Gender Norms
Such open spaces to play sports are mainly occupied by men, while women are mostly excluded on account of various gender norms. This also applies to many underprivileged girls coming from the margins of caste and class who lack access to safe and inclusive open public spaces to play, such as public parks or maidans.
Social norms don’t expect women to look muscular, but if men are muscular, it is considered sexy. Just by choosing to pursue a largely male-dominated sport that glorifies what is accepted as “masculine”, Karuna and Sibalika are pushing the boundaries of these labels.
The potential for art to connect people and to challenge thinking is continuously widening. Aarushi Jain, a 21-year-old artist from India, perfectly captures the societal expectations placed on women in her representation of the English alphabet.
They lay eyes on him, they see a body out of the gym. A black, thick beard, in a need…
Indian films have for long fed into as well as mirrored social and cultural practices. Many of them depict a woman as being restricted to the kitchen and serving delicacies during festivities.
Gender and sexuality are like constituent parts of a jigsaw puzzle that keeps morphing in such a way that nothing ever ‘fits’ for long, and the game begins anew each time.
Each time a child or adolescent asks a question that may be (even indirectly) related to sexuality, many parents and teachers get squirmy and nervous. This may be because they themselves do not have the information required, but in most cases, it has more to do with the ‘hush-hush’ that surrounds sexuality.
In tailoring the way we present ourselves to the world – be it as fashionista, frump or an artful fusion of the two – we think we are the ones making a choice about how we express our gender and sexuality along with other markers of our identity.
Clothes for me are our first line of defence. They are also our first act of providing relief.
So why do we have to have fixed notions of gender roles and food?
We carve strangers’ words onto our skin
like tattoos to be flaunted while hiding away
everything that we are from within.
How could I be trans if I didn’t tick off all the correct checkboxes demanded by politics, law, society and even the transgender community itself?
I often imagine if I had been able to access friendly and empowering comprehensive sexuality education from my childhood, how different my life would have turned out to be.