Perspective 1
I am not the only child in my family. Well, it is questionable whether I am a child anymore, but that aside, I have grown up with my sisters. 4 of them. I have grown up in a joint family. And I can boast of having been exposed to a multitude of arguments, opinion and perspectives on gender. And this is where the catch lies. I am not going to spill any more beans about my family. What I will do is tell you my experiences and sensibilities. Trust me, this has not shaped what I am going to talk about now.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Vivek Sharma, and I am not the co-founder of the Poetry Club Mumbai. I was born and brought up in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Left home 10 years ago and have since lived in Kota, Guwahati and now Mumbai. Perhaps a journey typical of a small town boy, trying to make a place for himself in this world. A dear friend asked me yesterday what was it that would keep me occupied this weekend. I told him I would be celebrating gender at The Hive. He mocked at me, not because it was funny, but because he wondered who I would be targeting.
It is not easy, trust me, to convince myself to talk about gender. Not in the least because I would be talking to people who are far more sensitised to gender than I have been. Not in the least because I am intimidated when people talk about gender. Not in the least because I am still trying to build an opinion basis which I can talk intelligibly. And importantly, not in the least because more than 70% of friends I have are girls.
Ok so my side of the story now. I kind of get uncomfortable when I see a girl smoking a cigarette. I get scandalised when I hear a girl hurl abuses. You know the ones I am talking about. I freak out when I see a girl driving a motor cycle. And I still get uneasy sometimes when a Eunuch passes by at a traffic signal. To some, these might be cultural shocks for a small town boy who has moved to Mumbai, of all cities. To others, these might be instantiation of a staunchly patriarchal mindset, or rather a very regressive mindset. I am still trying to figure out, and trust me. But where these arguments converge is gender.
We are here today, not because we don’t already know what the issue is, nor because we care any less. In fact on the contrary. We are here so that we can step outside of our activist selves and scrutinise the deep rooted notions we have about gender. To lend a voice to the innumerable instances in our everyday life where we condone or perhaps, to put it mildly, overlook acts or notions which our activist alter-ego would vociferously condemn. I am not saying we are hypocrites. I am saying we need to talk a little more in the spaces around which our society flourishes, or otherwise languishes under the cloak of tradition and culture. We are here because if we find ourselves in discomfort when subjected to ideas that break the gender mould, we should know that we are the ones compromising the movement towards celebrating the individual. Gender is my right, not anyone else’s wrong.
Perspective 2
It is not very difficult either, getting burdened by the sheer force of the topic we set out to talk about. As human beings, we are very comfortable living in narratives that have prevailed for a long time. Ideologies are an inseparable part of such narratives, and as communities, we are very passionate about defending ideologies, and holding on to them. In my short lifetime, I have seen the public discourse around ideologies evolve faster than most of our society. I am a part of the same society that becomes an easy target when it comes to passing the buck. We are here because we don’t want to be an easy target.
And this has put us into a rather fortunate position of talking about matters which would have seemed alien to the now developed nations at this stage in their history. As Indians, we seem to have evolved much faster. The important bit here is that our evolution is as much conditioned by the times we live in as the evolution of gender was.
My name is Siddharth Warrier, and I am a doctor by profession. I have built a perspective, and at the risk of sounding very much like everyone else present here, I dare say a unique perspective, on gender through my understanding of the evolutionary history of humankind. And I think we are here today not only to undo gender, but also mould perspectives through a discussion that itself makes an attempt to understand why gender in the first place. I will begin with sexuality.
From an evolutionary sense, why does sexuality exist at all? Most plants are hermaphrodites, that is, both male and female characteristics found in the same organism. While only 5% of animal species are hermaphrodites. This separation of sex features is important for a reason - to grow as a species. It was only by dividing the genetic library, and selecting different mates, that enough mixing could happen to create better individuals for natural selection to occur.
Now we come to human history, and their attempt to deal with sexuality. Sexuality is natural. Gender is manmade. A simple Google search reveals differences between meanings or definitions of sex and gender. What this has not been successful in doing is dispel notions that prevail around what these concepts means.
In the beginnings of society, humans divided the roles of early society between men and women based purely on physical attributes. Men were stronger and more capable of gathering wood or farming, while women were capable of giving birth to offspring and caring for the household. At that time, these roles were neither better nor worse than each other. They were equally essential for mutual survival.
Fast forward a few thousand years, and the surroundings have changed, but not the definitions of roles. This is explained by inertia of the collective public. Neither has man evolved from their role of 'protectors', nor woman from 'protected'. In a construct where labour, in any form, is being replaced my machine, do we really need gender identities? We are increasingly getting stripped bare of the rationales that existed for as long as humankind, for us to be able to define gender.
How ironic, that the more we progress, the more basic things seem. We are still a species, evolving in search of identity. I am here because I feel the need to be able to deconstruct gender from sex.
Perspective 3
When I was growing up, sex or sexuality was a taboo. As a matter of fact, a liberal discourse was a taboo. Which did nothing but stunt my growth as an individual who could rationalise a lot of ideals that I lived by. Expression of self, physical and otherwise, was limited in a certain respect. As I grow up and look around myself, there are many avenues where I see a disconnect. And I am not saying this purely because I live in Mumbai. I am saying this because I see this disconnect even in the most cosmopolitan of the Indian cities. And this spreads to virtually every facet of human life. Starting from socio-economic background to racial origins to colour and to gender. We are here today not to patronise the discourse on undoing gender. I think we are here today to explore ourselves and dig out the deep rooted prejudices that we still have somewhere inside of us, instead of blanketing them nonchalantly.
A few notions that I have harboured inadvertently as a product of the times i have grown in include the idea of superiority. Of one human being over the other, which manifests itself through race, colour, caste in our country and gender. What surprises me is that this is not just limited to our society or country, but permeates through the very skin of our species. Despite having witnessed a series of cultural revolutions that have challenged, at various points in time, the long established norms dictating our social behaviour, I think we have yet to harmonize the beliefs we harbour as individuals for us to change collectively.
Superiority has been the focal point of classification of our society from times immemorial. Men are superior to other genders because they are anatomically stronger. And the thumb rule of evolution is survival of the fittest. Not wrong, the latter part. But what the former misses is that there is always some way or the other where a species is found wanting in. Superior anatomically does not by itself guarantee superiority or a complete social dominion. Which is what we have been assuming and living by. I am here to because I want to explore and do my part in dismantling this. Not because I am a feminist or I hate met, but because as an equal species, we have a right to live as equals.
Which brings me to another thought that I have long nurtured. One of entitlement or right. What entitlement does is limit the freedom to explore beyond that entitlement in a social setting. Does a superior species experience emotions? Of course, every one does. Is a superior species entitled to express his emotions? This is where it gets fuzzy. Our concepts of superiority have prevented us from really seeing through the mist of prejudices to what lies underneath. Some of us are entitled to certain things, which prevents us from exploring alternate identities that we want to align ourselves with.
Take theatre. Men played the role of women. Not because there was not a sense of superiority. But because it involved a lot of aspects that were deemed to be inappropriate for women. Bodily contact is the easiest example. Who would want someone else to touch his woman. But the society needed entertainment anyway. So we bent the norms of superiority, which altered our sense of entitlement at the same time. Today, we have a more liberated woman living amidst us. Which has devalued the sense of entertainment of yesteryears to the point of derision. It is not surprising therefore that people who want to go beyond the boundaries that their gender has built, are not considered a fit in today's society.
I am here because I want to understand what has been defining this sense of superiority or entitlement. I am here because I want to deconstruct what it means to belong to a particular gender. We are here not just to nod in agreement because that would be what is expected, but make an attempt to argue and see our sensibilties around gender getting challenged and overturned. Deep down inside, we are products of our times. And I am here to learn what lies beyond our time.
Ladies and Gents, My name is Ankita Shah, and I am a co-founder of The Poetry Club Mumbai.
