A Masked Sexism

It was a perfectly modern liberated group of young individuals, people who checked all the boxes it takes for one to qualify as a feminist. The group of perfectly modern liberated young individuals of which I was a part, was indulged in casual conversation, when the name of an old classmate was brought up. A girl mentioned how he probably had a crush on her, and how he used to follow her to school and back home. 

That day, I made a startling discovery. Although the boys in the group accepted that stalking is wrong without question, but the consensus among them was, does it even happen in real life? For them, stalking was something happening only in the movies, and that boy wouldn’t go to so much trouble to follow a girl home everyday. It broke their bubbles to know that every girl sitting with them at that moment had been followed and scared.

As teenagers, we were all conditioned to believe that stalking was an act of love, a declaration of loyalty and devotion. As adults, who have unlearned whatever mainstream media fed into our minds for decades, we know that stalking is a form of harassment. Every girl sitting in the group had been stalked at least once in her life. We had all been followed to our homes, by strange men, by men we knew, and as a result, we are always hyper aware of our surroundings, and scared to walk back home.

But boys around us did not know such a thing existed in real life. This makes us wonder, how oblivious are men to our hardships, if they know nothing about common, everyday struggles. But this is not something that only men are unaware of. We, as women, are also sometimes ignorant of how society pushes us behind.

I have seen many male friends moping about how they have to drive around their sister, drop her off, pick her up. These sisters are educated adults, who grew up with all the privileges their brothers had. I ask my friends, why doesn’t your sister drive herself? And the answer, very commonly, is “She’s really not that interested in learning how to drive.” Is she not interested, or has she not been given the space to even think that she can commute for herself? Growing up with the idea that you will always have someone to protect you, you will automatically indoctrinate the idea that you are weaker than others because they need to shield you. 

This indoctrination gives us a false sense of freedom. They tell us that they trust us, but they don’t trust the world. Under the false garbs of security, they curb our growth, and we continue to consider ourselves free, when we can’t even commute independently. Society continues this facade of security in a woman’s workplace, where women are discouraged from taking up jobs that are considered ‘dangerous or dirty’. They push women to more suitable occupations, such as teaching and nursing, jobs that agree with femininity.

Many people who consider themselves to not be conservative, would still not agree with the girl of their family taking up jobs that require them to travel a lot, interact with other people, and be in positions of power. But many women themselves, defend their choice of work in more feminine sectors, saying that it was their personal preference. We shouldn’t attack these women for making these choices, but we need to consider how much is this a result of their choice, and how much is it a part of social conditioning which leans women towards these occupations?

We assume that just because people we surround ourselves with are ‘woke’, the world is a safe place for us. We assume that our education has taught us enough to recognize when discrimination hits us in the face. But so much of sexism goes unnoticed  every moment. We know that the rates of domestic violence, rape, female foeticide, dowry deaths, female illiteracy, child marriage, are all higher in economically backward and uneducated households, but in more privileged settings, these blatant acts of sexism do not vanish, they only manifest themselves in more subtle ways. The worst part about it is we do not view these subtle acts of sexism as a violation of our rights, they feel as normal to us as breathing. And we continue to live in these cycles of social conditioning, allowing patriarchy to reign over our bodies and intellect. 

- Smriti Choudhary