Pride: Gender sensitization and the road ahead

Celebrated as the Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the month of June gets as colorful as it gets and beautifully so. Although the ongoing pandemic restricted the organization of elaborate pride parades in most places around the world, including India, the general discourse around the theme hit new highs through virtual interfaces – most notably the social media. That being said, it can be safely and urgently ascertained that the need to carry the dialogue to our drawing rooms and bedrooms is as imperative. If we are to take a structured approach There are potholes and this is in no measure an essay based on ardent research and in-depth knowledge. It is being posted publicly with the primary aim of me knowing a bit more than I do - which is anyway minuscule.

1. Sowing the seeds: sensitization is necessarily the first step. The basic know-how, what’s okay and what’s not and the likes. This should be inclusion in high school curriculum - not special sessions but proper curriculum with exams - we have never taken moral science seriously, this won’t be either. So that’s definitely the first step.
2. Watering the saplings: Gender studies is a proper academic discipline. The basics of it need to be incorporated into formal higher education - for example, in Engineering, we learned English (there were many who came from vernacular media and hence were not proficient) or basic macroeconomics (spurred by the need to know personal finance and the basic markets). But most of us, duly including me, lack proper rigor and understanding of gender. That needs correction,  immediately so.
3. The winds that raffle the social media forest: Social media is awash with narratives these days- mostly pro taboos and grey areas  - including ones on gender. However, it is an unregulated platform and hence cannot be the bastion of information and inspiration. The fact that gender is fluid should be treated as axiomatic away as the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid. This is not something that social media can drive home for everyone. Formal education can. Thus, it cannot be the one true repository of acceptance or challenges.
4. Possible action items to nurture the trees for generations to come:
   • Gender studies and its associated domains need to be treated as a necessary discipline for everyone and read and discussed. At least read and researched upon by people like us who read and can afford to read and write about things beyond the struggle for daily sustenance. For example, people like us must know how we have arrived at the fourth wave of feminism and not form opinions on social media narratives alone - whether for or against is not the point of contention. We all know article 377 was quashed but has it reflected proportionately in our own households? Have we had a conversation with at least our parents if not our grandparents on the theme? Or are we still too “shy” on one hand but want our friends “to come out of the closet”? We are still reeling in casteism, regionalism, and communalism for god’s sake. So do we “know” when we say we “know”? We can answer for ourselves.
   • These are intense political movements that have led us to where we are today. We cannot afford to be marginally informed liberals when it comes to further these causes. No one is born knowledgeable but there are enough and more sources to understand real issues and improve them. By “we”, the population under consideration includes the likes of us with the luxury and privilege to engage in constructive discussions and practice art.
   • More importantly, we can then carry the message to those who are not as privileged and who don’t understand or are not accorded the opportunity because of an inequitable socio-economic construct. When the data from an official survey tells us that more women than men (by some significant percentage points¹) believe it is okay for a husband to beat his wife when we have double-digit percentages for each of emotional, physical and sexual violence against married women when the reverse survey of women initiating violence against men stands at a mere 1% of the total incidents of violence¹, it is a failure on our parts - we who have known and advocated that it is simply wrong. We just cannot write a blurb on social media on regressive and inequitable patriarchal constructs and move on. That is only helping us sleep at night - nothing else.

It must start with sensitization, and it needs to build upon that pedestal - by large degrees yet incrementally. Mass scale change will only then be a possibility.

Corollary to the social media argument: The narratives are many, confusing, and oftentimes too broad for effective internalization. We are grappling with issues regarding LGBTQ+ rights, minority rights, basic human rights, class and caste issues, feminism, racism, regionalism and xenophobia, political apathy, animal rights, etc and this is the mere skeleton. These are micro-battles in themselves and in effect may engender a truly classless and division less society. But until then, we need to choose our battles and support the overarching cause -  the latter through social media for example (including petitions and one-off protests), if that is what we can actively afford to. But the former needs us to get our hands dirtier than clicking share or attending a pride parade. It needs us educated and privileged masses to read and discuss and disseminate. Most of us know it already and most do not do much. Like we saw with #metoo - social media-fuelled the fire but the real battles were fought in courtrooms. Not enough has been fought and won yet.

There can never be an abundance of justice. The very fact that we have to fight for it means it is in shortage.

In conclusion, we need to facilitate those battles and possibly fight them – sign petitions, write to decision-makers and elected representatives, voice our stance and stay the course, mobilize people for peaceful, result-oriented protests. Nothing less will absolve us of complicity to these systemic issues which have plagued us for generations. It is not easy and it would be hypocrisy to declare that I have done my bit and am now pointing fingers from a morally, ethically superior standpoint. But everyone has to start someday and at the end of yet another historic pride month celebrating individual rights and dignity across the globe, today is as good a day as any.

Note: 1. National Family Health Survey 4 (publicly available)

Author: Syed Shakeel Imdad

Readers like you make Inside Northeast’s work possible.

To support our brand of fearless and investigative journalism, support us HERE.

Download:

The Inside Northeast app HERE for News, Views, and Reviews from Northeast India.

Do keep following us for news on-the-go. We deliver the Northeast.