Before I jump into today's theme and example, let me put certain things straight which may not be comfortable for many readers to accept it in face value. These are certain hidden truths, which if exposed will jeopardize the positional power of many. The truths are:-

1. Men have been harassed by cultures and societies since centuries
2. Men are emotionally dumb to realize the abuse and harassment.
3. Men's rights concept is a subject of humor for the society.

And this problem has been there since centuries across geographies surpassing the boundaries of caste, creed, religion, race and ethnicity. But one wonders as to why has it never made to our conscious minds about the problems faced by men?

Before answering that question, I will cite an incident from the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi - the man who was the key instrumental in getting India independence from the colonial British Raj.

Before beginning his non-violent fight against the colonial British Raj in India, Gandhi was in the South Africa. And on one fine day, he was slapped by 2 English policemen for climbing the first class compartment in tram. And he was also abused for being dark in color and badly insulted racially.

Gandhi, at that time, had two choices:-

1. Fight one to one against the policemen and slap them back accusing them of racism.
2. Identify the root cause behind it - create awareness about it, create a social support structure around it and corner the perpetrators robbing them off their choices.

Of course the second choice was obviously uncomfortable, counter-intuitive but it was personally empowering for Gandhi as he would be then firing at his enemy from a position of what I call as NOTHING TO LOOSE - if people are awakened by his awareness, well and good otherwise at least his bitterness would go away in a non-violent way and he would attain peace.

The first choice was disempowering as in that case he would be the criminal trying to obstruct policemen from discharging their duties and assaulting them. Also he would not be in a position to build a support structure around him as well.

Needless to say, Gandhi took the second choice and his endeavors in South Africa led the foundations of his crusade back in India which ultimately changed the course of history; not only for India but for the entire world. So we see how with one myopically uncomfortable choice and switching to an empowering context Gandhi altered the history to be written.

He did not take the problem personally and stop at it. He realized that the occurrence of the problem with him was a mere example; it can happen with anybody and the problem needs to be fought at a very higher level - seemingly higher than it appears. Similarly with men's issues also, often men who are victimized tend to take the problem personally and solve it only at a personal level, which means they make the first choice which is disempowering but myopically comfortable. Only if men realize that whatever happened with them was routine and can happen with any other man and needs a fight at a dimension much higher than that at which the problem occurs and take the second choice, today men's rights would not have been a subject of mockery internationally.

Comments

Add New

Write comment
Name:
Email:
Website:
Title:
UBBCode:	-color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.26

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."