Will reading down 377 cure all evil?

It has been an interesting few days.

First there was the storm of “hopeful” messages and articles shared on social media. It seemed like the entire community was pinning all its hopes on one petition in the apex court. Parts of the media went nuts and started publishing doomsday articles with catch phrases like “last chance” in the title. As if, magically, all queer activism, all LGBTQIHKA spaces and people and movements and collectives would just disappear overnight if the court dismissed the petition without agreeing to hear it. At the same time, the more positive articles just waxed super eloquent about what wonderful things would happen, again – magically, overnight – if only the court would accept the curative petition, and hear arguments.

I had hopes, sure, more like wild desires with not much real chance of fulfilment actually … of the court reexamining the RE criminalization of consensual adult sexual activity – both same sex as well as heterosexual – under 377 on 11.12.2013. However, I have been a part of queer organizing (how OLAVA began and some of the things I do now are more about community building and support activities) and queer activism (what OLAVA became, and a lot of things I do now, definitely fall under that heading) in India for almost 20 years now. So, I am more wary, more cautious to hope too much, than the 20-something generation Y friends who surround me. Maybe I am just jaded and cynical, but in all the conversation we had before the D-Day, I found myself being the dampener, the voice of caution against pinning too much hope on one event, the spoil sport, the mood wrecker, the party pooper.

Well, things went better than I secretly expected. For all my sharing of optimistic articles and discussions on what India could expect from the court, and whether or not it is time for INDIA to do away with this legal remnant of Victorian colonial prudery, etc etc, I really expected the petition to be thrown out of court. So, when it wasn’t, it was a very pleasant surprise to say the least. The 3 judge bench referred the petition to a 5 judge “judicial bench” instead, to be heard “at the earliest”, after a mere 5 minute hearing.

And then the jubilation began. Some of it seemed seriously over the top to my jaded sensibilities, considering that this wasn’t any victory of any sort. All the 3-j bench did was to say… we won’t make a decision on this matter, so we will pass the buck to 5 of our colleagues. Essentially… the community and its lawyers now have to convince FIVE people instead of three of the need to de – criminalize adult consensual sexual activity. Easier? I don’t think so! The whole process begins again… with 2 additional minds to convince.

And let’s say we do all that. And 377 is read down again. Maybe scrapped altogether. How much difference is it going to make on the ground? How much is it going to change the day to day lived realities of hundreds of thousands of LGBTQIHKA individuals?

Over the last decade or so, queer movements in India seem to have become exclusively centered on 377, just as internationally they have coalesced around marriage equality. And as tends to happen, when movements begin to focus too hard on legal change, sometimes other things backslide. Not to mention the fact that 377 has a big caveat of “privacy” which excludes a large chunk of the community, who for numerous reasons do not have access to privacy for their sexual activity, and therefore remain vulnerable to discrimination and abuse. And that “not all gays” wish to be co-opted into the patriarchal-capitalist frameworks of marriage and family.  

To many, in a country that is facing increasing intolerance, sharply rising crime against different marginalized communities, and so much more, how is it possible to imagine that scrapping 377 is the only important thing, or that it will miraculously make all our lives better? In the gap years when 377 had been read down by Delhi High Court and the Re-criminalisation by the Supreme Court, how much of a real difference did the community see in everyday society? Did the “average” parent or sibling or friend, let alone the religious fanatic, suddenly accept the queer family member with open arms? Did queer people stop losing jobs, homes, families, loved ones, and lives for being who they are? Not that I know of.

This excess of jubilation is seriously misplaced in my opinion. There is a long road to travel and a lot of things to be done. There are alliances to be made and space to be given over – to those who don’t have privacy, to hose who don't want to get married, to those who do not want a politics of “conformism” of “just like you, to those who do not want to be a part of the mainstream. Maybe it is time to start thinking of larger systemic changes, of weaving all possible marginal positions together to make a strong fabric of resistance. Of collectivizing across gender, sexuality, caste, class, and start discussions to dismantle the patriarchy-capitalism nexus that oppresses so much of humanity.

Yes, this is a positive development. But let us curb our enthusiasm and remember that thiss is just a small step on a long journey we still have ahead of us, a long battle to engage in, before a truly equal and just world can be arrived at, if ever. So yes, celebrate a little, but also…. And this is very important…

Keep calm and carry on!

Conditioning Conundrum

On the way home from a particularly intense and meaningful session of the Sunday Adda, I hopped on to a bus. Normally, on a Sunday evening at 8ish, I would just take one of the many autorickshaws plying the fixed route between the Adda spot and close-to-home. But, this is durga puja season, and all the Bengalis and their uncles have gone ape-shit crazy. Normally deserted, horror movie setting streets have looked like middle of the day at a busy shopping destination for the last couple of weeks. Traffic, non-existent to the point of scariness under normal circumstances at that hour, has been standstill and crawling it-will-take-forever-to-get-there over the last few weeks. So, not chancing waiting another hour in the insane auto queue, I just jumped into the first bus I saw that was headed in the right direction.

Miracle of miracles! There was a seat! So I parked my more than ample behind, and settled in to ruminate on the fantastic session we had just had talking about male gaze, comfort levels, policing of women's bodies and clothes, movies, books, feminist theories, Freud, Woolf, and SO MUCH more. In the intensely slow crawl to where I was going, many people got into and off the bus, of course, some noticed, some not, in my post adda zen state.

One pair I did notice consisted of a young guy and a girl, probably in their mid 20s. They got in, and seeing the crowded, standing room only, state of the bus, chose a corner near the doors to stand. I sort of vaguely, peripherally, noted the animated conversation they were having, and concluded – probably erroneously – from the body language and particular nyakami of the woman, that they were a couple or at least romantically interested in one another.

Soon, a seat opened up across the aisle, and the young man promptly rushed across and took it, leaving the girl standing where she was. The first reaction I had was anger. A clear, knee jerk, what a creep, he-should-have-let-the-girl-sit, what’s-wrong-with-men type of reaction that came from some lizard brain conditioned part of me. And that, the reaction I felt, that spurt of anger, immediately made me uncomfortable.

People who know me can vouch for how vehement I am about equality, about the abilities of women to negotiate this world without being constantly infantalised and babied (as chivalry does), and so on and so forth. The woman was not older, physically differently abled in any way that I could see, or pregnant (that I could see). Any of those would have made me ok with my anger, because I would be angry with anyone, of any gender, not giving up their seat in those cases.

But here were two similarly aged, similarly abled people, and yet my first reaction, my instinctive (conditioned?) knee-jerk had been of anger simply because the “man” had taken the seat. Putting myself in that situation, if one of my male friends had dared to offer me a seat “just because I am a girl” I would probably have beaten the shit out of them, or at least handed out an extensive and caustic tongue lashing laced liberally with feminist theory and egalitarian rhetoric. I DEFINITELY do not want a world where ANYONE gets special treatment (either good or bad) simply because of something like gender.

So, time for introspection I guess. About conditioning and its effects. About how successfully I have been able to resist conditioning. About how many of my received notions I have been able to ditch. About why/how I have seemingly retained some (unconsciously or consciously). And so much more.

The OTHER

An apparantly homeless, possibly mentally ill, middle aged man walks into one of the chain cafe outlets that are all the rage with a certain section of the young and hip, and the older but cooler crowd. He walks straight back into the little atrium area where the smokers like to hang out. He looks around, and plonks himself on a chair at one of the tables, an occupied one.

The change in atmosphere was electric. The change from light, fun adda to massive discomfort and distrust was so sudden it was like the physical slam of a huge wave bashing into us. A thick, viscous wall of all the nasty possibilities, of instinctive cringeing, caused the worst case of “chhondo poton” i have seen in a long, long time.

He sat next to me, at the table behind me, and leaned over to ask for a light. I am ashamed to say i felt the creeping discomfort too as i handed him the box of matches off our table to light his biri. Conversations, taking place at each table and across tables; vivacious and effervescent, had come to a grinding halt by now. The odd word muttered under the breath, and a lot of looking at each other and at the man was going on.

An employee of the cafe walked out to the atrium area, and i shook myself ready. With all the recent cases doing the rounds on facebook of poorer or homeless people being mistreated by employees of various establishments, i had no cause to expect anything else from this one too. My friend and i exchanged glances, and stiffened our spines to intervene if things went too far or if the employee got obnoxious.

He started with asking the man “what are you here for? Have you come here to smoke?” Something he would never ask any of us, regulars, dressed a certain way, appearing to be from a certain class,even if we had sat there for hours without placing a single order, as my friend P pointed out later. And yet, a couple of minutes into this man's appearence, and here he was. The man replied he was going to order some coffee, at which the employee asked another employee (who had come out in the meantime to offer moral support or something) to get the man a menu card. The promptness of service in the arrival of the menu card to the table would have impressed the most jaded of customers. Luckily, i didnt need to intervene, and the employees went back to the counter, presumably to give the man time to figure out what he wanted.

There were four tables in the outdoor area, two occupied by pairs of people (including ours), one had a young woman sitting alone and one, the one behind me with a young man sitting alone. Mr X (as i shall call him for easier referral) had looked around when he first arrived and sat down with the unaccompanied young man rather than the woman which i thought was rather good of him, and unusual in this country. Plenty of men i know or have had the misfortune to run into would take the situation as an excuse to inflict themselves on the solo woman, and then use that as an excuse to strike up a not- so-wanted conversation or try to instigate unwanted “friendliness”.

The palpable discomfort and mistrust of the other customers (myself included in the discomfort i am ashamed to say) continued, peaking in the young man sitting at that table getting up and walking across the atrium area to join the solo woman at her table rather than share a table with Mr X. While we were all fidgeting, hemming and hawing, and quite unable to relax and enjoy ourselves solely because a particular person is sitting in the same space, Mr X asked me if i would share my coffee with him, “i dont have any money for these coffees, you see”. Given that these coffees start ar 100 rupees, that is quite understandable. I had a couple of inches left in the bottom of my glass of black iced coffee which i told him he was welcome to if he didnt mind the taste (no milk no sugar is not a very Indian way of drinking coffee). He was fine with it, i handed him my glass.

Thinking about wanting to buy him a coffee of his own, i had almost made up my mind to get up, tell him i was going to get him a coffee, and go order, when Mr X said “must go and meet xyz today! Oh! I had forgotten! He'll leave soon!” to general space, and got up to leave. As he passed the solo wioman's table (she was inside at the counter at this point) he reached over to stub out his biri in the ash-tray. The young man who was at that table, having shifted there to avoid Mr X, lunged across the table as the man reached out to SAVE a pack of cigarettes lying on the woman's side of the table, presumably her property.

Mr X simply smiled, said “i wasn't going to take those” and left. The whole thing must have lasted hardly 10 minutes.

The atmosphere changed palpably again instantly. As if the lightness came back, but with a darker edge. Everyone started discussing Mr X. The table next to ours was occupied by a female friend of ours and a man of her acquaintance who we had met there, at the cafe, a couple of hours before, and had the sort of conversation with that you tend to have with strangers in cafes. We spoke of books and music and movies and such. This man now began to talk about how he hated random people just talking to him, and how he was not normally a violent person but “today” he wanted to be violent to Mr X. They left pretty soon after, too shaken i presume to reclaim the jolly night they were having before this rude interruption.

The young man of the chaged tables shoved his oar in a couple of times to the conversation the three remaining women, (me, P, and solo woman) spontaneously started having. Getting not much response, and feeling some disapproval (i personally felt really weirded out by his move of tables), he left too. The three of us talked for a while about how we were thinking of intervening if the employees had misbehaved (all three of us), how we were thinking of buying him a coffee (me and solo woman), how all of us found young man's action extreme (turns out he was the one who summoned the employees to “deal with” the man. He told solo woman he was a counsellor! And claimed that he could tell at a glance that the man was not a “druggie” but simly mentally ill! And then proceeded to inflict himself on her despite her very apparent discomfort with the conversation – which i could see from across the atrium – and tried to get very friendly), and how we felt about everyone's reactions, including our own.

After all, he hadn't done anything the slightest bit out of line. He hadn't misbehaved. In fact he had been more polite and well behaved than a lot of people we deal with on a daily basis. We are all self identified libertarians, liberals, often with a leaning to the left, involved in or in favour of activism and all of that. So, not surprisingly, it was a blow to our self images to see our own reactions, and we could not get away from a feeling of guilt and ashamed-ness.

What was it about a mild mannered, decent acting, middle aged man that rubbed us all the wrong way so quickly and so violently? Just because he looked scruffy and unwashed? Just because he looked down and out? Just because he didnt dress the way we are used to seeing people there dress? (not true since he was in pretty standard clothing, jeans, a t-shirt) What was it about the arrival of this one man that had such an effect on a whole bunch of people? What caused that knee-jerk, almost instinctive, conditioned, instant discomfort? 

And --- at the end of the day --- what does that say about me?

The simple-impossible task of breaking the silence – part V: Rape

(Read parts one, two, three, and four of my series of blogposts on sexual violence in india)

The rape map of India (click to enlarge), outdated as it is, is a good one-glance artifice to immediately focus one's mind on the issue. Recent news has reported on many incidents of horrific rape, from the horrendous Nirbhaya case to the more recent Uttar Pradesh incident, bringing rape to the forefront of the Indian mind. However, most of us still dont see the problem for what it really is. We still hide behind ideas like "rare“, 'provoked', 'kidnapping and rape by strangers', 'it's not all that common' to happily ignore reality. After all, if we don't acknowledge that there is a problem, then we dont have to try to do anything about it, and if we can blame the victim or some faceless monsters, then we dont have to examine our own roles in the rape culture or change how we think and behave.

However, here's the real picture. Statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2013 show that there are 93 reported cases of women being raped in the country every single day. The NCRB data, shows that some states are more advanced than others in the matter, with Madhya Pradesh leading the line-up of ' bad place to be a woman ' with 4335 reported rapes in 2013, followed by Rajasthan (3285), Maharashtra (3063) and Uttar Pradesh (3050). and these are just the REPORTED cases. Any reported crime figures are always gross under-estimates of the reality on the ground, much more so in the case of sexual violence.

The number of rape cases that DON'T get reported are vastly higher than the number of cases reported. A UN study of 57 countries worldwide estimates that just 11% of sexual assault cases are ever reported, and this is in countries like the US! One can guess, then, how many cases actually make it to record books here, given our taboos, hangups over 'izzat', social stigma, refusal of the cops to take reports, and more. Realistically, it is possible that less than 2-3% make it to a formal report/complaint. In spite of this, India ranks number three in the world in the sheer number of reported rape cases, far, far worse than war torn poverty stricken Ethiopia at number 10 (feeling the superior glow of 'mera bharat mahaan' yet?)! Really something to think about, and time to give up the idea that rape is rare.

In fact, as a woman in India, who has lived here all her life, i can say that we all expect it, all the time. It is so common, and the entire culture around us so encouraging and supportive of rape and so much against the victim, that we have an "is this how mine happens“ moment almost every week. Every time i hear a set of footsteps behind me – even in my own lane, 20 meters from home – every time i find myself in any situation were the men significantly outnumber the women, everytime i am alone around a bunch of men, fear squeezes the gut and i automatically think 'so this is how my rape happens'. We are reconciled to it, we know that the statistical probability of this happening to us in our lifetime is far, far greater than the chances of escaping it entirely.

As for the myth of the stranger, the monster, from whom 'Indian Society' insists on saving its women. The actual, horrifying fact is that a majority of the offenders are well known to the victims. NCRB statistics show that 94% of the rapists were familiar to the victim, which includes neighbours (10782), other known persons (18171), relatives including siblings (2315) and yes, even parents (539). So let us stop to examine what, in our esteemed and much defended 'culture', makes it all right for people to rape so many women they know so well, without the least fear of retribution, justice, or punishment. Why do we have such a pathetic record of registering rapes, or punishing the rapists? (And no, one death sentence in a particularly heinous case does not count, when thousands and thousands of others go unprosecuted or slapped on the wrist with laughable sentences.)

This video may shock and horrify a few of us intellectual, educated, liberal Indians (does it though? Really?), but it is a very representative, very true picture of how the majority of the country still thinks of rape. It happens to 'westernised' women who wear jeans, have 'love' relatinships outside their castes, go to pubs, drink, smoke, mix with guys, and wear indecent clothes. Basically it is the fault of the victim for crossing every socially acceptable boundary imposed by the patriarchal structure of out society, it is her punishment for trying to fly too high, for having no morals. Men are not at fault, they are provoked. Either by the behaviour or clothes of the woman, or by fastfood, or some other factor! At worst, it is a mistake made by boys and should not be held against them!

However, the facts say otherwise. Women are raped no matter what they are wearing, from miniskirts to burkhas, from sarees and ghagras to bikinis. It is NOT about her clothes. It is not about attraction either because 12.5% of the total reported rape victims in India are minors and older women get raped too. From the gang rape of a 51-year-old tourist, to the rape of a child of a year and a half (how did she provoke? What was she wearing? Was she drinking/pubbing?having an affair?), to the rape of 6 year olds, 5 year olds, 10 year olds, children between between 2 and 10 years old, it happens, all the time. And this does not even include all the cases of rape as punishment, ordered by religious or even governing/political bodies.

Add to that the fact that marital rape is not a criminal offense within the Indian legal framework, except during the period of judicial separation of the partners, or where the wife is below 15 yers of age. When women's rights groups lobbied for marital rape to be criminalised, in the 1980s, it became an ongoing struggle for making this logical step to protect women in their own homes, which failed, because both the judiciary and the government argued that the contract of marriage presumes the woman's constant and never ending consent to sex. They concluded that criminalising marital rape would weaken family values in India (because, after all, what is more indian or valuable than disrespecting your partner and raping them and assaulting them and not even giving them the right to say no)!

But there’s little denying rape’s all pervasiveness in India. According to one particular 2011 poll cited by the Times of India, as many as 25 percent of Indian men admitted to committing an act of sexual violence, and roughly 20 percent of those polled conceded that they had forced their wives or partners to have sex when the woman was reluctant or unwilling. Maybe, then, it is high time to stop thinking about rape in stereotypes, and to realise that it happens everywhere, everyhow, everywhen, and the only one to blame for it is the RAPIST.

Since i posted this blog, THIS bit of news has come out. Another feather in India's Rape Cap. 

The simple-impossible task of breaking the silence – part IV: Conjugal Torment

In this post, part four of my ongoing series of blogs on sexual violence in India (read parts one, two, and three), i intend to discuss that tool of everyday violence and opression – sexual and otherwise – perpetrated on a majority of indian women, everyday – the great Indian marriage.

We live in a country where marriage is as much of a fact of life... for everyone … as growing up, growing body hair, feeling hunger/cold/heat, death and so on. We dont have a concept of choosing not to get married because everyone must. Neither do we, as a rule, have a concept of choosing who we marry (beyond a pretend selection among candidates vetted and put forward by parents, and even there the boys get a far better say than girls). So, we live in a society where as women, we are mentally prepared from day one – practically from the cradle onwards - to be compulsorily and without choice married off to a total stranger, and expected to fulfil our conjugal duties (read provide sex).

We are also a patrilocal society, where the new bride is expected to move in with her husband's entire family, and basically act as an unpaid maid-of-all-works for every member. She is also expected to dissolve whatever values, learning, personality she has manage to acquire at her parents' home, (often in spite of efforts to make her a blank slate) and totally reformulate her entire being in the mold of her in-laws. Basically, she is the lowest ranked member of the new household, with no rights, no voice, no one to fall back on, and only a long list of DUTIES and expectations to live up to. One foot wrong, one failing, one 'flaw' and not only does she stand to be persecuted, screamed at, even hit, her parents, their values, and their very 'culture' will come into question. Often, they will be called up to be insulted.

Into this witches' brew of seething turmoil, add the worst two ingredients. A lifelong training to grin and bear anything the husband does to her, and an almost total absence of any kind of knowledge about sex on the part of both partners, complicated by far by a huge set of myths and misconceptions on part of the man. My own personal experiences as an informal counsellor for sexual health, online and offline, for almost 20 years now, keeps reasserting to my mind how little we- as Indians – know of basic human sexuality, and how many wrong and dangerous notions we have.

For women, the extreme taboo surrounding not just anything sexual but anything physical means that they are often unaware of basic hygiene and health related to their own bodies. Menstruation, puberty, various discomforts and discharges, these are not just mysteries, they are things to be ahsamed of and ignored, often to the point of illness, and never to ask about or get a straight answer about. As for the male anatomy or the actual sex act, they know only what they can glean from vague but thrilling whispers overheard when the married women get together, and the suggestive jokes they are pelted with around the time of their wedding, both sources being useless as a way to learn anything meaningful and often filling their heads with dangerous notions and fear.

In the case of the men, the situation is far worse. Not only is their entire knowledge of female anatomy derived from foreign porn (leaving them with no idea what a real indian woman looks like), their total knowledge of the sex act is derived from the same source as well. This means they routinely expect their women to be 'brazillian wax'ed, buxom, unrealistically flexible, able to take monster organs with a smile both vaginally and anally, completely in love with performing oral sex, and capable of acts like 'squirting' orgasms. Sex, to them is insertion, thrusts, climax, and thats all, and they are convinced that the bigger and rougher they are and the harder they thrust, the more the woman will enjoy it. In fact, they have no concept of foreplay, no concept of sensitivity or paying attention to a partner's needs, no desire – in most cases – to even care whether the partner feels anything as long as they themselves get off.

To top that off, they also have the concept, egged on by friends and society in general and bollywood, and all kinds of popular culture, that a marriage MUST be consummated on the 'suhaag raat' or the first night. Most believe that if they don't essentially rape this practical stranger they now own on that very night, they will somehow be less of men, and their wives will question their masculinity as well. Additionally, with marriage being the only endorsed and allowed way for people to be sexually active, most of these men are like rabid starved animals who have been waiting for years for this opportunity to finally stick it in someone. And they are not going to wait.

The result, a horrendous night for the woman, which is a good trailer for what the rest of her sex life is likely to be – for the rest of her life. Scared, anxious, nervous at having to leave everything she knows and make herself into a new person to suit the random demands of a family of strangers, married to a stranger she barely knows (inspite of the 'modern' practice of a bunch of dates – often chaperoned by cousins or unmarried aunts), and already dreading an act she has heard enough about to fear, she is given no time to get comfortable. Forget arousal, she doesnt have the choice to even relax, or just unclench – mentally- before her 'parmeshwar' or god asks for his rights.

Is it a wonder then that most women, even educated, modern, free mixing allowed, working, totally 21^st century Indian women have shatteringly disastrous and painful experiences beginning their sex life. And no, it does not get better. To add insult to injury, we dont have a concept of – let alone a law against – marital rape. She has no right to refuse to have sex with her lord and master, and in most cases she does not even realise it is possible to say no. Ill or well, happy or depressed, fresh or tired, turned on or not, doesnt matter. If he wants it, he gets it. She? She is not supposed to have wants, or needs or desires or opinions, so it doesnt matter.

Rape? But thats what strangers do to women right? Thats why we call it izzat lootna... or robbing of honour. We force raped women to MARRY their rapists because it restores their robbed honour, never mind her trauma at having to have a lifelong repeated experience of sexual acts with the monster because there cannot be trauma. By virtue of the fact that he is now her husband, the rapist becomes someone whose attentions she is required to welcome and enjoy. Simple. So how can a husband rape his wife? He owns her, he has full rights to do what he wants to her, whenever he feels the need. Where is the question of her desire, consent, or refusal thereof? She is chattel, property, she has no will of her own. This is her DUTY! And this is the attitude not just of our society, but also of our judiciary and our ministers.

Given this mentality, a woman has ZERO legal or social recourse against cruelty. No matter what he does to her sexually, and how much she suffers, she has no support. No one to turn to, no help, no way of stopping it. In most cases she does not even realise that this is abnormal. An overwhelming number of women think that it is normal for sex to hurt, all the time, everytime, and more than half of them have never even come close to an orgasm. It is not surprising that women suffer decades of sexual trauma at home, at the hands of the very peperson who is supposed to care most for her, and often does not even recognise it as torture. Even if she does, she has nowhere to turn, no one who can help. She just has to live with it until one of them dies.

What would you NOT do for love?

A heated, almost vitriolic, conversation (with me being harsher than I like to be) with someone recently got me thinking about some of the same issues again. Issues, beliefs, I hold very dear, feel very strongly about, and often get taken to task for. Things like my definition of love, trust, boundaries.

Given our cultural bias against relationships (affairs as we call them), love, and love matches, and the dismal, abysmal way bollywood handles, and has always handled, the issue of finding and falling in love, it is not a wonder that my views seem strange and alien and so impossible to so many. This person who I was talking to, on the other hand could be the poster child for the Indian concept of love/relationships, (apart from a few minor matters) in a culture where Devdas is considered a great example of a lover.

Being mistreated, cursed out, emotionally and even physically abused, having no self respect, no boundaries and no rules … this is love to most. This friend, and her spouse, are both textbook examples of this type of true love. He, for more than a decade and a half, has accepted everything that she has done to him, including but not limited to having one relationship after another (and often asking him for advice on how to handle them). Before anyone jumps in and starts screaming about different families and open relationships, let me put that ghost to rest. This is not a balanced, open, loving relationship.

Much as one partner makes constant public statements (almost obsessively) about how much they love the other, and much as another partner (also obsessively) captures the other (in myriad moods and every which outfit) on paper, the relationship is of the kind I have often deplored as a result of arranged marriages. This one though, was a love match, required a fight against social norms on more than one level, and was expected (I certainly expected it) to be the kind of strong, emotionally invested, mutually fulfilling relationship I love to see.

Instead, over the years, I have seen emotional attachment dwindle to lip service in the matter of “are you home safe” and “I love my partner so much!”, conversations are nonexistent, each is totally disconnected from the other and has a separate life, and “home” is a physical space they just happen to share. The relationship is a dead, empty space each fills in their own way. What’s keeping them together seems to be more inertia and apathy than any genuine desire to belong together.

One great lover has begun this process. Over the years I have seen acceptance upon acceptance of the partner of every transgression, every crossing of boundaries, every infringement of every precept of decency, almost. I believe in love. Been in love quite madly, (more than once, which is also a problem for most Indians with their “true love can only happen once in your life” mentality), but I recognize a few facts. And one of the most basic of those facts is that I cannot, and WILL not give up my self-respect, my identity, and my basic dignity, for anyone, no matter how much I love them.

I firmly believe relationships need boundaries. Just because one is in love, and in a relationship, is no excuse to mistreat or hurt the other, or to tolerate being mistreated and hurt. There have to be some things the partners will not do to each other, some hurts they will not inflict, some lines neither will cross. And if they do, it is not OK or tolerable or forgivable; especially not if it is a repeat offence.

The other partner, in the outside relationships, and increasingly so as they got older, seems to take the same kind of shit from the partners/lovers, as they dish out at home. Probably more, come to think of it. They keep saying they hate it, that the other person is treating them so badly, so cruelly, and that they feel terrible about it; angry, hurt, disgusted, self loathing. But, and this is the big issue, they not only don’t walk out of those poisonous relationships, they keep taking the crap not just from that partner, going back for more even after being kicked to the curb like a stray dog, but they keep choosing the same kind of partners over and over again (or alternatively keep driving whoever they choose to be that person with their needy, clinging, weirdness, or something). In short, every relationship ends up exactly the same, where they have to keep taking a daily dose of really bad treatment, verbally, emotionally (most often), but keep going back for more, pushing and pushing and pushing.

I don’t get this. If someone had dared say half of those things to me… I would have walked out then and there. Even my partner of 13 years, (with a mutual history of 27 years) father of my child, doesn’t have that right. And if they did, if they said some things, handed me some crap (not that he ever would), I would be gone. And once I have shut someone down…. They stay shut down. I’ve done it with friends who crossed the line, relatives, as well as exes.

No one, absolutely No One is worth more than my self-respect, my dignity. I learnt, the very hard way, to respect, value, and love myself, and I won’t let anyone … no matter how madly I may love them … trample on that or take that away from me. And if they love me, and are worthy of being loved in return, they wouldn't dream of acting that way. When someone does, and another agrees to tolerate, and goes back for more, that is not love…it is slavery. 

The Illogic Of Hate

I’ve arrived at a theory of bigotry, of why and how people can hate the unfamiliar, the new, the unusual, or simply anything that they don’t agree with/ understand. Based on my 38 years of living, my upbringing, the people who gave me that upbringing, things I have seen, done, experienced (pleasant as well as unpleasant), and looking at all the wonderful open minded, inclusive, embracing people I know, I can only conclude that bigotry, narrow mindedness, hatefulness, and hate mongering, is a direct side effect of not being able to love anyone or anything.

It’s not that difficult to see when you think about it. All the wonderfully inclusive people I know are people who deeply, truly, love at least one other human being. Usually, they love a large number of people, animals, things, concepts, pursuits and so much more! And it is this capacity to love, this empathy, this ability to feel deeply, that translates to an accepting, open mind in human beings, in my experience.

A lot of us, involved in activism and outreach as we are, tend to think of closed minds as simply the effect of “non-knowledge”. We tend to believe that if only we could talk to people, explain things to them, improve their general knowledge, in short, drag them – kicking and screaming – into the enlightened 21^st century, they would stop being haters and embrace universal concepts of love, equality, peace, and so on. I’m beginning to see that it is not that simple, but is – in a way – simpler.

People who are capable of love… truly capable of a deep, selfless, emotional attachment – cannot be bigots. They will see members of another race as men and women, like them. They will see the differently abled as people who might need a hand, but don’t need put downs. They will see unconventional expressions of gender identity – from androgyny to cross dressing to transgender identities – as just who that person is and “none of my business”. They will see love as love, regardless of who feels it for whom – men for women and women for men, men for each other, women for each other, or any other possible combination.

They will see no problems in any of these “others” wanting to share their lives with WHOEVER they wish to. They will have no issues with any of these others having families… any way they can. The only reaction a person who loves can have to someone else who loves is of fellow feeling. Of thinking…”yeah! That’s what it feels like”, regardless of who the recipient of that love/affection is, the gender of that recipient, or how many recipients there are.

These people – the ones who really love – would never be capable of ragging, hazing, torture, bullying, and other kinds of targeted, hate behavior usually aimed at anyone the “clique” sees as “different”. They could never put down someone for, or deny them the right to, something as simple, essential, and basic as the right to be, the right to love, the right to state that love and have it formally recognized if it is returned, and the right to share that love with a family.

How do I know this? Because in my life, in my travels, in my outreach, in my mad social life, I have met numerous people who fit this category. I’ve met so many people who may or may not have the advantages of a great education as we call it in India (which only means a few degrees by the way and does not – in any way – teach a person to think), people who may or may not have any exposure to the “right” political language, activism, ideas, beliefs, people who or may not have any exposure to the very concepts I am talking about – of racism, ableism, ageism, and alternative sexualities/gender identities.

And yet, one thing stands out. One thing is common in all the people I found to be open. One underlying truth in the way these people thought. Education, exposure, knowledge made a difference, sure, I could see that too, but it may not be as important as we tend to think. Because the people I find the most non-judgmental, the people who are the most open minded, the people who are the most accepting of everyone’s basic rights, the people who are the most willing to let others be and have no desire to tell everyone else how to live their lives, and no desire to hurt, maim, or kill people who choose to have lives different from their own, these are the people who love.

Some are highly educated, articulate, political, aware, and conscientious. Some are not. Some can barely speak English or Hindi, and have no big degrees to their name. Some have travelled the world and seen a lot, some have hardly ever left the small town or village or neighborhood they were from. Some lived an active online-cyber life, connected, blogging, tweeting, surfing, learning, while some could barely type out an email and wouldn’t know what a facebook was. Some were from wonderful open families that taught them the value of rights and equality and understanding, while some were from typical Indian, conservative backgrounds.

Still… all of these people had a predisposition to acceptance. Not understanding, not comprehension, but just empathy and acceptance. Where did that come from I wondered? And why didn’t the other people I met have that? What was missing in the recipe of the highly educated, modern, privileged, aware, exposed, brought up in mixed gender, equal-ish background people who sat at a university canteen and confidently told me that all women were nothing but cunts.

What was wrong with the same kinds of people who yelled and screamed for women’s rights but would not make a peep for dalit rights, or LGBTQA rights, or racial equality, or legal requirements for things like wheelchair ramps. What was wrong with the father who will happily kill his son/daughter for marrying into the “wrong” race/ community/caste. What is wrong with the village elders who ORDER a woman to be raped by 13 people in public, for daring to choose who she wants to marry. What is wrong with the religious leader who orders someone stoned, maimed, killed, for driving, wearing the wrong clothes, wanting control over their own bodies, wanting to love the people they do. What is wrong with those people?

And the only answer I can see is that these are people who have never felt love. In many cultures, especially in the east, that’s a regular part of social life… not feeling love. In India, as in most of these cultures, the social emphasis is on fitting in, on obedience, on respect (real or feigned, but always amply demonstrated), on doing what society, your community, your religious leaders, your caste, your clan, and your elders tell you to. Even in a fundamental lifelong institution like marriage, personal compatibility, attraction, affection, or love are non factors. Even in social life – making friends, hanging out, the emphasis is on the same things. You socialize mainly with people who are family (however far removed) and people who are ‘like us’ in social and economic standings, most often the children of the people our parents hang out with. We don’t choose our friends, and we don’t have anything more than a surface liking for them, much as we may claim to love.

We are trained to merely obey our elders as we grow, showing all the requisite outer symptoms of respect (read blind deference). If we disagree, have a problem, want something different, would like a dialogue – well, the option simply does not exist. Does each of these children love its parents and elders? CAN they? I don’t see how. To me love is a complex emotion arrived at after much give and take, back and forth, personality clashes, debates, disagreements, none of which we have room for in our system, certainly not between parents and children, nor between siblings. I know a lot of people who will jump down my throat for this. Claiming we are the epitome of filial love and affection with our single minded obsession for MAA (the archetypal, all sacrificing, Indian mother who we supposedly revere but who we are quick to throw out of the house if we can). Me… I don’t ACCEPT blind adherence to every word, never disagreeing, excessive kowtowing, and obsessiveness, and total control to be LOVE. Sounds more like slavery to me.

Once we are old enough, these same elders will decide it is time for us to breed. For the women it is so that they can get someone else to pay for our upkeep, in return for which we are required to be the unpaid slave of the clan and family, the personal sex slave of the person, and a baby making machine. For the men, since everyone knows how bad no-sex is for men, it is about having a person to have sex with, and someone to give them heirs, preferably MALE, to carry on the “family name”. In the choosing of this person… for either a woman or a man… attraction, affection, love does not have any role to play. Candidates are chosen, and the winner decided on the basis of factors such as family backgrounds, economic status, caste, religion, salaries, degrees, and anything and everything that has absolutely nothing to do with how the two will get on together. LOVE? We assure everyone – love will come with time. The way I see it…that’s not love. That’s getting used to a person, getting into the habit of having them around, even affection yes – of the kind we feel for a houseplant.

Then, this being the point of the whole exercise, the children arrive, often before the first anniversary. So any possible relationship building between the partners is effectively halted, and as the years pass, even the sex tapers off as they take on the role of ELDERS themselves. In true ragging/hazing pattern, all the oppression we have grown up with, all the lack of control over our own body, dress, life, circle, decisions, career, marriage is now happily passed on to the next generation. Hazing victims now turn hazers and to unto others as someone has done unto them. So… inspite of all the obsessive involvement that Indian parents have in their children’s lives, they don’t know the first thing about those very children. And how can someone who does not know me, does not have any idea of what I think, feel, want, LOVE me?

To them, kids are like insurance, investment. A job than needs to be done, something that must be looked after for X number of years so that when I am old and grey, and unable to fend for myself, the returns will roll in, in the form of deference, feet touching, feeding, clothing, shelter, and basic care giving. Now imagine a person living this life. Going from birth to youth to marriage to parenthood to middle age in this loveless, regimented, ruled, powerless way. I don’t see anything strange in this person being the bigot. In fact it would make total sense… because how dare someone else have the freedom, fun, love, fulfillment that I have never been able to have? Let’s kill the bastards!

Even religion, in our neck of the woods at least, does not counter this. All the monotheistic religions seem bent on making us god FEARING rather than god LOVING. The emphasis is on DON’T. what NOT to do is clear, control is paramount, submission to the will of the one and only almighty the only way to be. Not a happy recipe for a fulfilled life, because that machine too is driven by the unfulfilled, loveless poor souls. And polytheistic faiths, like Hinduism, which are all about multiplicity and inclusion, where traditionally we had everything from male gods taking female form, cross dressing warriors, men brought up as women and women brought up as men, two male gods who not only have sex but actually biologically produce offspring, transgender identities, atheism, non performance of religious rites, treating and thinking of the supreme being in any form you like, including that of buddy or pal, have all been an intrinsic part of the belief system – they have been corrupted beyond recognition by people with vested interests and narrow outlooks to the point where they are as restrictive as any other.

Not surprising then, that the average person, conditioned and oppressed from the moment they are born, and never feeling the immense depth and un-scalable heights of real love, turns into a narrow restricted person who cannot accept anything other than what they see as “normal”, and is willing to take out their own angst and frustrations on the person they see as breaking those norms. Me.. I love my friends and my folks and my man… after all not because I am expected to (kicked enough friends and relatives out of my life to prove that) but because they are MY kind of people and they love and respect me and really know me. I cannot – in any way – imagine grudging someone else that feeling. No matter who it is that they love. I love my child without feeling any need to own her or control her, and cannot imagine anything being more important to me than her happiness, well being, and health – not society, not honor, not face, nothing.

Lucky enough to have control over my decisions and body, I cannot imagine being offended by the same in another, wanting to hurt them for having it, or wanting to control it for others. I have so much love in my life, so many interests, so much to see, do, experience, that I am happy to say I have no time and no inclination to hate, exclude, or hurt.

Indian Male Privilege

A lot of the people I chat with, or interact offline with, especially men, keep telling me I am being too unfair, too caustic, too aggressive in my blogs, comments, opinions. Many of these people believe feminism is outdated, no longer required, because the world has changed, and “these days such things don’t happen, and women have all the rights” (to me this only means that these people don’t read the news, or have any idea of current affairs/reality). Most women would tell them they are living in a fool’s paradise. Any woman knows the reality of how patriarchy treats women. Even privileged, upper class, educated women, from loving, supportive, egalitarian homes (like mine) face enough social discrimination on a daily basis to never be fooled. Women in India re-realize every day of their lives, at home and outside, what it means to be a woman.

For the men who think Male Privilege doesn’t exist in India, who think everything is all rosy and heavenly now. Here is a small checklist of things you DO NOT have to face… because you are a man and not a woman.  

·         You were not killed before you were born simply for being the wrong gender.

·         You were not killed immediately after you were born by your father/grandfather/uncles chucking you in a well, stuffing you in a pot and filling it with salt until you suffocated, or drowning you in milk.

·         People congratulated your parents when you were born. Nobody consoled them with, “don’t worry. Try again, and you might just get lucky and have a girl.” Nobody asked  “What will become of you once you marry him off?” No one will comment about your parents “itne bacche hain inke….magar ek santaan nahi.” No one will be sympathetic to your parents about not having the child of the right gender to perform their funeral rites, ensuring their entry into heaven.

·         Even if you were the second or third boy born to your parents, you felt no less loved and cherished. No one treated you like crap because you had dared to be born. Your parents, especially your mother, did not get stigmatized as the bearer of only sons.

·         It was a foregone conclusion that even if your parents could only send one child to school, you would get an education.

·         You could say what you wanted to be when you grew up, when people asked, and people acknowledged your ambition, saw nothing strange in it, and encouraged you to achieve anything you wanted. Nobody laughed at you.

·         You had lots of role models, Tata or Birla or Sachin or whoever. You didn't have to search to find someone of your gender in your desired/chosen field to serve as a role model.

·         Growing up, you could choose from an infinite variety of children’s media – books, TV shows, Cartoons, featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of your gender. You didn’t have to search for meaningful male protagonists, they are the default.

·         There are numerous festivals around the year for the women in your family to give thanks for your existence, and none for you to give thanks for the women in your life. Clearly, you are precious and important enough but they are not. You don’t have to fast, and pray for the well being of, and worship, your sisters in festivals like Rakhi, and bhaiduj, or your wives in festivals like teej and karwa chauth.

·         As a child, if you misbehaved, and got into trouble, you were scolded only for your behavior. Not because you would make a bad prospective groom or son-in-law for some random unknown people 20 or so years in the future.

·         You were not constantly told to speak softly, laugh softly, sit properly, and behave like a “gentleman”, even when you were five or six years old.

·         You were not only allowed but encouraged to play outside. Becoming dark from the sun was not a problem for your future, and learning how to do household work, again for the benefit of random future spouse/in-laws, was not a priority.

·         You could dream of having a high flying career, earning big bucks, owning a fancy car and a big house instead of just a red lehenga.

·         As a 5, 6, 10 yr old, you could learn to dance, if you wished. No one stopped you because “in our house boys don’t dance like bazaru mard” or because “in-laws don’t like boys who dance; it creates the wrong impression about his character”.

·         You could wear shorts as a child, continue to wear them as a teenager and still wear them as an adult, at home or outside without fear of repercussions from your wife, your in laws, and society in general.

·         You only had to go to school/college, and relax when you got home. You were not expected to look after younger siblings, or serve your sisters hand and foot while they sat around like lords of the house. Neither did you have to help your mother in the kitchen, in household work, etc as a duty, and as training for your future.

·         You were never the one who had to stand around, waiting hungry -- with fathers and uncles -- while people much older than you ate their meals. You were never the last to be served, eating whatever was left. You did not even have to think about hurrying through the meal, sharing, or saving a little bit for the siblings of the wrong gender who were waiting for you to finish. You ate your fill and took your time. If nothing was left for them to eat, or if they had to wait hungry for a long time… well, that was not your problem. If there was one egg in the fridge, you got the omelet. If there was one chocolate, you ate it.

·         You could talk to your friends, even brag, about the changes brought about in your body by puberty. Your mom never asked you to keep it a secret, or to pretend you had no idea what others were talking about when they discussed it. You weren’t ashamed of the changes in your body and didn’t try to hide changes in loose fitting clothes. Puberty didn’t curtail what little freedom you had, and didn’t make you more of a prisoner in the home. In fact, puberty made a MAN out of you, and gave you more voice in the home, more power to make your own decisions, and to participate in those of the family. It didn’t seem like the beginning of the end, as a signal for the end of your life and the beginning of life as a lowly spouse/son-in-law.

·         You were not, henceforth, excluded from the kitchen and prevented from worshipping, for a particular few days every month.

·         Temples, like the Ayappa temple at sabarimalai do not exclude you from even entering their premises for 40 yrs of your life.

·         Your mother did not keep track of your physical processes, counting days and asking pointed questions if you were ever even a day late

·         If you have a bad day or are in a bad mood, people don’t automatically say “men are so moody, who knows what they will say/do”. They also don’t automatically assume that all irritation, anger, and negative reaction to their asinine behavior that you show or experience is because of “that time of the month”.

·         Your ability to make important decisions and your capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

·         You were not expected/trained to “hold it” in to an unhealthy limit, no matter how badly you needed to go to the bathroom. This unhealthy practice, leading to severe health problems in many cases, was never forced on you. There are adequate public toilets for your use. If there isn’t one, you are encouraged to just stand up anywhere.

·         There are enough toilets for your gender in schools, so that you do not have to drop out of school when you hit puberty.

·         No one leers at you and makes nasty lascivious jokes loud enough to make sure you hear, when you go to a store for pads/contraception. Buying contraception does not automatically make you available for the men behind the counter to fantasize about and leer at (since it proves that you are sexually active)

·         You have never had to do a gauri vrat, or a series of 16 somvars, fasting and worshiping specific gods/goddesses to get a good spouse in the future.

·         You were not married off to an old woman in your childhood “for your own protection”.

·         Getting and staying married is not the most important priority society assigns to you.

·         You are not expected to forget 20+ yrs of upbringing, lifestyle, beliefs, freedoms, tastes, and completely change your personality to become someone else.

·         Your parents have never been relegated to second class citizens in your life. You are not expected to forget about your own home, family, parents, siblings, and serve those of your spouse, even if it hurts or harms your people. You are not supposed to love someone else’s parents more than you love your own. You are not restricted from helping or taking care of your own parents unless your spouse/in laws allow you to do so.

·         You will never be expected to change your surname, and sometimes even your first name upon marriage. If you don’t, you will not be questioned by family, friends, and mystified strangers why you don’t change your name.

·         Your in-laws don’t dictate how you dress, what you eat, and whether you can go out to work.

·         You are not required to publicly advertise your marital status, marking you as someone’s property, with sindoor, mangalsutra, shakha, pola, noa, thali, etc.

·         No one else can dictate or control your body. No one else gets to decide when you conceive, what sort of protection you use, if any, and whether or not you have an abortion. Such decisions are made for you, BY you. Not by your spouse or in-laws.

·         If you decide not to have children, your masculinity, and your humanity will not be questioned.

·         If you have children, you will not be expected to provide primary care for them, and your masculinity and humanity will not be called into question if you choose not to care for them.

·         If you do provide primary care for your kids, you will be held up as an example of extraordinary parenting – even if you are only marginally competent. Regular, boring and repetitive jobs such as changing diapers and feeding will be considered your partner’s.

·         If you have children and also choose to have a career, no one will think that you are selfish for not staying at home to take care of your kids.

·         If you are straight and decide to have children with your partner, you can assume this decision will not affect your career in any way whatsoever. If career sacrifices are needed to raise the kids, chances are much higher that the career sacrificed will be that of your spouse.

·         Household chores, by default, will not be considered only your domain, especially the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks, they will be relegated to your spouse.

·         In a household where both partners work full-time, you are not the partner who is expected to cook and clean when they get home after a full day’s work, even if your job is more demanding than that of your spouse.

·         After work, you will not be expected to go straight home to look after your spouse, kids and in-laws. You can go to your friends’ houses, to parties, to clubs, or simply to hang out and relax, without being branded a selfish person, and a bad spouse, or a bad parent or a bad son in law.

·         If you and your partner have to live separately for some reason, like different places of work, it is assumed and considered normal that the kids will stay with their mother, regardless of her workload, available free time, etc.

·         If you go to a doctor specializing in “your” complaints, even as a 40 year old, they do not ask for your wife. They consider you capable of making your own decisions.

·         You can adopt a child. Within a marriage, you cannot be prevented from choosing adoption as an option by either your spouse or your in laws. The law also recognizes your right to adopt. While your partner can only “give consent”, she cannot apply for adoption.

·         If you are straight, you are not very likely to be emotionally, physically, and sexually abused by your partner. Nor will you be told, by your family, by cops, by courts, and by society in general to continue living in an abusive household for the sake of your children.

·         Marital rape is not an issue for you. You can express desire without being called a whore, and can say no to sex without being called frigid or being forced or beaten into submission.

·         Domestic violence is not a huge likelihood in your life. Unlike 70% of Indian women, your spouse will not regularly degrade, insult, and beat you. Neither will people assume that this is normal/ok/justified/deserved behavior on their part.

·         You don’t have to pretend to be dumb to stroke your wife’s/girlfriend’s ego. You can show that you are smarter.

·         If you earn more than your wife, or are promoted to a bigger post than hers she will be proud. This will not lead to ego hassles, domestic trouble, or divorce.

·         When your friends ask you why you won’t do something, your answer is never going to be, “Because my in-laws/husband won’t allow me to do it.”

·         You have far more choices even in choosing your spouse in an arranged marriage.

·         Losing your spouse to divorce or death is not the end of your entire world and your way of life. You are not expected to change all lifestyle upon the death of your spouse (giving up colored clothes, eating insipid, vegetarian, non exciting food, etc), and you will not be stigmatized for divorce.

·         If you are a widower or divorcée with kids, you don’t have to give up all hopes of companionship/ love/ remarriage. In fact, chances are that you will be remarried before the year is out.

·         Sexual harassment is not a constant reality of your life.

·         You can walk aimlessly around without having to plan your route and avoid certain streets/areas, at certain times of day/night. Nor do you have to ask people to accompany you even in broad daylight, if you have to go to certain places.

·         You can be certain that no woman will suddenly walk up to you and try to fondle/ pinch your privates on the street. Faceless entities will not constantly grope you in buses, trains, and everywhere else.

·         When you pick your outfit for the day (assuming your mom isn’t the one doing it), you don’t have have to run over your mental list of to-do’s for the day and wonder if it involves being around a certain kind of men or in a certain kind of area or returning back to home at a certain time of day, and then wonder if your outfit is appropriate considering all those factors.

·         You can dress how you want, without your character being questioned, and without your dress sense, or outfit being used as a defense for your rapist.

·         You do not live your life in the constant fear/expectation of rape. You do not have to constantly mistrust anyone and everyone of the opposite gender. If you are walking alone down the road, and someone of the opposite gender just happens to be on the same route, you need not automatically feel anxious/ threatened.

·         If you do get raped, you will not be expected to kill yourself or become a “zinda laash” whose life is as good as over.

·         No one will make assumptions about your sexual availability based on whether you drink or smoke or party or on the basis of the gender of your friends.

·         A total stranger upon seeing/hearing that you smoke, drink, or have friends who are primarily not of your gender, will not accuse you of being a blot on the name of Indian-ness. Neither will they insult you for it.
.    A total stranger, seeing you minding your own business and quietly smoking in a corner, will not walk up to you and ask"do you want to talk? are you depressed? why are you smoking? can i help you?"
.    Strangers will not follow you back home from the neighbourhood cigarette shop, because they "know" that women who smoke are loose, so you must be easy game.

·         All the movies you ever watch will not portray characters of your gender –smoking/ drinking as evil, loose and bad.

·         Other movies will not show a youngster of your gender who parties, drinks, smokes, and stays out late, being “rescued” when the partner of their committed relationship asks for sex, drilling it into you that this is not something that a “bharatiya mard” will ever accept

·         You don’t have to be categorized into just two categories in your entire life – father/brother or slut/whore/loose (in fact there is no equivalent word for slut for men, and slut shaming does not have a male equivalent.

·         You can have multiple relationships (monogamous or otherwise) before marriage and not be labeled a slut or have your character questioned and your reputation tarnished.

·         Ghar/samaaj/community does not locate its izzat solely on your body. You can have a girlfriend without fear of bringing dishonor to the family name, and you can even have relationships outside marriage without fearing a disproportionate backlash. You will never be killed by your father/brother for being raped.

·         You can have sex with your girlfriend without ruining your chances for marriage in the arranged marriage market (should you be interested).

·         You will never be caned in front of the entire school for daring to like a girl, or weaving a few fantasies around her. (Said fantasies shared only with your friends, and you having never even spoken to this girl).

·         A decision to hire you won’t be based on whether or not the employer assumes you will be having children in the near future

·         For a position, when faced with a candidate of the opposite gender, you have a better chance of being hired. This will become more and more apparent the higher up you go. Ifyou do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement of the result has any subjective angle, chances are people will think that you did a better job.

·         Shopkeepers, bank employees, CAs will not talk to you in a dumbed down language of “baby sentences” . They will not automatically assume that you don’t know and can’t comprehend basic math, economics, etc

·         People don’t get uncomfortable, and seem unsure about how to handle it when – in social situations – you join in to discussions on politics, current affairs, finances/ economics and more.  

·         Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media are filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal sexually only to you.

·         Pins to palaces, cars to concrete sellers don’t use half naked people of your gender to sell anything and everything.

·         Ads don’t constantly brainwash you to stay young, unlined, smooth skinned, no grey hair, to “keep your woman”, or to “keep the love young”.

·         You are more likely to be given a loan as sole applicant

·         When people hear that you run a business, they don’t automatically assume that it is a boutique, or a family business started by your father that you are now running, or that your partner/spouse "helps" you in it.

·         You can be careless about your appearance without worrying about being criticized at work or in social situations. Total strangers will not comment on your waxing etiquette. You are not expected to spend insane amounts of money on specific kinds of grooming, style, and appearance to fit in, even though you make less money than the opposite gender.

·         If you rise to prominence in an organization/role, no one will assume it is because you slept your way to the top.

·         Your clothing is less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing and tend to fit better without tailoring. So you can always find something readymade that looks good, and costs less.

·         You can go to a car dealership or mechanic and assume you’ll get a fair deal and not be taken advantage of, even if you don’t know anything about cars.

·         Expressions and conventional language reflects your gender in positions of authority, (e.g., “all men are created equal”, chairman, etc) and reflects the opposite gender badly (e.g., hysteria, “don’t be such a girl”, etc). Most curse words are not insults/comments on your gender/gender roles/body parts. (in India, most swear words you can think of are likely to be an insult to a female family member, or a part of the female anatomy).

·         Every major religion in the world is led by individuals of your gender. Even God, in most major religions, is pictured as male. You can practice religion without subjugating yourself or thinking of yourself as less because of your gender because most major religions state that a man should be the head of a household, while his wife and children should be subservient to him. While most of them also preach that women are born impure, evil, and so on.

·         You have the automatic social right to have your kids brought up in your religion, even if your spouse professes a different one.

·         You can be loud without being called a shrew, and be aggressive without being called a bitch.

·         You can ask for, and get, legal protection from violence that happens mostly to men without being seen as a selfish special interest case. 

·         Violence that affects you is labeled “crime” and is a general social concern. Violence that happens mostly to women is usually called “domestic violence” or “acquaintance rape,” and is seen as a special interest issue.

·         When you go to the cops to register a complaint about such violence, you can at least get a complaint registered. You don’t have to fear that they wont register, or that they will perpetrate the same violence on you.

·         You can eat as much as you like, in public, without attracting comment.

·         Complete strangers generally do not walk up to you on the street and comment on your weight, looks, appearance, complexion, clothes. Nor do they stand by the side of the road and pass lewd comments

·         Total strangers do not assume the right to say things like “you are pretty/goodlooking /hot/attractive. How come you are not married?” as if looks is all you are good forand marriage all you should aspire towards.

·         You can be careless with your money and not have people blame it on your gender.

·         You can be a careless driver and not have people blame it on your gender.

·         You can be confident that your coworkers won’t assume you were hired because of your gender.

·         Your gender does not make it less likely for you to get promoted.

·         You can expect to be paid equitably for the work you do, and not paid less because of your gender.

·         If you are unable to succeed in your career, that won’t be seen as evidence that your gender should not be in the workplace

And last … and definitely the most important, you have the privilege of being unaware of male privilege. You take all of these things for granted, while half of humanity has to fight very hard to get even a few of these basics.