Freshman year is novel and inimitable for various reasons. Students get to mold and shape themselves in tandem with new surroundings, selecting the people they mingle with and the subsequent values they hold closely as they learn, both academically and socially. This existential tabula rasa acts as a launch pad to everyone’s Duke University experience.
‘Twas my first year in college, and Thanksgiving loomed large in everyone’s minds; I had understood where I was positioned at Duke and had found a group of friends. We were a group that went out to the regular places on the regular days. Visiting Shooters and Devine’s on a weekly basis seemed a lot easier (dare I say sensible) my first year; the lack of other social venues and added social fluidity (owing to the lack of any affiliation) affected things.
One night, one thing led to another, and one of my close friends and I ended up sleeping together. I slipped out of bed to turn on the lights and gather my belongings.The lights turned on and out came the gasps. There was blood all over the bed and around both of us. She immediately became extremely apologetic, mumbling, “I had my period like last week. This is weird…”
The scene was straight out of “Kill Bill,”complete with all the visual Tarantino flair. Upon cleaning and initial inspection, I arrived at the conclusion that I was the source of the crimson patches. All I think I felt was the slight tug of a muscle. Visiting the doctor provided me with more information, and I was told that I must refrain from coital activity for a few months, before I could get corrective surgery.
The mattress was flipped over and the bedding dumped to the very bottom of the laundry basket. She and I never slept together again. The entire situation was handled really smoothly; I’m glad to say that we’re still close friends.
Thus manifested quite a cruel and ironic twang to my “freshman” experience: the proto-masculine farce of my functioning became evident when I broke my chief vessel of masculinity. Gender slapped my first-year self hard in the face.
In a way, talking about this, regardless of how of the way my views are received, will aid in at least facilitating conversation about things and ideas we’re surprisingly uncomfortable talking about.
I’d fashioned most of my outward persona carefully taking into account the impression I had on women who I fully hoped I’d attract. My years in boarding school back in India caused me to internalize an objectified and overtly sexualized portrayal of women. Spending all of your psychologically and sexually formative years with little to no contact with women isn’t exactly helpful, and the way we talked about women in our own environments didn’t help. This gendered nature of conversation and behavior is highly evident in college. We men change our words and tones in front of women, not once wondering why we do so.
One of my friends made this obvious when I was saying bye to her. I had just shook hands with another friend, and he’d invariably grabbed my hand for a man hug: they’re always an overtly manly affair. When I turned to her, she mimicked the same motion he’d done to me. I was taken aback as she’d cleverly made explicit the usually implicit nuances of gendered interaction. The status quo is internalized to acceptance.
The biggest dilemma manifested itself in coming to terms with the way I had become accustomed to treating women and the way I should ideally behave both towards them and around them. I was almost freed the moment talking (and smooth talking) wasn’t the means to the end of sex. Sex wasn’t the end, so my compass of heterosexuality spun un-calibrated.
Be it trying stop people around you from saying, “don’t be a p---y”, to just knowing that nothing except explicit consent is consent, there a million ways we can make things easier for half of the human race.
Many of us don’t realize the power men hold. In the fashion industry, women are objects of the male gaze, and, in social media and the music video industry, the pornification of the female body is rife. It’s frighteningly easy to slip into a tirade against masculinity, but that’s only because men, to paraphrase comedian Louis C.K, are the “single worst thing(s) to happen to women.” Heart disease, on the other hand, is the worst thing to happen to men.
Sexual/romantic attraction was completely changed for me that night because, when I actually ended up in an intimate scenario with a woman, I had to request her to do two things: “Could you please be gentle” or “Can we please cuddle?”
It certainly softened things up, and we ended up having great conversations. Being vocal in bed about what you want and need is a much easier affair than awkwardly bouncing around, waiting for the guy or girl to grunt a little and then sleep on one end of the single bed, sweaty and unsatisfied.
I was forced into reevaluating how I approached my own gender and sexuality.
There are entire spectrums and dimensions to gender that I have scarcely visited, and hearing from people who’ve lived these confusions is the best way we can make ourselves aware of the struggles people have faced because of society. Be it the haunting posters put up by #wearehereNC or gatherings like Common Ground, the more information exchanged, the more aware our community will be. We’re heading firmly in the right direction in many spheres, and the ones in which we aren’t, we must do so at the earliest.
Madhav Dutt is a Trinity sophomore.
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