Elina and I have an agree-to-disagree understanding. I propagate that women should be helped in breaking away from commercial sexual exploitation. That breaking away is clearly possible. That commercial sexual exploitation should not be normalised or tolerated if we wish to build a society that cares for its women.
Harjant Gill, a documentary filmmaker and scholar who has made multiple documentaries on Indian masculinity(ies), says, “One of the challenging things about talking about masculinity is that you engage men in this conversation and they don’t really know where to go with it, or like, how to even interrogate it…
Work on gender in the development and social sector has traditionally engaged with women and girls. It was only in the mid-90s that some NGOs started working with men and boys on issues of gender. One of the first entry points for this was population control and reproductive health where they were encouraged to use condoms and to accompany their pregnant wives to healthcare centres.
