Conversation with my Dad about masculinity 👱🏽♂️
From this conversation, I found out what married men would think and the solution my dad offers.
So just recently I told my dad about this publication and I told him what the goal is from this publication. It’s to change we think about masculinity by people sharing their stories/experiences.
My Dad is about 55 years old and he talked about some of the ways masculinity was viewed when he was growing up and what men around his age viewed it as. Also my family is Indian and we live in North West India, so some of things that are mentioned here, does not imply for the whole India.
A little preface on how families are usually setup in my city, man in the family is dominating and angry, man earns for family, women takes care of home and kids, whenever their is a social gathering men stays with men and women stays with women. You get the idea.
From our conversation the highlights were:
- If married men understood their wives they were considered weak.
- If a man didn’t give orders to their wives, he’s not a man.
- In a family, husband’ responsibility is to earn money and wife’s responsibility is to cook and take care of kids. If women works then her income should be lower than the husband’s income.
- Wife has to ask her husband if she wants to go somewhere
Again these were the characteristics that apply to men of my Dad age. For young couples some of things don’t imply.
The solution:
He offered two solutions, 1) for parents 2) for teenagers and adult
For Parents
They have to teach their kids from a young age to respect women. Respect their sisters, friends and teach them to express emotions. He also said
Before parents teach anything to their kids, they have to respect women themselves.
For teenagers and adult
Whenever they hear a sexist comment from their friends, they HAVE to say something. They have to say, that its not respectful. As a male adult myself, we talk a lot about girls. Usually we give a score to girls or score their ass or breast.
Sometimes I made comments like its not respectful to objectify them but I couldn't do it every time. I know its hard and if someone is trying this, I really respect you.
That was all, I am really glad that I had this conversation with my Dad. I’m really grateful for my family that they taught me these values.
