It sounds bizarre to talk about male rights in a male-dominated society. We do not talk about male rights, but always demand everything to be facilitated to the female. Women have many issues pertaining to lack of nutrition, balanced diet, marriage, post marriage, childbearing, nurturing, and nourishing a child. I have realized recently how difficult it is to be a menopause women, they suffer each day with body inflammation, body pain, and headache.
In these difficult times, it is always male support that helps us to overcome, how do we overcome such a life which is full of struggle in the absence of male support? How do we live without a male partner? We do not have ways and means without a male partner, and how important is the male partner in our lives? It is difficult to measure the requirements of male presence in our lives. When I think about this scenario, I remember how males were tortured and went missing and never came back. I remember when a male is pressurized and rejected to be weak and vulnerable. A male partner cannot weep or sob in front of a large audience because we do not allow it. There is a general perception that women despise weakness in men.
Have we ever thought about how violence is perpetrated on a male? I have a cousin living in Kashmir, downtown area, he is a male among four sisters who are married happily. He was the only male among five females at home. He must listen to his mother always; his elder sisters were ordering him to do their chore. He has never lived his life completely. Now, at the age of 35, he is struggling to meet a girl of his choice. When I talked to him recently, he narrated me a story which was quite astonishing. His family never talked about him or to him candidly; he has isolated himself from family members because they were talking about females; neighbors and other female members of the family. He was feeling coy and never allowed to express his point of view. Over the years, he has developed a perception that females talk always violence. They despise other women in the competition such a mother in law, she is projected as an evil, and daughter in law as an intruder. Also he narrated that after the marriage of his sisters, mother’s attention was entirely diverted towards them and now his place is replaced by nephews and nieces. Nobody loves him anymore, that is what he feels.
If we take an impromptu survey and ask women in Kashmir that how many times they have heard or have physically assaulted men in their lives. How many times do they have slapped, punched, threw things at them, women will respond that guys do deserve punishment. But it is a horrible assertion they would make and fall into trap of fundamental attribution error. How do we judge people, especially males, and support the majority perception without verifying and probing?
Can we use the Recognize Assumption, Evaluate Assumption, and Draw Conclusions (RED) model? The RED model is used for critical thinking basically where we solve different problems and avoid judging people. I think we need to converse with people openly including children who are isolating themselves, and parents do not observe it. A male is part and parcel of a family and he should not be avoided and forced to take extreme steps or fall into substance abuse. I have seen many people smoke openly in Kashmir and the consumption of smoking is huge, late marriages, late-career starts in Kashmir. Why? Is this a conspiracy that we marry late in Kashmir or we are waiting for some outsiders to occupy the vacuum in our society? I don’t think it would be complicated to understand that the importance of starting a life and marriage is an essential competent of life.
I think we need to ask hard questions to solve the problems of gender based on humanism, because humanism is an ideological doctrine that places human beings, at the center of the Universe. However, human nature and human life can be traced back eventually to ancient Greek thought. Humanism celebrates the value of human reason and thought. We should not divide our society based on preferences or sex orientation. We should treat everyone as human being and behave neutrally.