I identify myself as a cis male, but something has made me questioned that. This article is all about my story, my identity but as we know, this society don't allow you to decide your gender identity, it bestows its own notions and declare you a male or female.
I have been studying the role of patriarchy in our society and how it shapes gender dynamics for last few years.
However, I realized this only a year ago that I somehow have started to feel disgusting about my gender identity i.e., male. Being a Cis Male, I am born with many privileges in this society and always will be until I declare that I am no longer a male.
I agree that being a female in this Indian society is more tough and hard than what being of my gender identity is but today, I will share how I feel disgusted certainly during some points in life with my Cis Male identity.
Since I was in my teen years, I had a strange fascination towards wearing my sister's skirt, as in my school like of anybody's, girls had skirts and tunics as their uniform while boys had to wear pants.
Many a times, I used to wear that skirt in private when nobody else was around and one day when my mom caught me doing that, she just shoved me gently and laughed on me with other family members in the room. That obviously made me stop doing it.
When I reached in my graduation, again I started wearing skirt which I borrowed from my best friend (female), who also supported me throughout to wear that skirt. However, with due pressure from our society, she and I, both were very thoughtful of me wearing that skirt in public.
As everybody does in this social-media driven world, I also started posting my photos in skirt on Instagram and as expected, I received mixed reactions - some supportive and some very demeaning. Being a human being, naturally, I was demoralized with those negative comments and stopped posting it thereafter.
When I reached my post-graduation, I tried wearing it to my university but could never gather courage to make it possible for casual days like any other female friend of mine would easily do.
As that best friend says to me, "You only have not normalized this skirt and crossdressing in your mind, so how could you expect others to see you positively."
She is right but maybe I am going weak against this mighty institution of patriarchy which doesn't allow me to wear a skirt or any dress or jeggings, anything literally branded as women's fashion.
I think that patriarchy has done a lot of harm to Cis Male like me also who have to face eyebrows and humiliating comments over my fashion desires.
When I face all of this, I do wonder, and some questions revolve my mind like:
Am I really a Cis Male or not? Am I yet to decide my gender identity? Am I a gender-fluid person? or the other way round - Am I wrong altogether? Am I overthinking? Shall I just shut-up and explore alternatives in what male fashion has evolved in itself?
Answering these questions would've been very much easy for me if it was not a patriarchal society because then I could've just started exploring my gender identity with being gender-fluid for now and labelling myself as He/Them.
However, this is not the case, and I am stuck here to write this article and wait for this society to get better and more inclusive and sans patriarchal.