PRESS ARTICLES

"Sterotypes "

Source: Buzz

ARTICLE

“Are you a sissy? Boys don’t cry”. “Sit properly, don’t you realize you’re a girl.” Various such messages fly thick and fast in our growing years. So boys aren’t supposed to play with dolls and girls with cars. Boys aren’t supposed to clear up after meals, what are the mother and sister for? What would a woman know about investments and finance, its like asking a man to pick utensils that would be required for a kitchen! Stereotyping, typecasting and pigeon holing often occurs from childhood and many a time continues into adulthood as well. And if the typecast person chooses not to counter or defy those labels, it may shape the way he acts, lives, and believes things about himself. And then often ends up creating self-fulfilling prophecies. So the boy ‘learns’ (and can therefore unlearn) that crying is sissy-like and blunts out emotionality because he has equated emotionality with weakness. He gets married ands finds it difficult to emote with his partner. His spouse complains about his ‘insensitivity’ and lack of expression. And he has no idea why he finds it so hard to relate. He has succumbed to a stereotype! A wife is alert, has good business sense and is sharp to the nuances of finance. She sees her husband having a lacuna in the same. But believes that women and business ability don’t gel. She ‘dumbs down’ and does not voice her views. She too has allowed herself to become a casualty of her characterization! Stereotypes can be dangerous. They can be self-limiting, restricting and inhibiting. And can interfere severely in good interpersonal relating, when women and men try to fit ‘roles’ and thoughtlessly compromise themselves. Developing flowing identities rather than granite-like ones – with nothing ‘sacred’ – only for the woman, or ‘rigid’ – only for the man – can lead to healthy adjustment and adaptation – an important requisite for enjoyable intimacy. Today sex-roles rules are fuzzy and all for the better. Why draw boundaries around what we can, cannot, should or should not do/behave/display? Why not instead develop philosophies where flexibility, experimentation and exploration, is encouraged. Where people can express inclinations and choose responsibilities because they prefer to, rather than because they have to, where they want to rather than because they’ve got to. For then the probability of resentment and bitterness could well be low, and an obstacle to intimacy eliminated.

• The more flowing the identity the better the mental health. Rigidity and inflexibility narrows living and interferes in enjoyable relating.
• Stereotypes are learnt and thus can be unlearnt. The lesser the boundaries we draw around ourselves, the more adaptable and adjustable we become to take on responsibilities because we want to and not because we’ve got to.
• Defy and counter societal created ‘roles’. Nothing is ‘sacred’. The less we adhere to what ‘men should do’ or what ‘women should not do’, the more we’ll exploit our potentialities and flourish.