Please note all exhibits are inspired by real events keeping in mind only financially independent women. I am not even talking about the rest, the bigger chunk. That is upto your imagination.

Exhibit 1: You are a married Indian woman who is at her parents place along with your husband. Thankfully, in my generation, at least in the social circles that I am part of, its not so taboo among my male friends to stay at their wife’s parental home for a considerable time. Of course, I know this is a very small section of society. Actually, this should have been exhibit 1. How its totally not okay for a man to be living with his wife’s parents while, on the other hand, its totally not okay for a woman to want to not live with her husband’s parents. Anyhow, moving on to my actual exhibit 1. So, you are at your parental home with your husband. Do you think anybody in your family would mind if he doesn’t help out with house chores? Do you think anybody would expect him to know where a certain thing is kept in the house? At best, they would mind why are you two not going back to your own home, whatever that means. Now, reverse the situation. You are at your man’s parental home, or since I mentioned you are an Indian married woman, you might be living with them. Do you think people WON’T expect you to know in a few days of your entering the household where the salt is kept?

Exhibit 2: Below is an email my female friend & her mail colleagues received from their boss on the office email. Some context – she is part of a team where she is the only woman & the client group this boss is referring to is an all-women gang. In the last sentence, what is he trying to get at – everyone marked on the email would agree except her as she is a woman (I have hidden her name). To think, this happened on a public AND official platform and my friend’s reactions to her slightly apologetic & awkward after this male colleagues had to be warm enough to not sound like an overtly offense taking, dramatic person. Does it sound completely normal that the onus of making the situation ‘chill’ lies on the one who had been subjected to a gender level standardization? And what if she wanted to make a hue and cry about it? She is playing the woman card or the victim card. And why exactly would that be wrong, I ask. If gender level standardization is completely normal, then it should be culturally accepted that all of us will and should play the woman card at any given chance.

Exhibit 3: You are on the road trying to park your car while some jerk enters the parking spot out of nowhere. Pretty common sight in North India. What would you abuse about in the car? How “people” in North India are <insert expletives here> What if it was a woman? You would be saying – of course, stupid behavior was expected as its a woman driver. Just on the side, because this exhibit made me recall a certain post on social media, delve deeper into why women are less confident while driving.

I am not going to add anything after these exhibits, as more than enough has been said better than I could ever say on this topic. I just had rage inside and wanted to address when people casually remark about women being difficult beings. Why are women always angry?

As if, social conditioning has nothing to do with it. 🙂 As a 30 year old man in India, if your mom doesn’t even expect you to take care of your dirty underwear yourself (she probably doesn’t expect that from your dad either – see what I did there?), I don’t think the man-child in you is assimilating things as they are. Be a man (i.e. sensitive & empathetic to other genders including women) while keeping the child in you alive, not a man-child. 🙂