MALE or FE-MALE

Words like patriarchy and feminism always stirs up some weird emotions inside me which automatically activates my fighting cells. (if there are any)

My morning today started with a very healthy discussion with a friend of mine on these issues. What overwhelmed me in this conversation was his sensitiveness towards this subject, him acknowledging the stinginess of all ‘our’ mindset which is so hell bent on patriarchy and him even admonishing me for accepting all the injustices around us so easily.  It was a discussion which I wanted to continue, but time was the major constraint so we decided to carry on the conversation some other day.

The second half of this discussion with some other person happened some time later. It was just after lunch and me savoring the delicious mushroom and sausage curry, I overheard a conversation which irritated me to great extent.

I was near the wash basin, when the person next in line who is our office boy Mr. X came to wash his Tiffin box. This person has recently tied the knot and it is not even 15 days that he is a married man.  Every day he had been complaining of only one thing- “My wife can’t even cook properly; she is either sleeping or watching TV all day long”.  Mr. X was cleaning his Tiffin Box when the next guy in the queue comments in Hindi “Have you lost it, why are you cleaning your Tiffin box- have you forgotten that now you are a married man and you have wife at home?”

Failing to curb my annoyance over hearing such a statement, I ask him to repeat again. He gladly grins and tries to modify his statement “You are getting me all wrong, what I meant was why you wasting your time washing your Tiffin box, when your wife as she is a house wife can do it. In this way, the others in the queue won’t have to wait so much for their turn”.

I smiled and pitied his up-bringing and ignorance level and after some fracas decided to give up.

As I found, the deeper I dug, the murkier it got. I just told him one thing that today I understood why derogatorily the area from where you hail is referred as ‘cow belt’.  He was least bothered with the discussion and in fact again started reiterating the fact that what else a housewife is supposed to do.

So today, I actually had an interaction with two different types of ‘Male’, one who wants to merge two different identities, by adding two extra alphabets to himself- FE-MALE, while the other can be rightfully termed as a chauvinist as he wants to prioritize himself by retaining just the word ‘MALE’.