ACCEPTANCE — BREAK FREE FROM YOUR CONDITIONING!
“Why does it hurt your eyes to see a tinge of femininity in a biologically male body, the same feminine body which gestated you for 9 months until you saw the light of the day?”
Samrat, a 19-year-old teen at the end of his day starts contemplating and introspecting about his day, life, and the society he inhabits. Here’s a monologue flooding his mind.
Disclaimer: Any resemblance of Samrat to any living individual is pure coincidence.
“My phone buzzed with a WhatsApp message from my Colombian friend. He just seemed to have taken his IELTS interview. He was dumbfounded by the questions he was asked by the examiner. Attempting to articulate his dismay would be an understatement. Apparently, he was asked to pick his favorite piece of furniture. Such an eccentric question, right? Jaja(yeah, that’s how you laugh in Spanish) …We had good laugh for a while. He was plausibly not satisfied with the qualification of the examiner. But had I been in his shoes, I would have dashed my way into my closet, which by the way would be my favorite piece of furniture. You might ask why? The same closet has sheltered me for almost past two decades of my life which has cocooned me inside helping me pull up a façade like a trickster? But what alternative have I left? My flexible hand dexterity would chant a spell and invoke a gender slur out of you, would it not? Or I would become a butt of the joke if my hands fail to replicate that masculine curve while walking? If you can deduce the equation for that perfect masculine curve, lemme know Does it hurt your eyes to see a tinge of femininity in a biologically male body, the same feminine body which gestated you for 9 months until you saw the light of the day? Who decreed a biologically male body can’t internalize feminine energy or vice — versa? You know what, it’s not your eyes that hurt and bleed it’s your conscience that you were raised with, that you are conditioned with. I don’t blame you for that. But I blame you for not being kinetic and flexible regarding your perceptions and beliefs. Don’t be another stick in the mud! Our thought patterns need reassessment every now and then. Question the beliefs deeply entrenched in the societal mindset. Have you not ever played whisper challenge? How miraculously words and it’s sentiment get distorted from the first participant until it reaches the last person? Over the long generational gap, the actual meaning that our wise ancestors tried to impart has been distorted.
Sometimes, we have to communicate to the first person, in our case, our ancestors, who are obviously dead by now, but the legacy, the literary and mythical allegory they have left is still alive
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You want me to walk you down history lane? Let’s do it. Shiva was once seduced by the feminine avatar of Vishnu( Mohini), Zeus couldn’t resist the charm of the most beautiful mortal, Ganymede aka Aquarius, and ended up abducting him to Mount Olympus, Sacred Band of Thebes, 150 pair of male lover soldiers, vanquished the hegemony of invincible Spartans tipping the power balance in Greek peninsula and the list goes on.
What more narrative for gender fluidity would you want me to corroborate now?
Greek gods and goddess Hermes and Aphrodite were fused in a single body as Hermaphrodite, and so was Shiva and Parvati as Ardhanariswara.
And now ask yourself, what you were conditioned over 20–30 years of your life, can it outweigh thousands of years old, the wisdom of our ancestors? Is it not incumbent on educated people like us to lift the societal veil of ignorance?”
Why are we not compassionate towards each other? Does it hurt to accept the people for what they really are? If a guy wants to be shy, let him be. If a guy wants to giggle as long as he wants, let him do that. Let him swing his hips if he wants to when he walks or let him move every inch of his body as he wants to! For God’s sake, can we just let him inhabit his own body? Let’s not handcuff him with our casual derogatory gender slurs and let’s not imprison him for his true essence. Let’s set every Samrat in our circle free from the prison that he was put into from the first day he started exploring himself. Let’s Live and let live.
Who creates the stereotypes? We do
Who breaks the stereotypes? We do!!
