All things unequal

Equality is a distorted notion. It always favours those who wield the power to not just demand it but, strangely enough, enforce it. Now this may seem a rather twisted theory: how can an idea built on a certain assumed foundation work only when that very same cornerstone of assumption is bludgeoned? Russell’s Paradox by any other name.

And so it is, with men, even as we’re told off by a million women about our sexist ways (and 999,99X of them are probably spot-on in their allegations), it still leaves many a man open to reverse attacks.

Recently at a tasting,  a lady told me that the cocktail which had been offered to us was ‘extremely macho’. I pointed out the fallacy in her statement and how a man making such a generalisation would have been quickly hung on the cross for such a transgression. Either she chose to ignore it or the implications of it seemed trivial to her but she went on to classify many other drinks with a sexist nomenclature. And she wasn’t alone, recently I have heard of instances of women telling men that a certain belt looked feminine, a particular shirt was too gay, and in one case, made one look like a homeless person. Without reading too much into the general male dressing sense, it all points at ridiculous generalisations which need to be shot down before they can take off. Upon pointing this out, most women clarified that they didn’t mean it in a literal sense.

Men, do not try this line of defence; it will only get you dug in deeper. So much for the quality of equality. But then, there’s the other side, where a man is made to feel awkward in a situation when a fellow man decides to play the ‘bro’ card and belittle the woman in the situation. A real-time example follows. Last week when I was invited out as part of our to dine at a fine-dining establishment and a lady from the organising team accompanied me to ensure that the process was sincere and transparent. As expected the liquor menu was presented to me while the lady had to contend with the food. Considering it was lunch (and me the only alcoholic at the table) we weren’t too offended. But then the discrimination continued, the bill was promptly presented to me. It was embarrassing for me to slide it gently across the table to the lady across. Mind you, it could have been a bloke sitting in front of me; it was more so the action of having to push it over that made me somewhat squirm. The lady host of the afternoon was equally at a loss of words for the staff had just presented her guest with the bill. Nevertheless, we braved on and she presently inserted a credit card into the folds of the leather folder. The staff promptly appeared, took the card, disappeared and promptly reappeared with a machine in hand, card duly inserted. As if to add further insult to the general prevailing unease, the chap promptly handed me the machine to feed in the PIN. Once again, I found myself in the position of having to hand over the baton of responsibility to the designated host at the table. It was only when the bill and card transaction receipt was to be presented did the server get it right and hand it to the right person at the table. And this wasn’t a place where rudeness can be attributed to ignorance and conveniently overlooked; this was one of the leading five-starred hotels in the centre of our capital. The same transactional SNAFU was repeated a few days later and we humbly submitted to it, playing passing the parcel amongst us.

My ire didn’t stem from being treated to a lavish meal by a lady — hell, I can get used to that quicker than I embraced cholesterol — but from the presumptive callousness which the men in question displayed in these situations; it made the women feel ignored but the undue attention that was thrust upon the man in both the situations (viz. me) was equally unsettling.

So equality; what is it really? Does it show in merely what we do? What happens when we say things but don’t mean them as intensely as the words seem to denote? Must everything be taken literally or could some selective perception soften the impact? Till such abstract notions can be addressed, the idea that we are all created equal would only be suffixed with, ‘…but some are more equal than others.’

The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine