The ones who have it Tough…er
This world is tough and it is difficult to find your place in it. If you can comfortably be the real you with your friends, family, colleagues, up on stage, live on media, and 1-1 with random strangers…you need to tell me how you do that! If you can comfortably be the real you with a small set of people and a large group alike, the young and the old alike, liberals and conservatives (literally, and not politically) alike…you are one among the few to whom society has been kind. You were born at the right place and at the right time…into the right family, in the right community, with the right education and gender. You would also have the right combination of genitalia and sexual orientation. Society is on your side. That matters…for society dictates.
Society stands by the group of individuals it chooses to stand by. Abortion rights in the US are being repelled, whereas gun laws benefit those who use guns, and tax laws benefit those who have to pay more. Muslim girls in India are denied their right to education. And these two are the world's largest democracies. Sad state.
Even if you have finally found your place in society after a lot of permutation and combination, it is bound to change. People change - you and those around you, governments change along with policies that are already unstable and unreliable, and the world can swiftly change to the kind you never thought you’d ever have to live through (in remembrance of early 2020). To be effortlessly comfortable in your skin, you need to put in a lot of energy to navigate this mercurial society.
But some have to do more than just that. They have to be accommodating and accepting of others’ wrongs. I am sure everybody has had to do that at least once in their life…be accepting of others’ mistakes and understand why they did what they did. But there are groups of people who feel the brunt more. They have a tag that sets them apart, one that either sticks on from birth or catches on at a particular phase in life.
Case in point: A random person asked my partner-by-law where he married and brought me in from (He asked in Malayalam: evidena kettikondu vane?) I understood why he said what he said. He simply meant to ask where I am from. But that question reeks of deep-rooted sexism, the kind that is difficult to change and the kind I have to bear because I am a wife, married “into” a family.
Case 2: A group of friends was talking about the various LGBTQIA2S+ terminologies and one of them said, “I am a normal cis male.” Normal? Sure. Hopefully, we’ll be alive when everybody else gets to that level of normalcy…when they can confidently call their sexual orientation and gender identity normal without expecting ridicule.
Case 3: An African-American mingles with her new classmates at a university in her hometown. A mate asks, “How are you handling the time difference? Where is your home?” She responds: “I am an American. This is home.”
Case 4: A grandmom asks her grandchild to create an Instagram account for her. The grandchild - “Why?”
Case 5: A 35-year-old single woman is attending her friend’s wedding. She gets the questions she has been smiling at for years: Why aren’t you married yet? Don’t you want children?
Case 6: A lower-caste girl is going to her upper-caste friend’s house. The friend - “Let us get in via the back entrance. My grandfather is at the front porch.”
And the lives go on…
The victims of sexism, heterosexism, ageism, casteism, racism and add all other -isms to this pool. There! You’ve got the ones that I’m talking about…the ones who have it tougher.
There are habitual difficulties these demographic groups face. The kind where the offenders don't even know that they are being biased because they have been conditioned to use those words and perform those acts with these demographic groups. These groups understand why the offenders said what they said and why they did what they did. But it is deeply woven into the fabric of the society that the offenders don't understand even if they are active allies.
The world is already a tough place to live in. Nobody should have to ask: Why did I have to be born this way?
