Yours always, patriarchy

It’s very easy to make me cry. Show me Finding Nemo or a handicapped puppy, and you will find a silver drop of tear in my right eye. It’s just very funny to explain, we all have different ways we react to crisis -- mine is weeping my way out of it. As a wailing 18-year-old, I have been many times fondly advised to “grow up”, “not cry like a girl”, “man up” amongst many other pointers on how to play my gender role with utmost discipline. I never understood how could, or rather why should I not cry when I want to.

And I am not alone, I find so many fellow friends being effectively diagnosed as a gay man for not being able to grow a beard, or being addressed as a ‘pussy’ for being afraid of dogs (pun intended), or, more interestingly, called feminine because they wear pink shirts.

It’s not the dwindling intellect that startles me, it’s the shallow patriarchy that does. It’s more upsetting than startling that in a society like ours, boys are always supposed to be drinking protein shakes and building biceps, while secondarily also protecting feeble and helpless girls whenever they can.

If you can look beyond the surface, you’ll see how many young men like me light the cancer stick or roll the accelerators of our motorbikes to zoom through traffic, so that our peers are regularly informed about our manliness.

Jigar, a classmate, regularly reminds me how patriarchy is more than just provoking young guys to pick up fights and use a swear word in every next line to look rough and tough. He took science as his career after high school, despite being an excellent singer, because the litmus test of manliness had repeatedly advised him about how Arts and Literature is only for girls and feminine boys. I see him anxiously suffer with poor performance in a classroom he was never meant to be in. I often wonder what is the cost of proving one’s manliness? A gym membership or a screwed career? Or perhaps a pink shirt.

It’s funny how you are so subtly served a bitter dose of patriarchy every time you chose to be yourself. Even across genders, patriarchy finds its roots, smiling with satisfaction as it counsels more young man to fall in the line.

To be a man enough.

I sadly was taught to make my own rules. I will cry whenever I want and for whatever I want. You can call me a pussy or give me a shoulder to cry on, but the word ‘man’ will only define me anatomically. I’ll do what I want to, be

it knitting a sweater or dead lifting weights or dressing up a doll or talking about politics. A lot of things define me, and the word ‘man’ surely isn’t one of them.

Ronak Borana runs a nonprofit called Frostbite and is en route to becoming a doctor

If patriarchy is no party for you either, write to us at sexualitydna@gmail.com