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If we wish to achieve progress in gender equality, we need to work together and calling each other names won’t work.
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Editor: Arunima Gururani, from Uttar Pradesh, India, is an avid reader of The Good Men Project who is now a contributor!
A common problem with humans is the way we associate certain tags with certain things and/or people. Although, in a lot of situations tags come in handy because tags actually help us remember the things we want to remember. Those same things we are likely to forget due to our limited capabilities.
I don’t find anything as misleading as labels.
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The situation gets bad when we start to put labels on a person’s character. Labels such as good, bad, evil, selfish, so on, and so forth form an image of the person as an embodiment of these characteristics. I don’t find anything as misleading as labels. How is it possible to define one whole human being, who is a part of one of the most complex creations—Life—be defined by a few words?
We live in a time when equality among the genders is a major issue. Yet, I believe we are forgetting an important idea. Equality is not about putting someone down. Labeling men is the biggest mistake we are making in our journey to achieve equality.
Yes, there are men who try to bring women down and commit heinous crimes. But WAIT! We must remember there are also men who are as willing to stand up for women as women are willing to stand up for themselves. There are men who are nice people and are still being classified as evil and heinous. This isn’t fair.
We can’t call a man heartless because he chose to get out of a relationship that wasn’t making him happy.
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If we, as a society wish to achieve any amount of progress in equality, we need to stop putting labels on men and be a bit more open minded. We can’t call a man heartless because he chose to get out of a relationship that wasn’t making him happy. We can’t, and shouldn’t, judge a new date based on the few bad ones you’ve had. The same goes with rape. You can’t call every man a sex hungry animal based on the existence of rapists.
Labels do more harm than they do good. I remember when I was so heartbroken I didn’t wish to see a single man ever again. I believed that “all men are the same.” I couldn’t have been further from the truth. When I thought about my father, my brother ,and my best friend, who have been three prominent men in my life, I can never think of them as horrible heartbreakers.
We all have our baggage and we all have our stories.
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I couldn’t stand anybody judging them. That’s when it came to me to stop judging everyone else. Every person is different. We all have our baggage and we all have our stories. We may be afraid of trusting someone but we need to give it time. A label is something that sadly sticks around for a long time, sometimes forever. You don’t want to tag a gentle human being for a devil just because you had a bad experience. As well, you don’t want to label a jerk as your angel in disguise, either.
A man is a human too; give him time to show his true self.
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The key rule to understanding human beings is to give them time. Maybe we need to be a bit softer towards each other. A man is a human too; give him time to show his true self. Doesn’t push guys away. For all we know, if we want to achieve progress in terms of gender equality, we need to work this out together. All of this can work if we stop calling each other names and give each other space and time to see and appreciate our true selves.
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