I am writing this because I'm angry and my anger is slowly receding. I want to write this before I lose my anger and my memory of the incident. I want to write this because once I write this, I will flush it out of my system too.
There are inherent patriarchal remarks we have to walk through every day and it goes unnoticed. It's my last day at work today, having worked in an organization composing of 80% men above managers and maybe around 95% men as a whole, so I believe it is now safe to bring to notice some of the workplace remarks by men here:
When a woman is angry about some work, men don't take a lot of time to jump to one of the two following conclusions-
1. If she is young/unmarried - she must be sexually frustrated / PMSing.
2. If she is older, above 45-ish - she must be going through menopause.
Regarding PMSing and Menopause- I don't want to deny that hormones don't play a role in our emotions. They do. But concluding it like that in a workplace is totally demeaning and just shows how deeply rooted your patriarchal beliefs are. It's also a brilliant tactic to shed your responsibility of the work output and put it on the woman's moods instead.
I mean, what menopause must Putin be going through right now? Or is his actions not hormonal because he is a man?
You see, woman are told to get married/date people so that they don't have to build a career, while men are allowed to build or break even countries. Old, degenerating men!
Sexism is something that will not go away easily, just like racism. A lot of viewpoints are deeply implanted in us to ever notice them when they come out in the surface.
Men often get offended if we call them out on such things like demonstrating sexist behavior. They'd defend by saying it is so natural and obvious. It is as much natural and obvious as you blaming the entire gender of women when one woman does something wrong, but when it is a man's fault it is only that man's fault.
This is exactly like racism- a white man shooting people is a lone wolf but a black man or a Muslim man doing the same would shame the entire race or religious community as terrorists.
If a female leader acts out in a workplace meeting, she is hormonal.
If a male leader does it, he is just angry.
When a woman is a bad boss, women are difficult to work with.
When a man is a bad boss, only he is difficult to work with.
You may defend that because you have seen other good men bosses around. But what kind of variety of women would you even practically see in a workplace with only 20% women?
This inherent misogyny will probably stay for years to come, even longer than racism.
Articles written by females and female-centric movies will go unnoticed or appreciated by only a smaller section of the society. That's how we are - used to seeing more of men and less of women. A female-centric movie is a female-centric movie, a male-centric movie is just a movie. A female-centric movie shows women in this light or that light, while a male-centric movie just shows the male character in this light or that light. We are quick to generalize when it comes to women.
Coming to the second part of men's reasoning: sexual frustration!
Before the pandemic, I never felt any pressure to date or marry. After pandemic, things changed. I only took a conscious call to refrain from dating while most of the world around me took a call to get married.
As if the pressure of family and Facebook photos was not enough, now arises a new topic amongst men - sexual frustration.
Yesterday this 42-year old colleague of mine tells me to join Tinder so that I don't take my career seriously.
I've never taken my career seriously. Being sincere and overdelivering when I enjoy doing something comes naturally to me. He doesn't see that. He sees a woman, younger than him, looking for meaningful work to do. That's not natural in his experience and observation.
Am I taking up more work than him to kill his chances of promotions owing to the time he doesn't have because he has a kid? In this case, he works more hours than I do, does more projects than I do, and we are not even in the same band to compete with.
It's a fact, though, that all bachelors work late hours and contribute to ruining the workplace's 9-to-5 culture. But are men told to get married to avoid the same?
I gave him the benefit of doubt and I said I was never interested to marry. He said Tinder isn't for marriage. Date, have sex, have fun!
He has assumed I am not having "fun". I asked around some married women to give him another benefit of doubt, to see if marriage really brings any change to our inherent nature - a good word for it is being passionate, a derogatory word for it is being aggressive. They assured me it doesn't change anything.
So I come around to not giving him the benefit of doubt; him and some other men who happened to assume the same.
I find it again being a deeply rooted misogynist viewpoint that can go so nasty as "she just needs a dick" in your early 20s or in societally accepted words "she needs to get married" in your late 20s or early 30s.
I wonder if any single established man was ever assumed to be sexually frustrated. The most influential man of our country, who too is unmarried, happens just to be a man in his path/mission. Women are not supposed to have missions, I guess.
My female friends look at me, call me inspiring or damn successful and most of my male friends keep asking me when am I going to get married.
We all look for meanings in life and it's okay if you choose to find meaning in your family, in your child, in your career, in a social service you do or anything else.
The trouble is, this colleague or other men, say things like this believing they are in good intention, because they don't know any better. This is all they have seen, learned and known.
They see their wives doing household chores and they see these younger women at workplace either doing just the bare minimum to pass the day or doing more projects than they had ever imagined. The first category of women would mostly be married. The second would be driven. Their points of view, revolving around sex, gets concluded.
They see their fathers ignoring their mothers' outbursts at home by saying she is just going through a menopause. And they see the senior female leaders at the workplace being upset or angry with some poorly delivered work, and assume the same.
These beliefs are passed down from generations and it has become their second nature.
The comments hardly go beyond sex and hormones and revolves around the entire gender, as if no woman is different to the other. But every man? Every man is a unique person with his own behavioral traits.
I never thought I'd be writing such a piece at this age. I thought my ranting article-writing activist days were over back in Mumbai, back when I was 25.
Life comes back a full circle, nothing changed, and here I am- unable to make them understand their misogynistic traits without offending them and hence, blogging it instead.
To him, I replied by saying I don't prefer Tinder, that it is a shitty platform and then I laughed it off like good working women do.
My idealistic nature signs me up for a lot of disappointment in life. But thankfully it also helps me write such things and validate all the other women who faces the same.
I called up another friend, a 38-year old woman, unmarried, and told her about what he said. She had faced similar comments before.
She advised me to ignore it, and then she laughed it off like good working women do.
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