UNSTITCHING GENDER

Your language didn't differentiate genders and that postponed your awareness by a few years. The two year old you knew that Varsha is a girl but Varsha could as easily have been a boy. The word held little meaning for you. You were the first child so you didn't know what it is to have "a different treatment". Your parents decided to have no other children so you were dressed in shorts and trousers as often as dresses. Most of your childhood photographs were gender fluid dressing at best. You liked neither dolls or cars. What you liked were puzzles and books, both fortunate to hide away in the periphery of the gender question. Your nursery had children peeing in the open. The three year old you felt neither shame or distress at the thought. The adult you retrospectively wonders if the teacher wanted children to be comfortable with their bodies or it was an easy solution for fifty children wanting to pee at the same time. You did wonder why boys stood up while peeing but again it was of little relevance in your 3 year world. Your 4 year old changed drastically with the school you went to having separate toilets and strict instructions to 4 year old boys to never enter the door with the girl's picture.

My earliest experiences of the gender divide has been at home. I have a younger sister. Being a boy, I always felt I received more love and attention from my grandparents than any other cousins or my sister. I secretly relished this and craved for more like any other kid. I was seen as the heir to the family. So my grandfather would spend more time with me narrating moral tales, taking me to the family farm and involving me with pujas. I think he saw these qualities as essential for 'man of the house'. 

As a kid, I was afraid of the dark and an old ancestral home did not help. I remember being constantly compared to my sister and other female cousins who weren't so afraid. Instances such as these had built an image of man being stronger than woman. These assumptions played out in school too where I usually did well. I would be outraged if a girl performed better than me. This had fueled a competition between boys and girls which felt natural at that time.

When my parents agreed to send me on a trip , but did not let my sister come along. 

When my mother prepares something special to eat and sometimes gives me the share first.

According to me, there are certain expectations that one has from a male . It is rather very difficult to change that. People still feel that if a girl has achieved something, it is actually a big thing. They will yell to the world that this 'girl' has achieved a thing. To this society the achievements of a girl are not very obvious.

In my first year at school, when I was 5, a playground bully named Michael Van Burken used to taunt me by saying repeatedly "Gil is a girl, Gil is a girl."  I would always burst into tears, less because of what he was saying than because of the bullying way in which he would say it.  Interestingly, the taunting left me with the enduring suspicion that being a "boy" meant being a nasty thug like Michael Van Burken, and being a "girl" might be preferable.  Soon after that -- and this was just as the hippy movement reached New Zealand in about 1969 -- I started to see men with long "feminine" hair, so different from Michael Van Burken's buzz cut.  I was transfixed by the spectacle, on TV, of the long-haired Beatles and then the androgynously coiffed David Bowie looking so charismatically feminine.  I persuaded my mother to let me grow my hair long too -- indeed, I was the first boy in my school to have long locks over my ears and collar.  Others started asking me if I was a girl, but by that stage I didn't mind.  I had the Beatles and David Bowie to convince me that boys could be boys by looking like girls.

The feeling after exposure to love making/ erotic scenes on television at the age of around 12 was probably the very first time I felt like a boy. The kissing or love making scenes would leave me confused with so many questions about the act and no one to seek answers from. Touching myself, which occured very naturally, felt good and was probably my body's response to all that exposure. I can't recall any perception which I may have had at that point in time, but looking back I do fell that those visuals did have an impact on my perception about the role of a male or female in sexual acts.

My earliest memory of being made to feel like a girl is when everyone kept talking about what they would wear and what I would wear to my wedding. I must have been about 6-7 years old. They never spoke about my brother's marriage. So I got this understanding that marriage is a must for girls and an option for boys.

I thought "unfair" when as an 8 year old I saw my self-dependent, educated aunt bend down to apply cream to her husband's feet who felt no qualms about this. I was silenced for pointing this out because well, I was 8, I wasn't supposed to have an opinion. This instance is worse than the numerous instances of casual sexism, eve teasing, discrimination that I have come across, because it wasn't outside of the safe space of home. It was within. For me gender discrimination comes alive most when someone says "sacrificing mother," it is nothing to be proud of.

Dear Myself from the future past, Some of my first memories are of my parents and my cousins. And of playing. playing on the streets with my 'street' friends and of building fortresses out of pillows in my cousin's house. All of my cousins were male (it feels so weird to use the word 'male'). I'd always wonder why the girls I used to be friends with with never took part in organised games after a certain age. Almost as if the process of gendering "set in", now that they were no longer children. That was when I first started becoming conscious of my identity as male

Earliest memory of feeling like a boy is when I played a sort of house game with my cousins. We were enacting the role of a family where the guys were playing a husband's role and the girls playing the role of a house wife. The idea was that the men go out work hard while the women take care of household and kids. This was the initial impression I had of what a women's role in a society was. 

The earliest that I can recall is of my grandmother's biased behavior towards me and my brother. She would distribute fruits among us in such a way that my brother would get the larger portion of better quality fruits while mine were the once almost on the verge of rotting. When I  brought this point to her notice she would make me feel guilty of being greedy. It was a tricky position, I couldn't say anything, I used to feel anger but I didn't wish to be called a bad girl. 

Well, this differential treatment transpired in other areas as well. With time I realized that it wasn't being met to me because I wasn't a good girl but because I was a girl. 

Dear Varun, as I look back, I think it may have been when I was about in six years of age and in Upper Kindergarten. We played a game called 'Girls Catch Boys', where all the participating girls had to catch the boys. We tried 'Boys Catch Girls' only once as we caught the girls within minutes. I remember realizing that boys are physically superior to girls, and there was little arguing with that. When it came to studies though, my class topper was a girl. I do not remember it bothering me at all that this was an issue, but aunties and uncles alike would jokingly mention that a girl had beaten me at studies. I felt the little embarrassment they wanted me and forced me to feel. They may have said it jokingly, but there was definitely some prejudice in their jokes. It is difficult to trace how this affected my perception, but I think it did make me feel in competition with the other gender. It made me feel as though I had to do better than the girls and perhaps be better than the girls. In the years to come, there would be a playful rivalry of 'Boys v Girls', where both genders wanted to collectively win against the other. It felt natural, but I wonder why. Why do 6 year old kids try to depict and establish their own gender identity as the superior one, and by comparison, the other gender as inferior? 

I think it should be when I was treated at Deviji on Navratri. I know its weird, but that is when I felt like a girl, different from a boy, because my brother wasn't treated that way. And when i asked my mother why, she explained how female energy is regarded as "Shakti"... I felt powerful! And I guess since my brother used to be dressed up as Krishna on Janmashtami, I didn't feel any undue importance given to me...it was all fair, but clearly distinguishable! (This is when I was 6-7 years old) I guess it put that seed of females being powerful very early in my mind. Come to think of it, I have never seen myself or any other woman/girl in the image of weak/dainty damsels. That thought is revolting, maybe because although my extended family has its own flaws, it has very powerful woman figures. None of them are submissive. And that image confirmed to idea of "Shakti" whether positive or negative, but powerful, even after I became aware of our physical differences.