I was at the park today, chatting with a mom when she shared a moment that stuck with me. She told me about watching a group of little boys in action—a common game, one boy shouting, “Fight!” and just like that, the others went at it. She laughed and mused about her own son, K, and how when he gets older, she won’t stop him if he wants to join in those games. “Boys need to learn how to fight,” she said. “It’s the only way they’ll survive in this world.”
But then, she went further. She talked about how we raise girls to "hang out with the right people," to surround themselves with kids from “nice homes with nice values.” It hit me—she was equating survival with fitting into these rigid, gendered roles. Boys fight, girls stay safe, and both need these skills to thrive.
I didn’t tell her anything. I have realised over the years that such beliefs are more about conditioning than about how educated or not a person is. As a generation, we grew up surrounded by such narratives all around us in popular culture.
I left that conversation with this thought —what if we flipped the script, just for one generation?
Maybe it’s time to rethink what it truly means to grow up in today’s world.
And while I looked for an image to add to this post, I only found images with men dressed as women and vice versa and there in lies another reason for why one has to think of this subject in a more nuanced way. Rethinking stereotypes is not merely changing costumes but thinking of how men can balance the yang and women their yin energy.
No comments:
Post a Comment