Not raising our sons properly is leading to the abysmal gender dynamic and sexual violence against women.
A few days ago, my spouse, Sahil put up a proud Facebook post about my tenacity through the hard, slow and solitary act of writing. “I lost my spouse to her book,” he said. “I’m not complaining or resentful, not at all, just stating things as they were for these past three years, and feeling really proud.” A friend commented to me, “I know you know how lucky you are, compared to so many that have partners who are jealous and controlling. To have a partner who helps you to attain goals and is supportive is like winning the lottery.”
Oh, I do know how lucky I am, especially as an Indian woman married to an Indian man. Here, let alone a partnership where it’s ‘the man behind the successful woman’, even regular equal, egalitarian partnerships aren’t the norm. Most men always expect to be on top.
We live in a particularly gendered society, with deeply entrenched rigid norms and overarching male bias that are instilled from birth—and often even well before. A version of the blessing ‘may you bear a hundred sons’ exists in many Indian languages. And, although the government has banned sex-selective abortions, they are the primary cause, alongside better nutrition and medical care provided to boys, of India’s sixty-three million ‘missing girls’.
Around the country, there are many customs and rituals to celebrate childbirth—several of which are not performed or even inverted for the birth of a girl. Case in point is the Kua Poojan, a custom in many communities across North India, that involves welcoming the birth of a male child by worshipping the family well or other source of drinking water. However, when a female is born, some of these communities deposit trash on dustbins instead. The myth goes that if the birth of a girl is celebrated, more girls will be born.
In such traditional families, raja betas are made acutely aware of their superiority in comparison with their sisters and other girls around them. They are taught that they are entitled, first and foremost, to all rights—from food to fun; from education to property; and the world outside the home, at large. They see this paradigm played out in their parents’ and other marriages they see—the patis are the devs, the wives are their slaves, beaten occasionally to remind them of their place.
This ideology follows boys into manhood, where they impose it on women that they know. It manifests in various ways, big and small. When it comes to sex within a relationship, in a conflict between his desire and her lack of it, he gets to choose. When he is feeling angry and disempowered, he gets to assert his power and validate his importance through violence against women, in the home and outside.
I do paint a bleak and extreme picture, of a world far removed from the one you and I grew up in… or so you’d think. Patriarchy cuts across class, and pervades society at large. I know a girl in a top Mumbai college whose brother slaps her to enforce their parents’ patriarchal mores on hemlines/deadlines/boyfriends. I know a now-famous media person whose rich South Delhi family told her, throughout her childhood, that she could only do certain things (as innocuous as making chai for herself) in her ‘own’ (ie, marital) home; whose father would berate her mother for birthing a fair son but a dark daughter. When I gave a talk to a group of elite older women in South Mumbai, feminist activist Kamla Bhasin’s lines—‘Keep your beti in your dil but also in your will’—evoked a long round of applause. After, the women discussed how they had been denied inheritance by their natal families; and how they were trying to fight for their daughters’ rights.
While patriarchy does impact women’s roles in society, it’s not just about women. Restricted by gender norms, boys are discouraged from displaying nuanced emotions and developing empathy; unable to follow untraditional interests and reach their full potential; lacking in the life-skills department, and, therefore, dependent; and forced into the role of a breadwinner. Moreover, indulged, entitled and with unhealthy gender biases, they are often unprepared to meet women on an equal footing as adults.
Men brought up with this ideology are unprepared for the growing tribe of women who know our worth and rights. Men and women are trying to negotiate these new realities, and fumbling, and the growing rates of divorce is just one of the consequences. A dear friend is a highly educated and successful professional, who, in her thirties, married another professional she met online. They moved abroad, but the marriage collapsed shortly after. “He wanted me to make him a tiffin every day, babe,” she said to me, “and he didn’t want me to travel for work… Why didn’t he just marry some village girl if that’s the kind of marriage he wanted?”
Women just don’t take this shit anymore… which is great! But an easier way to solve the disquiet in the dynamic is to raise feminist sons. From the home environment, education, society, culture and religion, we must focus on the creation of better boyhood and the reinvention of the masculine identity at the seed. The need for such a revolution stems from the greater need to stop gender violence and improve the gender dynamic in adulthood, for the good of men, women and society at large.
An edited version of this article appeared in The Man in July 2020.