Society, Sexuality, Choices and Conditioning

Contributor: Anisha Gupta

Yesterday's session (with Sathyasree Ma'am) was an interesting one, a blend of discomfort in thoughts and awkward eyeing, storm of questions and confusions - some unanswered and settled some not, breaking your own notions and widening of our own perspective. To me I don't know what was that one particular thing that hit me - I was hit by a bag full of thoughts very hard actually. A string of questions inter-linked.

So as I will begin to write, I'll be talking just about how as a girl I feel and I may sound feminist at some points but then again I am girl and I don't say that boys don't have issues but then my feelings are driven by oestrogen and progesterone and not testosterone. 

We talked about sexuality today - men, women and others. The society in which we are living - society full of conditions which somebody else made as per his likes, dislikes and convenience and is being followed since then blindly. 

To me social and sexuality conditioning comes down to one thing i.e equality and freedom. Treating everyone as one - not as equal men and women but maybe just as simple as humans and giving each one that individual space where they can design a life of their choice - not influenced by लोग क्या कहेंगे.

So does that make the society we are living in just a trap? What kind of society ( family) is it if it's taking away your Individuality, freedom of speech, freedom of thoughts, operating on shallow notions and hypocrisy.

I was left with self doubt if the choices I am making are out of conditioning. What is right and what is wrong? and everyone has their set of rights and wrongs which will not match yours so How do you live with it?

Being a girl, I am my family's grace and reverence and doesn't matter how much they love me, their actions are driven by some of the false societal norms by which they take my life decisions.

So that is how it goes to being a girl:

When I was small, I was told not to talk to boys or bring them home. I still did. If I bring them home, the gate of room in which we sit should remain open - For obvious reasons! I was asked to come home before it gets dark - you're a girl. Girls of good families don't stay out till late. I feel like challenging it every now and then. Forget about staying over at a friend's place you cannot even talk to your friends late at night Because they think night is meant for just one thing! Yeah right and then they say we trust you. A course that is suitable and safe for girls is what they would like you to pursue which will also get you a good groom. Not a course of your choice. You cannot date younger guys or guys who are a little more elder to you. Oh! You cannot date at all because dating means having sex and nobody will marry you then. And they will never use the word sex but every girl-boy possibility with you comes with only fear to them and that's sex, इज़्ज़त खराब हो जाएगी,तुमसे शादी कौन करेगा and so forth the chain continues.

They want you get married by the time you hit 25, in a year have kid and in the coming years maybe have more - So yes, You should get married because you're getting old not because you want to. And again you should have kids because you're getting old not because you want to. (getting old means less sex, less fertility less chances of having kids which they don't ever say openly). Marriage again by their choice. All our lives they tell us not to talk to strangers and suddenly one day they ask us to go sleep with one and spend rest of our life doing same.

They want you to chose family over career because it's on a woman to make house a home and take care of it - they mean to say that you have cook, wash their clothes and utsenils, broom the house leaving a job you love to do. In growing years of your life you do what your father or family says, then you do what your husband says and then the in the remaining years you most probably do what your children will say. In all of this we just forget one little thing - It's your life and you don't have to live it by the way others expect you to!

Again a question - How right is it of parents to decide all the right and wrong for us? Because it's by their sperm and egg we're born which gives them that right or because they raise us, educate us, buy us clothes toys mobiles makes us owe our life to them. Is it fair of them to take away our freedom in the name of society and their own expectations out of us. Some parents call it being protective, but then again I doubt! There is a fine line. 

I know I am saying all this but there are a good number of chances that 5 years down the line I'll be married off to a well off -fat baniya if I don't raise my voice for what and how I feel to my parents. I don't know, to me again it all comes down to having courage to stand up against somebody you dearly and nearly love. Whenever I have raised my voice, I've been called a rebel, a disappointment to them. I don't understand when did it become so revolutionary to love yourself. Why is it always a fight when it should be a right.

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This is a reflection by the contributor on a session on Gender and Sexuality in our ongoing program, ONUS. Know more about ONUS here: http://youthallianceofindia.org/onus/