How Social Stigmas are Plaguing the Mindsets of Young People and Creating Gender Biases

Sometime ago, I was at home, watching TED Talks India: Nayi Baat, a show that very few people are aware about. Because for a weird reason, we tend to incline more towards those shitty daily soap operas and reality shows like Bigg Boss than towards insightful & original content. Let's shelve this discussion for some other time.

Anyway, so as I was watching some really awesome speakers come up on stage and share mindful thoughts about society & the world, there was one talk that distinctively stood out from the rest. 

Madhumita Pandey, who is PhD in the criminology department, wanted to do a thesis on some case. After hearing about the notoriously infamous 2012 Delhi Gangrape Case, that forced a lot of outrage among the Indian people and the media alike, she came up with some really introspective questions. Why do men rape women? What prompts these men? What are the circumstances which produce men like this?

Amidst all this chaos and blame games, she wanted to find the root cause of it all, rather than directly arriving at conclusions as majority of Indians do. So she went a step ahead and interviewed 100 convicted rapists at Tihar Jail in New Delhi over the past three years. Here's what she had to say:-

“When I went to research, I was convinced these men are monsters. But when you talk to them, you realize these are not extraordinary men, they are really ordinary. What they’ve done is because of upbringing and thought process.”

Most of these men were uneducated, a handful of them graduated, and some were 4th or 5th grade dropouts. While education plays a role in shaping our thoughts, it was clear that in this case, education was inconsequential to talk about. Society played a more important role in shaping the thought processes of these perpetrators regarding opposite sex.

In India, social attitudes are highly conservative. Sex education is left out of most school curriculums; legislators feel such topics could "corrupt" youthand offend traditional values. Over time, men learn to have false ideas about masculinity, and women also learn to be submissive. And it is happening in the same household.

Everyone’s out to make it look like there’s something inherently wrong with rapists. But they are a part of our own society. They are not aliens who’ve been brought in from another world.

Pandey also said that hearing some of the rapists talk reminded her of commonly held beliefs that were often parroted even in her own household. 

“There is certainly a lack of sex education in India. Hell, parents don’t even say the words like condom, periods, vagina, rape or sex. This is still considered as a taboo. If they can’t get over that, how can they educate young boys?”

As teenagers, they learn about stuff like sex, porn, from their friend circle. They fantasize about having a girlfriend or a boyfriend. As a result of this, instead of feeling completely chilled to talk about sexual feelings or having/not having girlfriend or a boyfriend with parents and friends, they make it a BIG DEAL. Like if you're 20 and still a virgin, you'll get a FOMO. A mindset is created around these sexual feelings, and as these kids gradually turn into adolescents and then adults, their minds have been shaped.

The rich start believing that if they don't sleep with a person of the opposite sex, society won't accept them. Or they won't fit in the social circle. Or they won't have anything to brag about. So they start committing heinous crimes against girls. The poor, on the other hand, realising their status in the society, driven by envy and frustration, and the ferocious ambitions of having everything the rich people have, including money and girls, start raping women of the upper class.

Then we, the society, start labelling these men as monsters, completely alienating them from the society, the same society whose very mindsets compelled these monsters to commit such crimes in the first place. We don't go on to find the root cause like Madhumita Pandey did, we present our judgements, spew venom against the whole men community, and even go to the extent of reordering our society in which females are depicted as being superior to men (notoriously known as Feminazism in the pop culture), a society where only women deserve to enjoy all the privileges while men are deprived of all the love and concern because they are supposed to be tough so we think they can handle their feelings alone, a society where only women are heard and men are always supposed to be the ones who commit crimes against women. Then men start blaming women and this whole chicken-egg game about who is superior to who plays on and on and on....


The society is changing, but not for the better but for the worse. For instance, today, as I write this blog on International Men's Day, I hardly see any statuses on WhatsApp or Instagram wishing men a Happy Men's Day. I'm NOT complaining that you should wish me. I'm just saying that if women deserve to be respected and recognized for their sacrifices, so do men. If majority of men commit crimes against women, it doesn't mean you should throw the whole man community under the bus.

We celebrate Women's Day with true spirit, posting colorful statuses and writing heartwarming wishes to all the women who matter in our lives. Why not the same spirit for #InternationalMensDay? Where are all those folks who kept posting statuses shouting about how men should respect women and how always men are supposed to be BAD? Why are there no special events for us?

Men have feelings too. Men are sensitive too. Men cry in solitude too. Some of the men have suffered too in the hands of women (in cases of false accusations of sexual harassment & exploitation in public). It doesn't always have to be in the favour of women alone, no? And yes, some of us respect girls too. Not all of us are bad. Not all of us are perpetrators. Why all the respect for women and all the hatred towards men?

Honestly the idea of men not being able to have emotions other than anger is really upsetting and an issue that needs to be addressed in the society. We created gender stereotypes, and engraved them in the very mindset of our society. And in the process we forgot that we all are humans after all. Why can't we for one moment believe that MEN AND WOMEN ARE EQUAL. That no one is superior or inferior.


The hyper masculinity that we start to teach male children right from their childhood is toxic. And even more so are the gender roles that we are supposed to play in the society. We should instead be teaching them that feelings are ok and you should not be bottling them up just because you're supposed to 'behave like men'. This whole idea of "dominating nature of men" should be averted right from childhood so that sexual violence against women doesn't happen in future.

On this day, let me remind y'all that the battle is not against patriarchy alone. Or feminism. It's against both patriarchy and matriarchy, against misogyny and misandry. Against  radical feminism & masculinism (yeah I just invented that word!). It's not about who is superior to whom. It's about walking hand in hand, and empowering all sections of the society, be it men, or women, or the LGBT community.

Also, Happy International Men's Day :)

Thanks for reading.
a.