by Jonas Stewart

Created on: April 01, 2009

Women and men are different, everybody knows that, but in front of the law or the state, all humans are equal. This actually is, except for some minor cases, true. The state does equalize both genders and has done a rather good job in promoting the same rights for both men and women. The society, however intelligent and modern it may be, has kept some of its prejudices and holds on to them.

But the society's negative influence on humans can not only be seen in women's problems, but also in men's! Both are equally affected by the society and thus both have to deal with sets of rules which they haven't made for themselves and which nobody asks them to agree with.

Just as women are not as accepted as they should be in men's jobs like aviation, politics and sports, men have some handicaps, too: Many of the things women can do are reserved almost exclusively to them, for instance make-up, fancy dresses, cheating on somebody, cooking, taking care of children, etc. are all reserved to women. But that wasn't always this way! In the 18th century, for example, men were just as dressed-up and wore make-up as women did and could be just as vain as their wives. Also, they could cheat a lot more easily without being judged all the time. Women, too, at that time, had several advantages: They could let the men approach them without doing anything as it was common knowledge that HE does the first step, they were always protected by their family and didn't have to care for themselves and about their future.

All these examples may seem funny to some of you, but whether something is important or not always depens on your point of view. As for today, even though women can live up to their aesthetic fantasies with all possible clothes and a huge market to provide them with whatever they'd like to wear, men are often forced to wear classic things, simple and neat. They aren't allowed to come to a dinner party in a dress or something really colorful. But what if some guy really loves going out dressed colorfully, or go to work in an elegant tuxedo instead of his usual casual clothes? His collegues will immediately call him a "Sissy" or a "Faggot" and start laughing.
Another example is the cheating question: When a guy finds out his wife slept with his neighbour, he goes to him and beats him up while the consequences for the woman are often minimal as if she couldn't decide about her own actions and had to sleep with the other man. But when a guy sleeps with his neighbour, his wife doesn't go to that woman to beat her up. She simply calls her a "Bitch" and goes back home to beat her husband up and leave him. Later on the whole city will call the guy a cheater and he'll be disrespected everywhere.

We shouldn't try to put labels on genders which say "Better" or "Worse", and I surely am not saying men or women have harder lives or one of them is better than the other. But what we have to be conscient of, is that every human being is restricted by the "public opinion" and has to live a life in the boundaries of what the society thinks acceptable, or live in disgrace. This is a very negative aspect of every society, and both women and men shouldn't just be equal in theory, but they should also be equal in the eyes of everyone of us, because only that can change our society slowly and improve the way we live!

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