Birds and bees

Life begins at the maternity ward and so does gender role. Baby girls are put in pink cribs and baby boys are put in blue ones. As they grow up, girls are given dolls and boys are given toy cars. Boys are asked to be nice to girls, hold doors and pay for them and girls are asked to behave in a “lady-like” fashion. Will you believe me if I tell you that this has spread to tooth-paste too? I laughed at first but the depth of the situation disturbed me. “Princess tooth-paste” comes in pink tubes and “Spider-man” toothpaste comes in blue ones and believe me, three year olds know exactly what to pick! My baby cousins (boys) think it’s an insult to own anything that’s pink.

I’ve always wondered why people console girls with “Don’t cry” and boys with “Men don’t cry!” And not just that, we are also expected to be attracted to a certain group of people based on our biological sex. I don’t understand this uncontrollable need to have binaries. There are homosexual men, homosexual women, trans men, trans women, trans homosexual men, trans homosexual women and queer men and women in addition to heterosexual men and women. Do you see how problematic the idea of “normalcy” is? Why are certain human differences, considered inferior to others? Isn’t it obvious that gender was constructed? What is this obsession with gender? A few weeks back, while I was at the supermarket, a guy friend pointed at a bunch of razors and asked me “What does the pink one do?” and I said “Exactly what your’s does.” and the poor guy looked confused. But I swear they do the same thing!

This Post is written for the Incredible Blogger Marathon Challenge. The challenge has 10 tasks and this is the ninth one.

IBMC #09: The Be a Baby Challenge is a challenge where we are supposed to pick up some aspect of everyday life, look at it from a new perspective. The idea is to question it like a child.