Talking about patriarchy is “in” these days, or at least in my friend circles. That’s probably because I am an activist. Being one, there’s one fact I’ve realized about women activists. They might be the fighters for any cause- environment, children, gay rights, RTI, Free Tibet. A female activist would always be a ‘women rights activist’ AND some other activist.
And hence you might quite realize how I’m being forced to realize that men are nothing but patriarchic pigs, and there’s patriarchy everywhere in the world. English is a patriarchic language. Corporate offices are ‘P’. Marriage is a ‘P’ institution. The Bra is ‘P’. Pregnancy is because god was ‘P’. And so forth… Phew!
Theatre societies in schools/colleges are pretty interesting groups. There is one group of so-called passionate actors, who almost always play the lead and the second lead roles. There isn’t much movement in and out of this clan. The rest of the roles are played by a more volatile crowd. They don’t take theatre very seriously, a lot of them quit, and a lot new join in. More often than not, there are very few women in the former. Even the leading ladies have to be drawn out of the latter. Or that’s probably just because women aren’t very passionate about much anything..really!!!
Just imagine, if a play has a female as the leading character(s), it’s called a female centric play. Whereas otherwise it’s just default, it’s a normal play. There is a special mention of the word female, because most of the plays have men as the leading people. That’s because they are the people who matter, and have traditionally mattered. They have been heads of families, societies, institutions. They were the ones influencing changes, and hence, inspiring plays.
I remember myself and a few other boys dominating the theatre scene of our school. There was always a tough fight for the best actor shield in the inter-house plays, who gets to act on the annual day, which one gets the excellence in theatre shield. At the back of my mind I did realize, there were certain girls who deserved these laurels as much as we did, if not more, but were never even considered in the race. I see them doing great in professional theatre, and I look back and wonder why?
The question is not why they didn’t get any prize they deserved. The question is why weren’t they ever even considered?
In college the theatre society has pretty respectable sex ratio. When I read a script, I can well imagine which actor would fit into which role. It’s clear in front of my eyes. But when it comes to actresses, NEVER! I always think I’d have to audition a few of them for the roles. Am I a patriarch?
Most certainly no! But somehow, a thought that women are just not competitive enough does slip into my mind every now and then.
I shared these thoughts with a few friends and I realized, I’m not the only one suffering from such a dilemma. Is theatre about to be added on list of the-bra-burning-women’s hit list? Or am I just keeping a lot of bad company these days!!? I don’t know…..
2 comments:
You're right about the patriarchy...especially the bit about 'female-centric plays'...that one made me think a lot...
I guess it's not that *all* 'men are patriarchic pigs' really :) but its probably more accurate to say, as you do, that 'there's patriarchy everywhere in the world.'
At a guess, probably the reason why women don't appear as competitive as men is socialization? Women just aren't encouraged to be terribly competitive.
Newspaper articles about successful women generally reinforce the image of women as more caring and cooperative and less competitive than men in a similar position. Of course that's just a layperson's observation and one shouldn't generalize. :)
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