the next available restaurant that looks reasonably hygienic (another couple of kilometers have passed). You pull over. The wife hurriedly leads the child to the bathroom while you use the opportunity to stretch your legs and order coffee. You have now welcomed your girl child to the world of feminine caution and taught her to adjust to the real world where hygienic toilet facilities are few and far in between and like everything else in life she had just better learn to 'hold it in' till an acceptable stopover is reached.

You notice a similar scenario in children's clothing stores - the girl children are led to the trial room by the diligent parents while the boys are stripped to their magnificent male bare essentials in full view of the world. After all, what is there to cover up? What does a male need to fear about his physical form? The children quickly lap up these lessons - girls need to always ensure they are not 'exposed' in public. They have a lot to be ashamed of. For the boys all the world is a public rest room. Or a trial room. Sure they may not do exactly the same things when they grow up. But what if the idea of male privilege thus instilled manifests in other facets of their life and thinking? Like judging a woman based on what she is wearing - and thinking that if she is not 'covered up' she is probably fair game?

Those little things we do without thinking too much about it! Of course you don't train or expect your son to grow up to be a chauvinist. Maybe you are not the kind of person who would relieve himself by the side of the road either. But male privilege is not just something that 'other people' practice, accept and pass on to their children. It is something that creeps up on us when we are not looking, infiltrating our carefully moulded quasi-egalitarian existences. It is lurking in the shadows when you call your children to dinner and then ask your daughter to serve the guests while your son has taken his place at the table. It is right there perched on your shoulder when you tell your sons to eat healthy so they grow up tall and strong and you tell your daughters the same so they grow fair and pretty. And it is staring right down your nose when you tell your son to 'drive safe' when he calls to say he will be late and you tell your daughter to 'get home before dark and not bring disrepute to the family' if she calls up with the same message.

I am not advocating that girl children be allowed to pee on the roads and try on clothes in public. I would just like to state that certain codes of conduct essentially stem from common sense and therefore should be gender neutral. It is a civic duty to not stink up the public roads. It is good etiquette to not undress in public (and in present times, sensible parenting too to not expose your children to roving eyes). There is nothing gendered in these choices. There shouldn't be. If a child wanting to go to the bathroom disrupts your smooth trip, it has and should have nothing to do with that child being a boy or a girl. Let us all just pay for that coffee so we can use the rest room in the restaurant. 

'Well Heeled' no more

I am a centimeter short of 5 feet. There, I said it! From the time I painfully realised I had reached my full quota of growth,  I tried to tell anyone who would listen that I was 5’1’’. No one is walking around with a measuring tape, are they? I don’t know how many believed it. After a few years, I scaled it down to 5 feet, realizing 5’1’’ was a bit of a, well, stretch and even a good lie needed to be believable in the first instance. A centimeter was forgivable, I told myself and fixed my own height at 5 feet. And now, at the lofty age of 41, I am declaring to myself and the world that it makes no difference to your life or mine how tall I really am and what I really am is a centimeter short of 5 feet. Hark – did you just hear a thunder clap? The sound of a mountain crumbling? A scary gale? No? Exactly!

Did you ever know that a short person, in the first instance, is unaware of the fact that they are really short? I was about 17 when my friends were having a random discussion and one of them remarked, ‘you know what I realized standing in the bus this morning? Mostly everyone was shorter than me! You guys ever felt that?’. It was the sort of random thing you nod along to (in my life experience upto that point) without much discussion and along with the others I lazily murmered a ‘ya’ when there was a sudden peal of laughter in the group and I looked around wondering what I had missed. Then I realized they were laughing at me. ‘You agree?’, one of my friends was asking while practically wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘Well, yes..?’ I replied, still not realizing what exactly was funny. From the ensuing rounds of fresh laughter and overlapping exclamations from my friends I suddenly hit realization – I was actually shorter than most people. A fact of life that had somehow escaped my attention till that point because it had not stood in the way of my doing anything I had wanted to do – topping examinations, taking dance lessons, winning debate competitions etc. That was the day I took a long, hard look at myself and had this epiphany – you are bloody short! You better shoot up fast or you are going to owe the world a major apology!

Unfortunately life intervened and I really could not work on the task of growing taller. There were still degrees to be won, grades to be achieved, a career to be established. And thus I missed the deadline. Besides I was probably at the end of the growth cycle in any case by that point. Of course I had plenty of reminders along the way – various people from various walks of life reminding me that I had failed the test of growing tall. Till I was about 25, my dear grandmother refused to let go of the hope that I was going to gain another couple of inches, vertically. ‘I think you have grown a bit taller from the last time I saw you,’ she would say, but I knew that was just her love for me. To all intents and purposes, I was done. Done for. And woefully short!

You wouldn’t believe how this offended people! I got so many short jokes from tall people during University and later my office days that I finally put up my hands and gave up! I joined the league of fat people who made themselves the butt of jokes before anyone else could, because seriously, that was the least you could do for the world after failing miserably at that simplest task of achieving an acceptable physical stature! There I would be, presenting ideas at a serious meeting when someone would feel the need to point out how small I looked. I mean, how distracting, right? How was anyone supposed to acknowledge your ideas made sense when you made it impossible, visually, to get past the fact that you were really really short?

And then I married a guy who was 6’1” - a full foot and an inch and a centimeter taller than me!  That provided some cause for merriment – the wife-needing-a-foot-stool to get hold of the husband’s collar variety of jokes flowed. My six inch heels on my wedding day did nothing for the wedding pics which still continue to entertain and engage! And imagine when I was carrying my first child – bring on the football-on-heels jokes – puh-leese!

And then there was this one time when a colleague thought it would be fun to have my height measured in view of the entire office one lazy Saturday. (Everyone else got measured too, it was all in good-natured jest). Add to the hilarious little frame the postpartum weight I was still carrying from my second pregnancy and there was cause for much giggling, squealing and hysterical laughter. There was this tiny flicker of resentment that sparked  inside of me that day because this was initiated by people I would need to trust to judge me by what I did rather than how tall I was or how much I weighed. Also the gnawing thought that all it took was a smidgen of sensitivity and respect for a fellow human being to leave well alone! It was difficult enough having to go the extra mile your entire life because your genetic makeup did not include a ‘tall’ gene. On top of that is the compulsion to find defense mechanisms to deal with states of being that are hereditary, acquired, grown into or simply, just there by virtue of nature or nurture. You grudgingly get used to being judged on those attributes instead of the ones you have worked for, not what you have spent years trying to master and perfect but the physical or personality traits that go into making you, you – height, weight, complexion, texture of skin or hair, oddities in speech or gait, even accents, clothes or food preferences! In other words you live your life allowing the bullies of the world to wield the power to undermine you.

If you have ever made fun of a close friend for being fat, taunted a cousin about her skin tone, sniggered at a colleague who lisps, I am sorry my friend, but you are a bully. And here I would like to reiterate that bullying is not just about physically hurting those weaker than you. It is about aiming your negativity - whether physical or verbal - at someone you perceive as lacking in something you happen to have. At the individual level we shamelessly take credit for something that we have played no part in achieving – genes, gender. And use that to shame others we perceive as different – or in our estimation, falling short. Because it makes us feel superior? Because it helps us forgive our own limitations to point out that someone lacks something we so easily, naturally, lazily possess? At the societal level we do the same with caste, religion, language, place of origin. Use it as a tool to differentiate and taunt those who are different from us – for no fault of theirs. For no merit of ours. 

I am taking off those heels now. Because I no longer consider it necessary to offer a defense or an explanation for the fact that I am short. Or fat. And a woman. A Malayali. An Indian. Any other label which happens to be mine by reason of birth or descent. I think I will just focus my energies on battles worth fighting from now on.