Thursday, July 4, 2013

Your anatomy makes you shameless/jobless.

I won't go into details.

But a few weeks back, things changed at college.

It wasn't a sexist place, not by a long shot. It wasn't a BAD place for a girl. It still isn't. Maybe I'm saying this because the guy:girl ratio in my class is 1:50 and Science pressure weeds out the jerks so most of the guys I know are nice anyway, I don't know.

But then the rules changed a little bit.

No shorts, no sleeveless tops.
Girls and boys, use separate staircases. Even when it makes absolutely no sense to do so.
Different gates.

And the English teacher said this, almost verbatim;
"Today I noticed, some of the boys are sitting in the girls rows. And some girls are sitting in the boys row. Now, I have no problem with this, you can sit however you want, but you might get into trouble. From tomorrow, sit in your own rows."

The weird bit is, we don't have separate rows.

And this got me thinking, what message are you trying to give us? It's the 21st century, it's not a big deal if girls and boys sit together. Talk. Wear shorts and parade the incredibly taboo skin of knee-to-ankle. I'm lucky that 2 of my best, BEST friends are boys. For all my feminism (actually, for all YOUR perceived notion of what feminism is), I don't hate men. I don't believe that every male is out to rape every woman, or comment on her ass and assets. I don't believe that at all. But our system - patriarchy, for want of a better word - does.

Friend's friend - Hi, I'm Sahil [ie male]
Me - Hi, Manasi.
*we shake hands*
*outside the Supervisor's office*
*I get disapproving looks from some lady I don't know*
Friend - Hey, we have to go for Maths. See you later?
Sahil - Yeah.
*friend and I walk up the boys' staircase because we're badasses like that*
Me - Did you see the looks that woman was giving me? JEEEZ!
Friend - Yeah,
Me - Imagine if I was wearing shorts. She'd think I was so shameless.
Friend - What's going to happen if we wear shorts yaaa? Are boys so jobless that they're just going to rape us here, in front of everyone?!
Me - Nono, they'll take us to the boys staircase.

Do you see this, people? Do you UNDERSTAND? Making a rule that girls can't wear short clothes, means you think boys absolutely cannot keep it in their pants. Making a rule that we can't go on the same staircases or through the same gates, means you don't think we can be in close proximity without doing "naughty naughty things". Making a rule that we can't mix in the classrooms...I don't even know.  Most of my guy friends are really smart, and if I wasn't allowed to talk to them about intellectual stuff, I'd be a lot less intellectual. We'd all be.

This isn't a post against college, this isn't a post against guys, or the 21st century, or my teacher, or the lady who was shooting me looks. This is against the notion that all boys are horndogs, that girls are in charge of preventing violence against themselves. Let's focus on that for a minute - girls are in charge of preventing violence against themselves. For those of you who don't actually understand this, it's like saying it's India's fault the Raj happened, and the East India's Company was just natural, boys will be boys, companies will be companies, and India shouldn't have worn shorts.

Masculinity isn't muscles and domination and Axe body spray. Femininity isn't sunshine and daisies and butterflies. We're all PEOPLE. Sure, some guys may have completely screwed up notions and I don't want to be on the same staircase as them, but others are really terrific, and maybe if we stopped pressuring them into this terrible idea of masculinity, we'd actually have intelligent conversation. Maybe we'd actually act like we're the result of 4 billion years of evolution.

Can we all just please try to be like this guy please?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Zj6pPSlJI

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