Random thoughts/conversations

Why did we start to care? Traveling by bus, feeling attractive doesn’t last long. Its takes a look to makes us feel cheap. A comment. A stray guffaw. Was that something about me? Should I react?

Picking up a fight is choice to make with much deliberation. Where am I? Can I expect support? I don’t know Kannada, is that going to work against me? How much before it hurts his ‘manliness’?

“What’s the need for all this?”
“Gender stereotyping that mars an individual’s lawful freedom must go”
[...]
“Is all stereotyping bad?”
"hmmmm...no, I guess not."


“I don’t drop my buddies home if its after 11. But I drop you everytime and you expect it, don’t you?"


“There is a difference between bias and discrimination. For example, I am biased to look at men as responsible. But the minute I stop a woman for doing something, like an important task because I expect her to be irresponsible, that’s discrimination.”


“Ok admitted stereotyping makes things easier for us and it actually makes sense. In a harmless way as children we classified things as living and non-living. As plants, as animals, as wild, domestic, etc, because it helped us associate a set of behavioural patterns with a name. But sometimes this harmless classification can get restrictive. Man – breadwinner, strong, tall, broad shouldered. Woman – kind, caring, motherly, frail, fragile.”


“Women just want to be fashionable and dress to the latest trends. They just want attention. If they don’t dress decently – I don’t need to tell you what that is, right? – if they dress that way, then boys will comment. They shouldn’t dress that way, thats all.”


“I don’t need any of this empowerment shit. I really don’t think it’s needed - what you are doing. Women today can handle all this much better. Maybe women in villages need all this talk and all. Not us in the city.”


We spoke to others. We spoke to each other. And soon it was too late to wonder why we cared. We did. We've heard people laugh at our initial attempts at running self-defence classes, disbelief that this would change anything. Sometimes we are struck by the futility of our efforts. Then we step onto the streets and look troubled at the gang of laughing workmen. Just a bunch of riotous lads, but we keep watch over them from the corner of our eye. A part of us always aware that we are being watched too. One of us wants to light up. There’s no way we can on the road. We walk up to a deserted spot and get ready to stare down anyone who passes by.

Back at work where they are talking about going out drinking, a boy’s night out. They think, nay expect, that we wouldn’t ‘understand’ a thing about hangovers, drunken talk, bonding over beer. They expect us to blink stupidly back, which we do, cause we have enough battles to fight already. There is that subtle line between just expecting and stereotyping. Between when you've just let it be known where you where last night to when you're made to feel more and more alien to the group.

Sometimes it’s easier to hide within the boundaries of expectations, no?