Back when I used to live in my grandmother’s house, it was scheduled for my two sisters that they do the dishes daily. As per my grandparents, my gender wouldn’t uphold cleaning them. I was supposed to have the perks of not having to do the household stuffs just for being born a boy. It was, however, a clean excuse for a lazy lad like me to get rid of the works which were even the consequences of using the assets given to me. This is where all it starts. Children at their young ages are shown, taught and rendered to keep up with the long-lasted legacy of gender discrepancy. Women in our typical society are considered work machines or said bitterly; household slaves. I personally do not find much problem of women being downtrodden in opportunistic context; they have assured reservations in most fields, for instance. The problem usually is in the visions; the way a female is perceived. The differential preferences amongst the genders of soon-to-be-born child just on the bases of virility and religious authorities that they are going to possess and at their parent’s death, is not relevant to this time. And to everyone’s good, such practices seem long lost, except for the countable communities that are still isolated with illiteracy and rooted prejudices.
Though ‘female’ is the gender that suffers exploitative workloads, undervaluation, as well as violence from their stronger counterpart ‘male’, it is not the gender that is facing low preferences except for the orthodox ‘virility’ based concept. In the course of acquiring equality amongst genders, the present generation has promoted feminism. However, on the other hand, has inaugurated a different form of inequality between them. With the gradual change in people’s behavior and attitude, the modern world now has discriminations against homosexual people. ‘Homophobia’ is a term that encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. In the USA in 2010, 19.3 percent of hate crimes were motivated by sexual orientation bias. In the 2011 census of Nepal, almost two-third of the respondents who were third-genders were assigned male at birth. Even the ones who were assigned third-genders in their citizenship certificate attempted to change their genders due to hesitation in being called with different Nepali terms for LGBT. Over sixty percent reported experiencing at least one incident of abuse or discrimination. The most common form of discrimination was verbal harassment in stores, public transportations and schools as well as denial of the service in the health care settings.
The psychology that is driven with wrong perceptions and low tolerances create hurdles in the mutual existence of every one of us. There is no debate in the fact that people, nowadays have some serious problems in their attitudes. The large portion of people’s thoughts that considers heterosexuality as the only natural, normal or moral mode of sexual behavior has no significance. There is an irony in the fact that the modern world claims itself being comprised of educated, intellectual as well as moral individuals, yet, nurtures hate on the basis of sexual orientation. In my view, the sexuality of an individual should not be a headache unless the behavior prompted by the sexuality is unsocial or unethical. The people of this generation, too, should accept this fact. The participation of the third-genders in every aspects of social and national affairs, as well as provisions of rights corresponding to other genders’ cannot be turned a blind eye to.
Many of the times, we do not even realize the forms of inequality that we foster. My perception about equality changed when I realized that the comforts that I took for granted were the results of domestic drudgery my mother did every day. I started to keep in mind that the works she does are the parts of my responsibilities too. I could imagine life happening in a totally atypical manner if any day my mother would stop working for everyone else’s comfort in the family and we, by any means, could not oppugn her doing so. However, there is always a very little possibility of such things happening, I, myself started comprehending and appreciating her efforts for all of us in the family and would now not hesitate to offer help regarding any household jobs to my mother and the sisters too. The picture of the responsibilities that belong to oneself start being seen clearer when we start living away from home, or just away from where the female members of the family live. For my generation, I sowed a seed for gender equality beginning from my own home and I believe, people of my generation should do it too.
