Genders-Label or No Label?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw   

Recommended to listen to this song during/after reading the blog. 

 GENDERS-LABEL OR NO LABEL?

Like a spider's web entwined into our very existence,

Name yourself a man or a woman;the threads will weave your living,

Defy the label, and thou shalt be eaten.

There are 117 types of genders,Mehboob said. Also, there are around 27-28 pronouns existing as of now. 

But Mehboobi(as i call him lovingly),there are still so many people who don't want to be given any label at all,not even queer. 

Well i guess that's the thing,Mehboob said.....what if we just didn't have any labels at all in the first place?

Well then we would have to look at each other as human beings; I said. And that means we would have to look at each other's real selves, who we are under our clothes and garments. Can we do that, when our whole life is built on pretense?

The very word of gender is socially constructed. For society's convenience.You know, there is a book called the Handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood(super rad,everyone should read/watch it)...and in it there are handmaids, women who have been assigned to a particular household to do "God's work"(not giving any spoilers).All these women are not called by their real names,but by the names of their commanders followed by a prefix "of". For eg: Of-Joseph, Of-Red,Of-Glen,they are not called June, Moira, Emily etc. Why? Because this way is more systematic, more organized....or rather;more convenient. Even if it is wrong,it is Convenient.

That is exactly what society's definition of gender is- A gender assigned at birth to a child depending on their biological sex that will determine the norms,roles,responsibility,social conduct(basically your whole fucking life) in the society. If you are smart enough you might be going like Woah! Our entire idea of life....is based on our gender given by the society. All the things that you do,wear,believe,talk,conduct...depends on your gender. You want an example? 

I was always into sports. But our music teacher thought that girls can miss their PT periods to sing. My parents never thought to put me into sports competitions, coaching etc. My building still plays cricket but not a single girl dares to come down and play with them. To the girls who don't care, i respect you. But the ones who sit in the window and curse themselves for not being a boy to be able to play cricket, etc etc sports freely since they were a child, I feel you. I get anxiety even if i go down and ask if i can play with them. The black sheep? A girl wanting to play with 20 boys? (Everyone starts awkwardly fidgeting lol). Hence, i stuck to plastic bat and ball at home with my dad. Ofcourse, i am not good at playing cricket. How could I? If i was never given a chance to develop in this area. As our Child Psychology teacher puts it: I underdeveloped in sports because i was never given a proper environment to facilitate my development aka- As said in Lev Vygotsky's theory of social constructivism. You need a proper social environment conditions and interactions inorder to develop, just age and biology won't work. Society plays a big role in this. So yeah, we are fucked. If it weren't for this Gender stigma, i would have considered my career in sports, not teaching. I never even considered it, or thought how deeply my gender impacts my decisions, until now.

I told this to Mehboob. They said that they felt the same pressure. They would have studied fashion designing, not MBBS.

Here's the thing though- both me and Mehboob took the decision of being a teacher and a doctor willingly. But still it wouldn't be wrong to say we were merely influenced. Our choices were based on our gender, not our own. Think of Gender as a rental shop, that rents clothes. You go into this shop to buy clothes, but the shopkeeper only shows you a limited variety of clothes that they think is appropriate for you, instead of showing you the entire collection. What do you do? You pick what you think is the best piece from that limited set of options and buy it. You are happy that you took such a good decision, but what if you found a perfect, dazzling piece, which is totally your fit and your type...outside of the collection that the society; oops! the shopkeeper is showing you? We need Customized, not Generalized.

Apply this to yourself, tell me your story. Tell me you realize that the Entire Idea of Life is based on gender. We have been taught to have a solid idea about ourselves, who we are, and it has to be rigid also. For Organization, for having a System, for Convenience. At what cost? that's all i ask.

Priya- Female, Mehboob- Male. Not Priya, Mehboob.

Moral- We don't just have to remove the Idea of Gender but also the things associated with it.

Source -teenvogue.com

There is always a point beyond which everything gets fucked up,
I guess the point here is the Britishers.

But Mehboobi, how did we even get here in the first place? How could we let this happen to us, what caused this divide and what was the motive behind it?

It was the Victorians, the Britishers( I eye-rolled at this, what have they not fucked up eh?). Their motive was simple, to add "value" to people, to add "culture". To be considered "valid" according to gender.Did you know our Indian culture was actually very rich before all of this?From Arjuna being portrayed as a eunuch in Mahabharata written more than 2,000 years ago, to our sculptures in various temples like Khajuraho, Elephanta caves etc, to our Vedas (Manusmriti), To our very own Hindu mythology (Agni, the God of fire is married to goddess Svaha and Male moon God Soma);you see, we had a rich culture. Some of the indigenous groups in South Africa,  Sri Lanka and Malaysia still follow the pre-victorian system of gender fluidity and their culture is hence, still very rich.I guess the point here is that we were already at a good start, until the Britishers came. 

We need to change the Judicial system, the Education system, The protection laws, the public bathrooms; basically alot of things,if not everything to extricate the Victorian Idea of Gender in our society. Even in an office, in our careers, in our professional settings, we have rules to obey, what clothes to wear, the men's formals and the women's formals. All of this is nothing but a hoax, a hoax that we have to be considered valid according to our "gender".

Mehboob- What is the definition of gender? To me, it is more of a feeling. What YOU want to do with your life. How YOU feel about yourself. It is something that brings YOUR mind,soul,and body in alignment.It is more liberal,not social.

Source-Scientific American

All your actions should come from a place of sacred love, and not fear.

Well there are 3-4 theories on Gender, you can write them down, Mehboob said. For example there are these two theories-Gender expression and Gender Identity, both are different. Gender expression is how you express yourself publicly(by clothes, makeup etc) and Gender identity is your individual experience of gender.It is your sense of being a man, woman or anything from the diverse spectrum of gender. So a person can be adrogynous ( likes to dress up in men's clothes if they are a female, or viceversa.. ie outward expression is different from their gender given by the society) while a person can be non-binary ( feels they are not a man or a woman, but something else, ie their identity as a whole is different from their gender given by the society). then there's Gender incongruence and Gender dysphoria.Gender incongruence is a feeling of mismatch, that you feel from the gender identity you recognise with but it doesn't match with your gender assigned to you at birth(eg:identifying yourself as a female in all aspects of your life,but you are given the gender of a male...this feels as if someone gave you the wrong mask to wear at a birthday party lol). Gender dysphoria, on the other hand, is when you are forced to wear that mask for too long even if you don't want it, and as a result it causes you some serious psychological distress.Here's the thing tho, most people receive therapy, or given the freedom to transition their sex, or acknowledged even;only after they have experienced Gender dysphoria. Gender incongruence should be the deciding factor of undergoing transition and not Gender dysphoria, don't you think? These words sure grabbed my attention. So i wrote this down instead.

I was annoyed at this point and asked rather childishly; So why are we even following gender norms when we know it's toxic, I mean we are not stupid. Everyone deep down knows this, they just don't say it.Why don't we just squash and demolish the term gender itself from our existence, since it has no meaning? To this they replied, because we are scared. We are scared of losing power,loose the familiar,the structure,the certainty.Once gender as a word is wiped off, chaos will ensue. And most of all we are scared of the question that will follow after the very Idea of our life is destroyed: What now?What next?Nobody has the answer. Also, they went on to say;if someone on a street today tries to invalidate my identity, i can say that i identify myself as binary, or non-binary etc. I have google to research the labels, read more about them, learn about them and also connect to people who describe themselves under the same label. If we had no labels, how would we put forth our standpoints?

Two sides to a coin,right?

Me-(Sighs) Right.

Source-CNN

Oh,Oh Heaven is a place on Earth,

 A place without Genders! 

You know, the other day I went shopping with my dad to buy some clothes and i bought a couple of shirts from male section to try on.As i tried them on at home,my mother was very uneasy even with the mere idea of looking at me in men's clothes. She almost blew up( me and Mehboob both laugh at this, both silently agreeing with each other that it happens,that it is the insecurities that is so deeply etched into people, that makes them attack at us).She started saying what was i even thinking wearing such clothes, all the people will stare at you, trying to make sense of what your gender is. Do you want people to think or question what your gender is? Everyone will think you are odd, man or a woman? WHO ARE YOU? All these words, each syllable, pricked me;like a needle to a cloth.I shut myself inside the bathroom and this is the first thought that came in my mind: But i am a girl.Phew, i am normal. I am normal because i am a girl. I am not trans, I am a girl,I am normal! This thought disgusted me, I didn't want to think this way....but i did. This poison of binary gender is not just in our conscious, but also in our subconscious. I ended up returning all the clothes back to the shop, I was so affected by this instance.Mehboob looked at me with eyes of empathy, even if they are not sure of their own gender identity( I wanted them to look at me with disgust,telling me, you too?you too believe that anything other than being a male or a female is abnormal?)But they did nothing as such, in their eyes i could see the understanding, the understanding that, it's not you, it's them.And it's okay, atleast now you are aware of how it feels, how hard it is. For people who are gender non-conforming. They shared their own similar experience with me, the time they took something cute from the female section but were laughed and taunted at by their brother and parents that they just couldn't bring themselves to buy anything from the female section,ever.They too,like me, returned it back.

I close my eyes, we are almost at the end of our discussion. Mehboobi, I am imagining a future with no gender labels,and i imagine our kids in that future.Imagine there was no gender assigned to them at birth, they could choose later whoever they want to be. Choose their own clothes, their own toys.I imagine a teacher teaching them history and going like now we live in a label free world, but boy your ancestors sure were fucked up because of the Victorians!!! To this, Mehboob adds:Imagine a world where makeup is ungendered, it is considered a form of art, like a painting over your face. Your voice is not judged,because now people try to control their voices too not wanting to sound "feminine" if they are males and viceversa, their pitch, their tone(there is something called as voice therapy for people who are stigmatized for their voices),but in this world, people will know that your hormones estrogen and testosterone and your thyroid hormones determine how you will sound, and it is natural, which means it doesn't make you any less of a man or a woman.Fashion would be gender neutral, with gender neutral clothes. There would be no judgement, everyone would be accepted( did you know, there are these Trans-exclusionary radical feminists, who do not accept trans women! and many more of such people...list is long!). Emotional responsibilities would be fostered no matter what your gender is. We all would explore our emotional capabilities better. Cry, laugh, be strong,be soft...explore it all,feel it all.

So yes, It would indeed be a Beautiful World without Gender and Labels.

Source-Twitter

Thanks Meh, for this.

You are welcome, Manga.

The End. 

Source-weheartit.com