Would you laugh if you see a guy wearing a yellow dress? If I were 6 years old I would, but at 21, I’d go home, put on my brother’s blue jerseys, go back out, and say hello.
I’m not trying to sound nice. I’m trying to defy gender roles and societal expectations based on someone’s sex, because these roles and expectations have gradually eroded humanity.
I’d like to call myself a feminist, a member of a movement that has progressed to fight against the oppression of women, but I don’t think that I am. I am for both men and women who are victims of sexism.
I can remember that as a child, I was always reprimanded for going out to play with boys my age. The older ones always warned me not to trust boys simply because they are boys.
Before the words were spoken, everything was without malice, but when the words were out, in the mind of a little girl these boys were created to become rapists and murderers.
Now we blame poverty, corruption, elitism, lack of education, and evil spirits for all the crimes committed in our society.
We’d call for justice, but did we not mold these criminals ourselves through our incessant demand for differentiating the boys from the girls?
When we begin to speak of boys as boys and imagine malicious acts that they will commit on girls, do we not doom them and give them an excuse to do such acts?
Are only boys capable of doing these acts?
Why are they condemned and judged for their strength and build?
If, in the beginning of time, we did not teach our girls to be wary of boys, but, instead, to treat them as the children that they were, wouldn’t this world be a safer place?
I do not want my girls to someday be in constant fear of boys. I do not want my boys to someday be constantly feared by girls. If only we look beyond our physiological composition, we will see that we all had pure hearts when we were children, waiting to be nurtured — or poisoned.
Of course, I won’t force my little boy to wear a yellow dress, or my little girl to wear blue jerseys. What I am trying to say is that, beneath these material things that have come to clothe our sexuality, let us look at one another without bias. Let us look at one another as an individual. Let us not be defined by our sex and preference. Let us be human, but a better and kinder one.
This message will take a lot of voices in order to be heard. This is going to be a strenuous walk, because if it were easy, I won’t be talking about it now. This would have been achieved decades, if not centuries, ago.
I hope that someday we will get better — that we will stop dividing and classifying. In our efforts to protect ourselves, we have victimized the innocents.
It’s difficult, I know. Because even if we just look into somebody’s eyes, there will be a classification of blues, greens and browns, not to mention the rare purples and blacks, but we don’t stop looking right there. We look through them and begin to see someone’s mind that share the same beliefs of love, peace, freedom, hope and equality.
Have you seen a guy in a yellow dress? I haven’t, but I hope to see one someday.
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Deszth Atria T. Cutanda, 21, is with the legal staff of Panay Electric Company Inc.