Does the title of this blog discomfort you a little? Possibly, yes! Well, on the one hand, it echoes the famous beginning of Milton's Paradise Lost. On the other, it seems to suggest what many may, and do, consider impossible, man's discomfort.
Well, November 19 is precisely an eye opener against such set (of) ideas as it is a day dedicated to men's welfare. Surely, in the popular imagination, men's discomfort would get reduced to a wife worse than Xanthippe, a shrewd and shrewish mother-in-law who could be the very source of all mother-in-law jokes, and so on.
Actually, November 19, in my opinion, can be a day that questions and corrects this 'men will be men' mindset. I think it is a clarion call for a fair society wherein none is inferior or superior due to gender. It is a day that celebrates our humanity, and neither berates, nor belittles, nor eulogizes a man as, and/or just because, he is a man.
True, given the way history evolved from the matrilineal to the patriarchal, once the socio-economic set-up settled in to agrarian, and onwards, way of life, men had it comparatively easier than women. And, yet, the patriarchal point of view victimises men, too. A rather obvious and simplified example of such a way of thinking could be the simple and well-known fact that men are not supposed to express emotions, men must always have a stiff upper lip that could shame the British image at this achievement!
And, yes, indeed, it is true that women, too, can be unjust. In my opinion hence this day should be celebrated as working towards a fair, just society wherein neither sex suffers the gender injustice. Instead, there is a human(e) attempt at creating a sensitive and sensitised society wherein prejudices do not b(l)ind either gender. In to that land of kind and considerate humanism, let our future bloom like thousand flowers!
Pratima@Liberation involves getting rid of all sorts of prides and prejudices!
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