Discover dancing like a man at Zee Jaipur Literature Festival

"You have to be, as Virginia Woolf says, bisexual to write," said Australian author of Greek heritage Christos Tsiolkas, who was part of a panel at a packed session on gender identity in literature and performing arts – Dance Like a Man: Refiguring Maculinity on the fourth day of the ZeeJLF.

"It isn't about who you sleep with, man or woman, but about being able to be in touch with your feminine or masculine side which makes you write better."

He admitted to being at a disadvantage growing up with a Christian background as a child. "I think in India you have an advantage because of Hinduism. Monotheist religions don't have the advantage of deities comfortable with their alternative sexuality."

Joining him in the discussion were writers Mukul Deva, Shobhaa De and Ashok Ferrey. To Ashok Ferrey's question on what "dancing like a man," meant, De said, "I think its unfortunately come to mean dancing like a Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan or Akshay Kumar. Its no longer just dancing because you want to. What is below the belt often is brought into play with really hard pelvic thrusts at the world watching." She added, "This is sad since it has to be dancing because you want to."

The author who wore a necklace with a large pendant which said Devi in the Devnagri script, lamented that the world of fine arts including dance is plagued by stereotyping.

"The sniggering that a male Bharatanatyam dancer faces or the more recent controversy over the Russian ballet dancer who was told that he couldn't play certain parts because he has thick thighs are all indicative of the ridiculous limits we have taken our gender stereotyping to."

Tsiolkas admitted that words like 'metrosexual,' mean little. "This is a media-created term and can only be acceptable in an urban cosmopolitan scenario. Once you go to the interiors things haven't changed much even in a supposedly progressive developed country like Australia." He also pointed out that women who try to assert themselves are often called sluts."

De agreed with him that labels like slut (for girls) or sissy (for boys) do a lot of harm. "It creates insecurities forcing them to conform to conventional, traditional gender roles." According to her, society still equates masculinity with violence against women. "The way Bollywood condones eve-teasing or the way we at Stardust, in our own uninformed way long back created expressions like Garam-Dharam are all part of the same mindset," she said, reminding the gathering of the way Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher were often called the 'the only men in their respective cabinets." She cited the example of the Rani Mukherjee-starrer Mardaani which chose to think that a woman who asserts herself is being man-like and said Bollywood revels in such stereotypes.

She felt that despite South Asia's poor track record on equality it has had women leaders only because they began their careers with a sympathy wave. "Society was trying to compensate them for their widowhood on account of assassinations," she averred. She went on to add, "The West or metropolitan India should not be held up as some shining example when it comes to the way it treats its women. Women there too have an increasingly tough challenge to face daily. Women like Indira Nooyi have said so."

Mukul Deva said he did not see the need for refiguring masculinity. "I've thought about it long and hard with some great help from Kingfisher last night but I did not see any need for reconfiguration." According to him, the fact that he was raised by his mother and that he's raising two daughters all by himself had helped sort him out.

De felt the younger generation held hope for change. "They want to break the grid their parents created, often challenging and excercising their sexual options in a different way. This needs to be encouraged and celebrated because unlike our generation they do not want to live a lie."