It started off with a friend asking me for inputs for an article she was writing. I guess it’s been growing in me, this utter discomfort with a celebratory month, week, day to focus on the misfortunes of women in general and women in my community in specific. It perhaps bubbled over a few weeks ago when at my daughter’s request I penned the words of a song/poem that she’s trying to take into music video form. I don’t know. And I confess I am confused.

I was never, you see given the opportunity to gloat over the fact that I was the male of the species. In a single sister-single brother home my parents dished out treatments of all kinds with great equanimity. We were given access to the same resources (yeah sure I was more demanding than my sister, but perhaps that was because I was less sensitive). It was she who went on and completed her MBA though I was supposed to live up to that expectation. Oh I can think of very few instances when my parents favored me simply because I was a boy. And maybe that’s the root of my take on this present day issue.

If my mother taught me to respect ladies, my sister taught me to give her space. And the both of them sensitized me to the quirks that make woman a special breed. When I got married to a girl who was a tomboy in her environment, my reaction to her womanhood took on different dimensions altogether. And when we parented two girls the circle was complete.

The decision to have two kids was mutual. And we both decided that the question of boy or girl was to be left to divine forces. So two girls. And a natural ‘So What’ kind of response to anyone who dared to ask.

I have never consciously done anything for my wife or my daughters BECAUSE they were female (except mundane things like buying them perfumes and lingerie). I have never treated their opinions as being of less importance because they were after all feminine. And I have respected their wishes just as if they were equal partners in a business called life.

Come to think of it, except for my carnal desires I don’t think I ever thought of their sex at any given time. And I don’t plan to.

And that brings me to a question. Is the way some people are taught or allowed to think…to distinguish between man and woman…is the way they think, the root cause of the problem? Are we in some fashion encouraging the projection of some traits to drive home deeper the basic difference between male and female. And in the process are we alienating some people. Creating a situation where a man has a reason to look differently at a woman…to love her more than necessary or to hate her more than called for?

My girls are not ‘one of the boys’. They are their own selves and beings created from their desires and wishes. Influenced perhaps by my inputs but very clearly left to themselves. So if my wife wants to work it’s her call. If she doesn’t it’s hers. If my daughters want to work they have my support. If they don’t, they have my home.

This is not an attitude that I have consciously adopted. It’s an attitude that I have grown into. My parents, my schooling, my girl friends, my crushes, my profession, my hobbies…my family…all have taught me different dimensions of my stance. And I find I am comfortable.

I like it that my male friends find me comfortable enough to hang out with. I like that my colleagues know that they are evaluated on the basis of performance and not measured on the sex barometer. I like that my children are content with my take on life. Most of all, I am at peace with myself.

Now I am too humble and too pragmatic to offer this formula as a panacea for the evils that hound society today. But maybe there is a beginning somewhere. Maybe the oneness of look is the solution to the cross eyed perspective of a perverted soul. I don’t know. And I rest my case before it’s even begun.