A man I peripherally know sent me a cut scene from a movie on social media with the caption “Benefits of Arranged Marriage” overlayed above it. It described (and showed) how great it is to be a man in the arranged marriage market. You could go from house to house ogling at women in front of their parents while eating free food instead of paying for meals on dates. Annoying. Did my pain end there? No. Under the video, he sent me a message – “#guystruggles.” Okay, let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt, maybe he’s being meta or sarcastic. So I replied, “I don’t understand.” Does he back off, or take the chance to say he’s being sarcastic? No. He doubles down. Basically saying that of course, I didn’t understand, they were guys’ struggles.
I’m a mental health counselor, my work challenges me every single day to build the muscles of empathy. I was irritated. No mystery that friendship never flourished.
After I graduated, I stayed with my parents for about a year, in an intense job search. During that, acquaintances of my parents sent in “matches.” Information of people whose parents were looking for potential daughters-in-law coming in unsolicited. It never even got to the stage of talking with one of these “matches.” Why? Because I was rejected over, and over, and over. Which is fine. Finding someone to be your life partner is not something that I expect to come quickly or easily. But it was the reasons that after a while, started to sting. “Too short”, “too dark.” It didn’t help that I couldn’t get anyone to value my resume and offer me a job – with no traditional work experience, degrees, or recommendations from this country.
Now, all I seemed to amount to were these superficial traits on paper that weren’t the things about myself that I most valued or felt were core to my being. Reject me because we have life goals that don’t align or because our personalities don’t vibe, not because you think I don’t deserve the time of day because I’m not “fair.” I was torn. Do I feel happy that I know right off the bat that we have different priorities? Or do I give in to the crushing thoughts telling me that people didn’t feel I was worth getting to know? Between these rejections, my mother received a call from someone asking me to convince her son to get married because he didn’t want to. At this point, not only is my self-esteem struggling but I was being disrespected – expecting me to therapize their kid because what else would I do with my time?
The process of arranged marriage, from first and secondhand experience, can range from cumbersome to emotionally and mentally painful. It’s brutal. Biodatas with no room for personality but astrology as a priority are passed around from family to family. I’m a fairly open book, but my weight, height, and complexion are not making it onto my biodata. Mostly out of spite, but also from a place of hurt. I am one of the luckier ones, I have access to physically removing myself from these conversations and means to take care of myself with love and not pressure. What about the people out there whose bodies are not catered to conventionally, or those in the closet? What about people who don’t have space in their households to share parts of their life without facing further emotional turmoil? If you think this is not a thing, it is.
My biodata isn’t as complete as I want it to be either. I put on as much information as I could. I had to find the balance between putting myself out there, not wasting people’s time by sending out a generic resume and hiding the parts of myself I am not ready to share yet. So while there is pressure on my biological clock, an urgency to find a man to complete my life, and constant bullying from so many people about how my life is imperfect – yes, please, joke about how I am being objectified on my family’s dollar and my time in the process. By all means, continue to bring people’s attention farther and farther away from reality and how shitty it can be, profit off of generational pain.
If you disagree with the objective fact that, by large, femme-presenting people struggle more than the average masc-presenting person, this platform is not for you – might as well leave now if you’re not open to those beliefs being challenged.
My feminism includes masculinity and men. My struggle goes against the war on femininity. Misogyny expanded into the oppression of all and anything under the Sun that was ever attributed to women. This affects men. Emotional vulnerability, a wide range of fashion and so many other things are controlled and limited by ideas of traditional masculinity and what that means, and it’s unfair. Men do not need to constantly project financial stability and head-of-the-family vibes.
However, it’s not without reason that we are where we are. There is a reason WHO acknowledges violence against women. The UN and other organizations describe and spread awareness about women and girls feeling unsafe in public spaces. There is a reason I send my location to people when I’m out on dates, why I always have a self-defense keychain on my person.
Coming to what actually brought me to tapping away on my laptop today. The trailer of a movie called “#MenToo”
For those who are not familiar, Me Too was a social movement started by American activist Tarana Burke in 2006. Its focus was going against sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and rape culture. In 2017, the movement gained a larger audience and attention after people started sharing their personal experiences on social media in response to actress Alyssa Milano.
This movie title, an obvious take on the Me Too movement, thinks it’s clever – but it’s not.
The entire trailer is an insult to every person who’s shared their stories and people who experienced the unfortunate and horrible comforting knowledge of knowing their struggles were not alone.
Lazy writing and a lack of creativity proves how easy it can be for men to flip the script and not just take up more space, but invalidate the strife of real people. If the team behind the movie was truly wanting to share with the audience the struggles facing masculinity, what was the need to ridicule women in that process? Is it impossible for other people to have problems? Or does the attention being shone on the gap in power, accessibility, and privilege make them insecure about its closure?
While a combination of the most fragile reasons results in movies like this, it carries forward the responsibility of the patriarchy to discontinue the process of unlearning misogyny and spreading awareness.
Agree with me? Boycott the movie, and demand better. Be mindful about where you spend your resources, whether that is time, energy, or money. There are better things out there worth it – like taking a nap, reading a feminist blog, or one of the biggest threats to the patriarchy – thriving. Most definitely not men who are incapable of not being tone-deaf or leveraging their privilege for a more equitable society.
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