On the morning of Women’s Day, like all other mornings, I saw my mom wake up at 5:30 AM. That morning, like all other mornings, she asked me to wait for my friend for the morning walk, because at 5:40 AM, it is still dark. That morning, like all other mornings, breakfast was ready at the table by 6:30 AM.
Like all other days, on Women’s Day too, my mom did everything to run our house in an orderly manner. The only change I witnessed that day was the constant interruption of wishes – “Happy Women’s Day! Happy Woman’s Day!” – on our phones. But these wishes aren’t the only things that have provoked me to write this. There were some groups of words, substantiated by emojis, which were circulated on WhatsApp, fondly known as ‘jokes’. I would like to present some before you:
Specimen 1
“आज अंतर्राष्ट्रीय पुरुष मौन दिवस हैं!!
चुप रहें खुश रहे
(Today is International Men’s Silence Day.
Keep quiet. Stay happy.)”
?????????
What you see here is a cunning reversal of the histories of men and women. Women’s long-continuing history of silence is being attributed to men, and laughed upon – while at this moment, so many women might be keeping to themselves the feeling when inappropriately touched by men in the metro, when the leering gazes of men fall on them and the patriarchal heads ask them to hide the potential rape-causing bra strap, the horror on being eve-teased on roads, the frustrating tradition of taking the onus of serving guests, of curbing so many aspirations and rights of their own and the list goes on. Now, having successfully reversed the histories, the ‘joke’ sets a precautionary advice (most often given down to women), in front of the readers, which can be read as “चुप रहने में ही भलाई है (It’s safer to be silent)”, thereby normalising the oppression, the silence in the garb of happiness and safety.
Such jokes surface almost every day on several WhatsApp groups. My friend Praveen, with whom I have shared my irritation towards these jokes, forwarded me one to enhance the discussion. It goes like this:
Specimen 2
“पत्नी: २ किलो मटर ले लूँ?
पति: हाँ …ले लो।
पत्नी: तुम्हारी राय नहीं माँग रही, पूछ रही हूँ,
छील लोगे इतने, या कम लूँ?
(Wife: Should I buy 2 kgs of peas?
Husband: Sure. Buy it.
Wife: I am not asking for your opinion. I am asking whether you will be able to peel these many, or should I buy less?)”
?????????
My infuriated impulsive answer was, “I find such jokes very unrealistic.” He corrected me saying, “I find such jokes targeted.” That was true. In jokes, women are granted the space to take the lead and wield power – but even in this fictional and ridiculous realm, they are endowed with a power of an oppressive nature. In some cases, they are portrayed as despotic rulers – misfit leaders who misuse power.
The creation of this delusion fosters the necessity to curb the rights and thereby hinder the growth of women in the real world. Moreover, during my easy hunt for these sexist jests, I found that men who exercise this brutal repressive power every day never make their way into such jokes. Why would they? They have to be taken seriously. In the above-mentioned joke, the woman is perhaps vocalising her frustrations amassed daily, or her strong resolve to share the domestic load with the husband. But her powerful voice is dismissed, and her angst forms the content of an ever-circulating ‘joke’.
So, on one hand, we have women who exercise power in a tyrannical manner – and on the other, we have women who are naïve, ignorant blockheads. Here’s an example:
Specimen 3
“पति – भगवान के वास्ते अब बताओ भी हुआ क्या है? दो दिन से मुँह फुलाकर बैठी हो???
पत्नी- वो जो तुम्हारे Laptop में एक फोल्डर है…”My Documents”…. तुम उसका नाम ‘Our Documents’ भी तो रख सकते थे ना…??? “अब तुम मुझे बिलकुल प्यार नहीं करते”…!!
पति ने तुरन्त Laptop ही बेच दिया है…!!
(Husband: For God’s sake, just tell me what happened? Why are you so disgruntled for the past two days?
Wife: In your laptop, there is a folder called ‘My Documents’. You could have named it ‘Our Documents’. Why didn’t you do so? You don’t love me now.
The husband immediately sold the laptop.)”
Now, what do these mindless, doltish women need? I believe they want the guiding presence of a man throughout her life, because clearly, these men are born with a superior intelligence and divine wisdom. In this instance, the woman knows what a laptop is and is even in possession of knowledge regarding folders – but well, she was confused with the pronouns, and to pacify her, the husband had to sell his laptop.
In her article “Behind the Cultural Imperative for Women to be Sexy and Cute” (2013), Lisa Wade suggests that
“The sexualisation of girls and the infantilisation of adult women are two sides of the same coin. They both tell us that we should find youth, inexperience, and naivete sexy in women, but not in men. This reinforces a power and status difference between men and women, where vulnerability, weakness, and dependency and their opposites are gendered traits: desirable in one sex but not the other.”
Lisa shows how such differences and inequalities are propagated during childhood through recent toy makeovers. Childlike features like bigger eyes and the crimson tint on cheeks that prompt the need to nurture and provide tender care are found in toys designed specifically for girls. While men interpret “this trend as the ‘result of a cultural imperative for women to embody both the cute and the sexual’, women don ‘cute’ clothes […] They wear eyeliner to give the illusion of the large eyes of childhood, foundation to hide the marks of ageing on the face, and pink on their cheeks to mimic the blush of youth. They are taught these imperatives from an early age.”
Amidst these two representations, there are jokes on women being compulsive cleaners or too complex for their partners to understand them – and worse, sometimes they have to seek a doctor’s help.
Specimen 4
एक आदमी रविवार को डॉक्टर के पास आता है.
आदमी: डॉक्टर साहेब मेरी पत्नी मुझे कुछ समझती ही नही .
हरसमय चिडचिड करती.
मेरा कुछ नही सुनती.
क्या आप उसे शांत कर सकते है ?
डॉक्टर: अरे बाबा यह सब इतना सरल होता तो क्या मैं रविवार को दवाखाना खोल कर बैठा होता ?
(One Sunday, a man visits a doctor.
Man: Doctor saheb, my wife doesn’t understand me. She is always irritated. She never listens to me. Can you calm her down?
Doctor: My dear, had it been this simple, would I be sitting in the hospital on a Sunday?)
??????????
Specimen 5
“Q: Why hasn’t NASA sent a woman to the moon?
A: It doesn’t need cleaning yet!”
The dissemination of such jokes not only ensures that women are brought up in this manner – the angel of the house, always scrubbing and cleaning – but it makes it seem as an innate quality, something we are born with rather than the incessant demands of a patriarchal society.
Thomas E. Ford in his article, “Psychology Behind the Unfunny Consequences of Jokes that Denigrate” (2016), explains why such jokes, representing disparagement humour flourish without any hindrance. He says,
“Disparagement humour is paradoxical: It simultaneously communicates two conflicting messages. One is an explicit hostile or prejudiced message. But delivered alongside is a second implicit message that ‘it doesn’t count as hostility or prejudice because I didn’t mean it – it’s just a joke’.”
To substantiate his argument that jokes of this kind foster gender discrimination, he presents studies where “men higher in hostile sexism – antagonism against women – reported greater tolerance of gender harassment in the workplace upon exposure to sexist versus neutral (nonsexist) jokes. Men higher in hostile sexism also recommended greater funding cuts to a women’s organisation at their university after watching sexist versus neutral comedy skits. Even more disturbing, other researchers found that men higher in hostile sexism expressed greater willingness to rape a woman upon exposure to sexist versus nonsexist humour.”
It’s time we take these trivial and seemingly harmless jokes seriously. They have serious social, political, economic and psychological repercussions. And don’t fool yourself into believing that they come only in form of dialogues between a husband and a wife or a husband and a doctor. Sometimes, they also come in the garb of a pretentious historical fact.
Specimen 6
“Did you know?
Initially, Women’s Day planned on 6th March.
But women took 2 days to get ready.
That’s how it got postponed to 8th March!!!
Men’s Day was also planned…
But as usual, they forgot the date!!!”
You may now want to kill yourself!
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Featured image used for representative purposes only.