The Infestation Called Misogyny
In the most unexpected situations in life, we find our long-term friend – misogyny – staring right at us. It’s always present, and as we grow up, we find a way to deal with it, often let it be, seldom fight back and sometimes stop and ponder why we are where we are.
This is one of those times.
With the increase in the number of domestic abuse cases in the past several years, it is saddening to see that our society, which is often boundaryless in matters of violence and inequality against women, is far from improvement. Several cases do rounds on a daily basis where women complain of being brutally beaten up by their husbands, brothers, fathers, or other male members of their families. These reports come from educated as well as uneducated backgrounds, different classes of society, and rural as well as urban areas. The reason? A mix of inconsequential as well as thought-provoking matters relating to household chores, career-drivenness among women, or general frustrations stemming out of arguments, disagreements or simply quenching a misogynistic urge. In light of this situation, a relationship can be drafted between the in-built gender bias present in our society leading to a large pool of men turning into abusers.
As girls, we are told on innumerable occasions, whether verbally or through actions that our male counterpart is physically stronger than us. He has the muscles to pick up those chairs from the backyard or fix the car that the girls of the house would obviously not know how to, or even fight goons with his physiological strength that women will never have. We are told that these men are so strong that they don’t cry, that shedding tears is women’s business and a business of embarrassment for manhood. This biologically instrumented strength found in the male body made them the stronger sex and that was it for the females. By virtue of being a boy, he had many advantages, but the highest of them all was a cover for his lack of wisdom – something boyhood was synonymous to. While girls were taught to be the neater ones, the quieter ones, those who don’t run around breaking things, boys were given the freedom to be naughtier, short-tempered, more adventurous and if matters ever went overboard, there was a quick comeback to keep the gender roles intact – boys will be boys.
So these boys, being themselves, would grow up to do many things that were not normal for girls. Teenage girls would learn to be cautious of their bodies so the “evil teasers” down the road were not given a chance to “be the boys” they could. These girls would learn that their honour is being protected by a man, the same honour that is stripped off naked in a second of frustration by misogynistic abuses. These girls would also learn to not mutter those same exact insults even when justifiably furious. Our male counterparts have always had a higher degree of right to display emotions, whether it’s anger, frustration, or sexual attraction. Men make for the highest number of viewers on porn websites, where they seem to derive enjoyment out of exploitative, objectifying and often illegal displays of sexual acts. Bearing the brunt, therefore, is the “fairer sex” by having been reduced to a mere object of attraction.
Here we have a 3-stage process that depicts the growth of a domestic abuser from boyhood to manhood represented symbolically with the help of a tree. The roots define the ingress of a gender biased-thought process engrained in boys from a young age, leading to a narrow view towards the female sex once these boys approach their teenage years or the trunk of the tree. Finally, in the capacity of full-grown men, as their branches expand far and wide, wired with a misogynistic thought process since childhood, they resort to domestic abuse to maintain the feeling of superiority.
The world never forgets to remind men how strong they are by creating a vicious cycle: Men threaten a woman’s modesty so she would need a man to escort her everywhere. His privilege would protect hers. This “stronger sex” however, is somehow not all that strong when it comes to doing dishes or laundry. These tasks are reserved for the weaker sex, the women, who manage the house to finally end up on the left hand side of her husband, the head of the family. The naughtier, hip-hopping boy who was privileged enough to be carefree until recently is now the king of the household, the same boy who took too long to mature so he could get a much younger wife is now, almost overnight, the representative of everyone at home. This sudden escalation in position and power, is more often than not, ill-handled by men, who then begin to believe that everything ranging from their attraction to anger to tantrums are all justified. And then they pick up logs, ladles, or merely their legs and beat women up to prove that they will rightly be what everyone had always said they would – boys.