Is it hard to be a boy?

So, I was on my way back from work today and I was thinking about how so many women are still oppressed and suppressed. Then I started thinking about men and I began wondering if in today’s world, it’s actually hard being male too. I mean, I know it’s difficult being a woman…our challenges are endless…and most people I know believe that all men have it way too easy but maybe that isn’t entirely true.

We live in a country where there is a huge hullabaloo made about the girl child and female foeticide and such. I wonder whether parents who would like to have a son can declare their preference openly or whether they will be met with scornful gazes and looked at as people who are gender-biased.

We live in a country where a lot of women look at men they don’t know with a whole lot of suspicion. Thanks to the media, the characters of men have been permanently tarnished and all the male species that exists outside the circle of those we trust are regarded as probable criminals.

Men have a hard time when it comes to deciding their futures too. Although nowadays women who sit at home only are looked at with a lot of shock (take me for example), if there is a man who is sitting at home and not out making money, how tongues wag! It is almost like a weird kind of pressure that’s put on them to get out there as early as possible and make a living. No father wants to give his daughter’s hand to a boy who hasn’t got a steady job…and that’s the bitter truth.

Plus, boys are harassed, molested, abused and raped too, and not enough people give a rat’s tail about it. We only talk about the female population who is undergoing that trauma but hardly ever do we acknowledge that there are men who have gone through the same ordeal and need the same sort of support we talk about for female victims. In this case, as usual the minority is male and his issues have got shadowed by those of the majority…girls.

And what’s up with the thought that a boy who cries is weak? I mean…how sad is that if a boy can’t cry because men are supposed to be able to control their tears. How horrible it must be to grow up with the idea that “crying is for sissys” ingrained into your brain??

Poor men….maybe you don’t have it all that easy after all…

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Free Write day on Write Tribe…this was my take in fifteen minutes 🙂