Feb 23, 2020
Not all Men — and other majoritarian victimisation cry
I love sporting a beard most of the time for obvious reasons like hiding my beautiful face from all the pollution etc.,
The other day I was travelling to my hometown (Kumbakonam) on a train. Few hours into the travel, one of my fellow passenger, an uncle made a casual talk on me, which went like
“Have you got hold of your ancestral property and birth certificates or have you packed your bags for the detention centre?”
Obviously assuming myself to be a muslim, as I had my beard cut out in such a way. (This is after the CAA 2019 ACT)
However the group of uncles, passed it on as a joke. I was baffled to have encountered this, that too in a relatively small town where I have never faced any such. (may be because I never had beard before or we never had such polarization as we have now).
In that moment I were thinking; should I tell him that am a hindu? or should I show him my jaenu which I am not allowed to wear? But then it struck me what if I were really a muslim?
Also I travel quite a lot. On one of my vacations with random people, we were talking about food.
Sooner we talked about going vegan/vegetarianism and how that would help reduce global warming. (although it has its own shortcomings and tough challenges).
A privileged man and a woman floated a thought and displeasure as to why everyone wouldn’t go vegan and save the world.
I resorted with my view, of how the poor/daily wage workers and those that socially discriminated either on the lines of caste/class couldn’t afford the vegan/vegetarianism lifestyle and that meat is the cheapest nutrient source for the hardworking.
The man was quick enough to call me, “A Fighter” while in fact I was just stating my view/opinion (also it’s a fact but lets give that a pass) as much as he was giving out his. My view happened to be questioning his.
Why do we feel targeted when someone is calling out the supremacy exerted by a group that we belong to?
This past few years have been rampant with increasing polarization across the country, infact across the world.
People in general are being presented with a thought of Them vs Us. However statistically illogical, the majority group of people are cited to feel threatened by the people that may belong to one or more minority groups.
There has been voices from the authoritarian societies citing reverse discrimination by such minority groups.
Let’s debunk together, why we feel that we are being discriminated.
One classic example of this reverse discrimination is Men saying
“Well, Not all Men…”
Let’s take an imaginary scenario where a woman walks alone in some dark corner of a road, she sees you ; A Man, approaching her. She all her life have experienced andor heard of all such scenarios. She most probably, will experience fear because of all the history of Men abusing Women, generations after generation, and it is only natural for her to feel this fear, after all our defense mechanism works that way. She might have thought of using pepper spray on you, or shouting for help or even running away from you.
You might have even turned out to not be the guy she thought you were, but does that mean you were discriminated ? Definitely not. This is prejudice, but definitely not discrimination. The prejudice/generalisation is wrong absolutely, but given the history and all the inhuman discrimination it is only reasonable.
Now replace the woman/man in the story to,
black/white
queer/straight
asians/white
jew/nazi
palestinian/jew
religion-x/religion-y
shudra/brahman
caste-x/caste-y
The caste discirmination in India is much more complex than any other oppressed/oppressor we have seen here, that it takes a completely another blog to discuss about. But let’s just leave it there for now.
Sometimes we feel attacked when the discrimination exerted by us or the group we belong to unknowingly or knowingly respectively is questioned.
This victimisation that we claim has just got to do with the privilege that we might enjoy, sometimes even being questioned feels like discrimination. It also has to do with the fact, that we take pride in belonging to a group that is completely a genetic accident. Yes, that’s what we do, we take pride in things that were purely accident!
I will leave it to the reader’s discretion, to decide for her or himself, on whether we should call the prejudice as discrimination or as a group that enjoyed privilege for quite so long, to come forward and help change the prejudice by fighting the discrimination or oppression by joining hands with the oppressed. Most of the time just not crying victimisation will help!
Social inequality begins in your brag about your ancestry, which is a mere genetic accident. Be it Religion, Caste, Language, Ethnicity or Gender.
