The Fallen Manhood

It is said that a society is known by the way it treats its women. It is said that women used to be respected in some era and some societies….

I did not want to write a post on a pointless pursuit. I don’t have to write what is the way the women are being treated today,… and that speaks all. Why I take my virtual pen finally to write is the ‘rate’ of deterioration of the society that has come to view in the past few months. I am troubled enough to be pushed to post a question as to why the society is spreading its viciousness towards women in such a geometrically progressing pace?

There was a report that one of the reasons is that violence against women depicted in movies is reflected back into society. That’s a point I quite agree with. Many movies I watched have disturbed me. Some for the foul double meaning language that the veteran heroes of the south use with women; the disrespect and objectification spewing from their words. When heroes do it, the fans follow. It is indeed visibly reflected in the society.

Other movies disturb me for how a large section of the males in the audience react, when they watch on screen the plight of a woman shuddering in fear and misery! Shockingly (maybe not surprisingly) quite a large part of it, jeers and laughs in pleasure! Lustful society indeed that cannot see a woman beyond her body.

Men would blame it on the women for having objectified themselves. Have the women of today really objectified themselves? Well, what option is left with the insecure womanhood, if she has to find or keep a man; when the only thing any Man is willing to ‘love’ her for, is her body and she is constantly in threat of being dumped for a better or younger 'model'?

What makes man so insensitive?
Curiosity does lead humankind into the dark lanes. I know of someone who tried beer. And then he tried it quite frequently. But he became aware that the beer was pulling him into the liquor lane. He also realized he had the capacity to become an addict. From that point of realization he did something that requires great strength. He made a decision and stuck by it. The decision was to never touch even beer! There are rarely any anecdotes I remember with as much admiration as this. He is one real strong Man. He had strength enough to resist even the ‘little finger’ of an irresistible evil.

I don’t know if anybody realizes the powerful truth in what the three monkeys of Gandhiji teach - “Don’t see evil, don’t hear evil, don’t speak evil” For evil is very powerful. It can suck you in, into its vicious grip. You may start by curiosity about the evil, but you never know how and when as you move more and more into the lane, in an explorers spirit, you become part of that evil, you become addicted; some evils that were repulsive to begin with, end up becoming a source of pleasure.

This happens to be the story of all sorts of addictions. Its starts with a one time and then suddenly, you realize that you are in the vicious grip of a snake, that slowly pushes out all your sense of right and wrong, deadens your spirit and makes you a ball of mass that ‘laughs and jeers at grossly wrong places’. Such a person no longer cares what a petty sight he makes, he is hardly aware of it, for he convinces himself that he is proud of his sickness. That it is his Manliness, his strength!

Weakness it is.. Can a man be so strong as to let go of even the finger of the evil when he realizes where it is leading to? Can a man be so strong as to not even touch beer no matter how his buddies laugh at him? Not even be incited by peer pressure and insinuations of not being a man? Can a man be as strong as that! If there is such a man, then he surely is a Man!

Today what we also see is that no man seems to have the strength to stand by a woman to protect her! ‘Manliness’, they convince themselves, is rather in abusing the weak women in all possible ways and blaming every failing on them. For the measure of pain and blame man is capable of giving, he does not have the strength to take even a fourth of it!

They think ,act and talk ‘lust’, and then they hide their lustful nature behind the insinuations to womanhood as sluts and objects of entertainment. Not that they believe the sex seeker image of women projected by the ‘virtual businesses’ that thrive on lies; but rather they are weak and prefer pointing their finger at the woman than admit that they have in fact objectified themselves; that their ‘whole world’ from thoughts to words to actions, revolves around their… ‘object’.
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After incidents like in Guwahati, the ‘show time’ made by the media and society out of that teenage girl's plight at the hands of jeering senseless men; women must have lost any remaining respect for manhood or any hopes from society in general to genuinely empathize with their situations. That naïve girl believed she had empathic ears as she talked to the camera! She is too young to know, that it is not just a matter of few fishes, it’s the whole river that is dirty.

As men conveniently forget to care about women whom they were designed to protect, they turn out to be woman’s worst enemies. They numb themselves, and do not care where they stand in the ‘lowly’ woman’s eyes.
By the by, what does the Man in today’s society look like in the Woman’s eyes? I am sure in any mature women’s eyes they are the weakest Men, weaker than even women, that any era could produce

But the truth is, it does not help to hate the sick. The sick have to come down from the throne of pride and see their sickness for what it is, only then can they help themselves out of it. The men who claim to be strong by harassing the weak, should come to terms with the weakness it actually is. Men have to abandon their high horses called “Manhood” that take them to hell holes. They should not lose their head to the powers of evil, rather, they should finally show their strength where it is really required; against the power of the dark as it pulls their right senses in. The head can rule again if it is kept where it belongs. That power is for Man to summon, for it is in his own hand.