Unbreakable Hiteashi

Written by Hiteashi Desai

When I was a small girl I used to love the heroic stories of kings and queens, but my most favorite stories were of queens and princesses. When we talk about these stories, we see that these stories mostly talk about the triumphs of men “how a brave prince slayed the dragon to save his princess”. We rarely hear the story where the princess saved the prince or saved herself without any help. When I got older I started to raise questions that why we hear stories of a man saving woman or man saving the kingdom, but I never got the answer. Why only men are capable of having the courage and attaining greatness, and why women are the only damsel in distress who needs saving. Many of us have the same question that why these tales and stories only focus on the bravery of man but not of woman. It seems that people tend to forget that women are much capable of having courage. Whose fault is it that the stories we heard in our childhood are mostly male-dominated, that many novels, folklore, stories, and movies narrate the triumph of man’s bravery but they forget the woman and even if we see a strong and powerful female character in the story, she is portrayed as an evil witch (or an evil person)? Even if we look at our history, only a few female rulers are seen but even there that female ruler is linked to a man or known for her beauty, not by her wits or her significant work. For example, Pharaoh of Egypt Cleopatra who ruled Egypt from 51 B.C. to 30 B.C., is famous for having affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony and her beauty but very few people talk about how knowledgeable she was and how she was able to influence roman politics while ruling her own kingdom.

We don’t hear enough stories of influential women, who played an important part in major historical events,s and because of this women are a constant target of Gender biases and sex discrimination. One of the main reasons behind this biasness is our literature, movies, media, and history and their writers, who do not narrator woman’s side of the story properly. These writers do not bring heroic sides to women.

these kinds of male-centric stories are told to children as a result of it small children starts to discriminate amongst themselves and as they become adult these childhood stories still influence  their mindset (consciously and unconsciously) and creates the ideology that women are weak and they need saving. Although there are many people who properly understand these stories and take a positive note of it or they question these stories and try to change other people’s ideology regarding the same.

Written by Hiteashi Desai

I have faced gender-based discrimination at every stage of life. Whether being the second daughter to my father or doing activities that are known to be masculine. My parents have been constantly criticized and pitied upon because they have only two daughters. Even after my birth one of my relatives suggested that my parents should try for a third child. My parents always shielded me and my older sister from this nonsense. As I got older I started to realize that I and my sister both of us were considered a burden on our parents, although our parents never saw us as a burden society made it look like that we are.

When I was in high school, I started my rifle shooting training and won 2 gold medals in district-level competition. my parents were more than happy, they told many of our relatives about my achievement, some of them were happy as I was the first person to ever won a gold medal in sports competition but some were not happy as my achievement should them  that  I am capable of achieving anything as their sons.

All my life one question has always stumble upon my mind is that why my parents were Discriminated for not having a son, Does it have to do with the fact that( in Hinduism) parents won’t get Moksha (eternal peace) after their death because they did not have a son to do their last rites and rituals? Or is it about the expenses my parents have to endure during mine and my sister’s wedding or when they are old there will be no one to take care of them.