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We should not stop our boys from expressing their emotions.We should stop saying 'boys don't cry'.
On October 11 every year, we celebrate the girl child and address issues facing by almost half of the population of the Earth because of gender. I hope the relevant issues raised on this day continue to be addressed and not become another excuse for special discounts, spa treatments and chocolates like it happens on Women’s day.
A child , whether a son or a daughter is a blessing. So when my little boy asks me why special day for girls , I did not know how to translate feminism to him who had no part to play in building patriarchy.
I never knew I would be advocating for girls. I just wanted to be the best advocate for my boys and somehow I thought I cannot talk for both boys and girls. But, at this moment when I looked at my son eagerly waiting for more explanation, I realised how wrong I was.
I told him that we celebrate Girl Child Day to educate the unjust patriarchal society which feels girls are inferior to boys.
“So, on this day are boys inferior to girls”? He asked.
I sat down with him and told him that it is not about giving importance to any one gender, it is about both genders respecting each other and doing away with stereotyping gender roles.
He said ok, and ran down to play. I really don’t know what he understood but I came to a conclusion that we cannot educate girls about their rights in isolation. We need to educate our boys too.
I am glad that we have begun to raise our daughters more like our sons but it will never work until we raise our sons more like our daughters.
We are more likely to tell our daughters they can be anything they want to be but we don’t do the same for our sons. Boys are discouraged from pursuing anything that is considered feminine.
We should not stop our boys from expressing their emotions.We should stop saying ‘boys don’t cry’.
We should allow him to be himself, dress the way he wants, do what he wants without belittling his choice by calling it feminine
We should teach him to take care of himself. He should know how to cook and how to handle everything at home and not depend on his partner
We should teach him that he can also take care of the others at home and it is not only the women’s duty to take care
We should teach him ‘no’ means ‘no’. Silence also means ‘no’ only ‘yes’ means ‘yes’.
They are strong but we have to teach them to show their strength to acknowledge their emotions
We have to teach them how to be tough enough to stand up to intolerance.
Then, maybe someday we can really say that we are bringing up boys and girls equally and there is nothing great about it because it’s normal and that’s how it should be.
Image via Pixabay
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Women know exactly how vulnerable we are in public, but whenever we speak about it men seem to believe that the solution is to learn the art of self defence. “Teach your daughter karate so she can defend herself when she is sexually harassed”, they say, quite forgetting that that even being among the best wrestlers in the world didn’t save Sakshi Malik and Vinesh Phogat from being sexually abused, or that a number of police officers trained in the use of firearms were among the victims of HD Prajwal Revanna.
While the only long term strategy to reducing sexual harassment is a combination of behaviour change communication directed at men and speedy legal action being taken against the perpetrators, we know that calling out (or distracting) the perpetrator will almost certainly diffuse the immediate act of sexual harassment.
It was to get a dipstick of how men behave when they witness an act of sexual harassment that I create a poll on X (formerly Twitter):
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