16-Year-Old Simar Singh Challenges 'A Failed Social System' That Sees Crying Men As Weak

If we live in a patriarchal society then it would not be incorrect to say it affects all. Akin to women, men are victimised as well. Samar Singh, a young poet challenges these ideas in his poem. 

 

 

Titled "How to be a man", the poem talks about how difficult life is for men too, and how like their female counterparts, they too are relentlessly suffering.

 

 

Sixteen-year-old Simar Singh explains through his English poem ‘How To Be A Man’ that the idea of a man built by our society, in which crying and expressing one’s emotions are looked down upon, is like “mental violence”. Men, he says, have become a product of “a failed social system where expressing himself was considered sin”.

 

 

Singh, who is breaking societal norms though his poetry community UnErase Poetry, opens his poem by saying “Mard ko dard nahi hota (Men don’t feel pain)” is a “false preaching” that the society thrusts on men.

 

 

“They told me I will soon be the man of the house, while I was just 6 years old. It’s not their fault you see. This is what they have been taught since centuries, that men don’t feel and men don’t cry. Man up, they told me. Man up, young boy,” Singh says while reciting his poem.

 

 

He says the pressure to be a man according to the societal norms is a torture that needs a voice against such diktats.