Nothing has polarised humankind more than the evil mastermind who started the pink and blue divide, may he rot in hell. Since then, we’ve been reduced from the glorious sum of our distinctive parts to just the distinctive parts — bits and boobs, er, bobs. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Machoist Movement, the male version of the double X Feminist Movement.
Oh yes, gender reversal is trending worldwide. Back home, decades after electing a woman to run our country, we’ve decided to grow a pair and give the legal nod to a woman to head a Hindu household. Not that she was moping around, waiting to be acknowledged. Nah, she had quietly shuttled off into space, with bigger plans. The Hindu household didn’t look quite so stifling from up there, did it, Flight Engineer Chawla and Commander Williams? The fact that both happened to be wearing pants when they did this had nothing to do with what was under them.
Evolution (the psychological kind) dictated that women juggle baby wipes with balance sheets and bottom lines, so they did, sans any dramatic departures from their inherent female selves. You men didn’t make it any easier for us, but that’s OK, because now that the ball is in your court, we’re not going to be all ‘tit for tat’, mostly because you don’t have either. Har har.
Jokes aside, we totally get where you are today. We applaud that you want to explore the other side, and we’re behind you all the way. All we’re saying is don’t let your penis railroad your happiness. If you’re thinking pink, think it because you like it, not because it’s trending. Think fuchsia or burgundy, if it makes you happy, or just rock good ole’ blue. You are so much more than just a colour. You’re the dude who takes his girlfriend on a spa-date, the guy who is nauseous right through his wife’s first trimester, the dork who lets his little princess paint his nails pink, the man whose eyes well up at the sight of his father, intubated in the ICU. You could slam a football into the goal, or plié in spandex without feeling like your trusty chromosomes are under siege. So why all this commotion about gender reversal? It’s simply about being human.
Someone, long ago, buttonholed us into pegging our happiness and identities to our genders. Women smelled the rat first, and we turned into master jugglers, learned to balance our yin with our yang — we simply turned from women into persons. We entered a state of gender-agnosticism, and we’d strongly recommend you give it a go. Honestly though, this gender reversal hype, isn’t it simply reinforcing the same stereotypes, only this time with a different gender? Proclaiming that a man is free to be a house husband is no better than announcing that a woman can now be a CEO. Unless my job involves peeing standing up, why would my annual office appraisal be impacted by my stilettos and C cups? Ambition hasn’t been a stag party since Mata Hari crashed it a few centuries ago, and motherhood was never ever about giving parking space to a foetus in your womb. Which means you could be mommy, maybe even a better mommy than birth mommy, just as long as you have the real prerequisite for motherhood i.e. the ability to put the child before yourself 24/7, for as long as you breathe. It’s true, you can get a womb on hire today, but renting a mother? Still a problem.
Over to you, boys. Go out there and show the world how it’s done. Mother, pole dancer, masseuse… whatever’s your jam, go own it, while we go and flash mob outside the Vatican. No, of course we don’t want to be ‘pope’. But who are they to decide that we can’t be ? Like it says on my hubby’s Tee, “Same Same But Different”. If fist bumps were words, that’s what they would read. Now give me a fist-bump, yo!
