All Men are the Same

As she sips her coffee, Hajra casually remarks, ‘Sab mard aik jaisay hi hotay hain, Fatima.’ Amna, who is sitting across the table nods in unison. And Fatima, oh dear, she wipes the last of tears from her face, an elegy to her heartbreak. Her majazi Khuda has left her. Which kind of Khuda even does that— leave his obedient follower with marks of torment?  

Are all men really the same? Are we all two-headed dragons breathing fire, and coughing abuse under the guise of a beard and a moustache, and sometimes, even a muscle or two? Coming from a man, the true answer is perhaps, a yes. The statistics would also scream nearly a yes. Why so? What do you really expect from a society built on patriarchal values where toxic masculinity is the currency of control, and emotional paralysis, an emblem of strength? Little boys internalize what they see, becoming the same almost uniform type of a man, the so-called ‘mard’. And if they don’t, society makes them realise, ‘Tum tou mard ho’— the mard who is the villain of the same story in which he dreams to be a macho hero.

Who is this mard?

It is the same mard who doesn’t understand emotions. ‘Larkay thori rotay hain’ — a statement far too common, yet an ideology far too deceiving behind it. Early socialisation bootstrapped by such ideas creates an emotionless man, the mard we see, who can’t express his emotions even to his loved ones and the suffocation of not being able to do so gets channelled out in ways monstrous. And this isn’t even the most tragic part. The tragic part is that this inner frustration is seen as normal. Haven’t you heard a headline stating, ‘Man killed his wife for serving cold food’? Sounds ridiculous in writing, no? But you would have definitely heard something similar once or even more. Do you think empathy would have been present in the heart of such a mard? Of course not. Presenting you the emotionless Frankenstein mard. To put into a more common perspective, most of you would have seen your father scolding your mother much more often than you would have seen him actually expressing love and showing affection to her. Right? Isn’t that nearly every mard though?

It is also the same mard who is expected to give in to his desires rather than mastering control over himself. Larkay tou hotay hi aesay hain. Such free passes become a vessel of normalising patriarchal behavior, often accompanied with the breakdown of any moral compass which was present within these men. A woman is expected to dress and behave modestly, while a man is bestowed a free pass to just not only subject her with his predatory gaze, but also touch her, if he feels enticed to do so. Have you ever seen a boy being told to lower his gaze, while the society screams at a girl to take her dupatta? Obviously not; I say ‘obviously’ because it’s so normalised. You and I, we both have witnessed it, one way or another. Aren’t most men given this free pass, sometimes subtly, sometimes directly, right from their childhood? Isn’t that nearly every mard though?

 It is also the mard who is a slave to the notions of toxic masculinity. While the term ‘toxic masculinity’ has become much more common, it’s certainly a surprise that the actual male toxicity hasn’t so easily been rooted out. Why? Because it subtly hides in the society’s gaps and goes unnoticed, even when it slithers out to take its prey. Such is toxic masculinity, a swift snake, with much potential to assert misogynistic male dominance. While the debate on unequal domestic roles between men and women has become much more common, the narrative has produced a ‘hero man’, who is celebrated for washing dishes or cooking, chores which are quite simple. Were the women celebrated before for doing the very exact thing? Obviously, not. But it’s important we realise that the ‘hero man’ phenomenon is also a hidden form of toxic masculinity. Because the ‘hero man’ never fails to miss a chance to narrate his version of the ‘adventurous and thrilling tale of putting Lemon Max on an oil-stained plate’ while asserting his dominance all the same.

Even if we sideline the ‘hero man’ for a second, the traditional toxic masculine behaviors are still rampant. Isn’t even your paid house’s cleaner, a kaam wali and not a kaam wala? It can’t be, for the most part, because it’s a role that has been defined by gender. 

And most significantly, it is the mard who can’t even call out his fellow peers when they strip off a woman’s honor even in the smallest of their conversations. If you’re a man reading this, you can definitely recall your last long conversation with your bro. Didn’t it seep into some gossip about some woman at some time? And well, it wasn’t just gossip, usually much more, right? Crude sexualisation might have taken place. Or ummm… maybe a joke about her body? Or someone was just called a slut. And at the very end, the slogan of the brotherhood pact ‘bros before hoes’ stamps the ultimate notion of female identity in a man’s mind: that of a hoe.  And while it all happened, we listened quietly, didn’t we? We didn’t call out what was wrong, right? Isn’t that every mard though? 

Maybe the Zainab next door is very frighteningly right when she says, ‘All men are the same.’ Or that Khadija who tweets, ‘Not all men. But always a man.’ Sad, isn’t it?