Are there feminist men in India? Yes, there certainly are. The feminist movement is far more inclusive than it was some decades ago and it is now represented by people with diverse identities.
CYC recently spoke with three feminist men - Bappaditya, Manak and Aditya, who started to explore gender at different points of time in their lives. As they navigated the role they were expected to play - that of a man, they somehow arrived at feminism.
Here they share experiences from their personal lives which ultimately shaped them as  feminist men. They also talk about how they are enabling youth to question patriarchy through their work.

Bappaditya Mukherjee, Founder, Prantakatha

Bappaditya, who is fondly called Bappa, is a voice that represents the LGBT community in Kolkata. He is a bisexual man who works on gender issues with young people through his organisation Prantakatha.
Bappa discovered his sexuality in the 90s when he was a teen. “Back then, as I developed my fantasies about my sexual expression, I understood that the gender identity I desired was in conflict with my biological sex. It was the most challenging time of my life. I felt like a lone survivor in a dark cave,” he says.
While growing up, it was easier for Bappa to relate to the women around him. “I first came out to my female cousin who was also my closest friend. I could see how she was struggling because she was a girl. One of my aunts left an abusive marriage and raised her daughter alone...My sisters, cousins and friends became my support group. It was only later in life that I connected the dots and saw that their struggle was actually a feminist struggle,” he says.

Bappa says he learnt feminism without knowing that it existed as a concept. He says, “No one tells you about feminism in your school books. I learnt it by experience.”
The arrival of the new millennium, the internet boom and cell phones made information accessible for many Indian youth, including Bappa. He joined an LGBT rights group in Kolkata and began to work with sex workers and survivors of human trafficking. 
Soon afterwards, there were two incidents that propelled Bappa into the sphere of social action. Bappa was working as a TV journalist when he learnt that a close friend was facing domestic violence because her in-laws wanted dowry. Despite being in the media, Bappa could not take action against the family which was influential. He felt helpless.

Also, around the same time Bappa came out to his family and friends. Although his parents were shocked, they slowly managed to accept it. But soon word spread in his small neighbourhood. 
“One day, I was abused and beaten up by some friends (people I had known from school and college) and men from the neighbourhood. They called me abnormal. Suddenly I was an outcast. This attack left me felt completely shattered.”
As he slowly emerged out of this incident, Bappa decided to do something about it. He wanted to create a space where young people like himself could speak about this katha (story) along with other silenced stories. That's how Prantakatha was born in 2006.

Bappa started Prantakatha based on his understanding of feminism, which is grounded in the idea of equality and equity. “Feminism is primarily a gender-based equality mechanism in which any gender - be it female, male, trans and in-between - can have equal access to all support systems and necessary resources,” he explains.
All the programmes & campaign activities at Prantakatha have a gender component. “Prantakatha is safe non-judgemental space for young people where we accept people as they are. We have a drop-in centre which currently houses a transgender person, a homeless boy and an interfaith couple”, he says.
Bappa has seen that youth who open up about their gender and sexual preferences during adolescence are likely to face violence. He says, “Even as young adults, they remain highly vulnerable and need support. That is why youth work is a critical part of what we do at Prantakatha.”

Prantakatha runs four youth-led programmes. Melting Pot is an yearlong programme for youth which nurtures capacities such as self-awareness and leadership skills. Young people who have graduated from this programme have brought change in their own communities. For example, their alumna Ankita persuaded the local authorities to build a public toilet for women after she realised there was no toilet for them.
Other programmes run by the organisation offer support to social enterprises started by young entrepreneurs, engage volunteers to provide care to elderly citizens and support the education of migrant workers’ children through a learning centre.
Even though 12 years have passed since Bappa started Prantakatha, he feels that there’s still a lot to be done for gender equality in the larger world. “Right now as we speak the Supreme Court hearing on Section 377 is going on,” he says. Bappa is hopeful about the court’s pending verdict and is determined to see it through until the end.

You can follow Bappaditya on Facebook | Twitter
Learn more about Prantakatha here:  Website | Facebook 

Manak Matiyani, Executive Director, The YP Foundation

Manak Matiyani picked up feminism early in life. “My family was the first place where I inculcated feminist values by looking at my parents’ relationship and particularly at my mother,” he says.  “My grandmother told me that my mother really wanted to go out and work and that it was everybody's responsibility to support themselves financially.” However, things outside home were different for Manak. He was bombarded with gender stereotypes while he was growing up. He remembers being very conscious of how he was supposed to physically behave as a boy. “I was supposed to not talk or walk in a certain way which came across as girly,” he says. As a young boy, Manak knew that he was gay but he felt that he had to say and do things that would be acceptable to others. “I knew that I had to behave in a certain way in the outside world or else others would make fun of me. I could not really express myself which was very debilitating.”

In college, Manak studied English literature and got a chance to read many feminist writers. “This is how I came to understand feminism as an organised way of looking at the world and as a political thought. I saw the different kinds of boxes that everybody was trying to fit me into. Feminism liberated me from the idea of having to fit into one box or the other,” he says.
“I believe people should be treated the same irrespective of their gender. Feminism is equality between people, particularly between different genders in the world.”
During his post graduate degree in film, Manak and his friend Kuber made a film called All About Our Mothers. The film looked at how gender operated in both their families.  

“I applied the feminist lens to whatever work I did. Creating content in the form of films helped me concretise what I wanted to do in the area of gender”, says Manak. He went on to make films about menstrual taboos faced by young urban women and the need for safe cities for women.
In 2009, Manak started working at Commutiny The Youth Collective (CYC). He credits the CYC with giving him a foundation to develop his ideas around youth development.

“Initially I worked in the Changelooms programme. That’s when I first engaged with young people with a focus on building leadership. I learnt to see young people as key stakeholders in the process of development.” 
Manak says he has taken this perspective to other places where he has worked including the YP Foundation. He works as the Executive Director at YP. “My focus is on facilitating young people's engagement with social change from a human rights based feminist perspective,” says Manak.
The YP Foundation works with urban and rural youth in socially marginalised and economically challenged communities in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. 
Their programmes cover critical areas such as life skills, sexual and reproductive health & rights and gender diversity. 

“At YP, we understand that young women and girls in marginalised communities have the lowest access to resources. Therefore, all our programmes have a very clear focus on gender and 70% outreach is to young women and girls,” says Manak. Manak also explains why intersectionality matters in feminism and youth work. “One of the fundamental aspects of feminism is to look at people's identities as intersections and to consider the whole range of experiences a person has to undergo to arrive at their identity. There is a need to acknowledge that young people also have different identities,” he says Manak also feels that feminism is not so much of a bad word as it used to be a decade ago. “I now see a world where we are talking about gender and feminism on social media. Now more and more men are open to examining gender in their own life. It is not a quick process. It is difficult and it requires a lot of effort to have these conversations with men,” he says.

While Manak views men’s involvement in this conversation as positive, he adds a word of caution. He says, “It is important to recognise that men are only one of the stakeholders in this conversation and not the most important ones.”
A big part of Manak’s activism is also his work on queer rights. He feels that he was fortunate to have understood the feminist movement before he understood queer rights. It has made him aware of the male privilege. “I feel that men also take up most of the space in the queer rights movement,” he says.
“I find marginalisation gets a lot of attention whereas privilege goes unnoticed. The privilege I have as a man goes unnoticed when I find myself on panels to discuss women's rights issues with three other men. This privilege is something I have to continuously watch and be aware of,” says Manak.

You can follow Manak on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram 
Learn more about the YP Foundation here:  Website | Facebook  | Twitter | Instagram

Aditya Gupta, Co-founder, People for Parity

Aditya Gupta had what he calls “a very stereotypical middle class upbringing”. He remembers how his elder sister was expected to do very different chores from him when they were growing up. 
“My sister was expected to help in the kitchen. I was expected to help my father with various things...he talked about financial assets and property with me and not my sister. My sister was provided an excellent education but in terms of having mobility and decision making power, there was a clear difference between us. I saw how my sister struggled with some things,” says Aditya.
Aditya spent four years of his adult life in what he describes as “a very toxically masculine and competitive environment”. He studied at IIT Delhi at a time when the institution had 5,000 men and only 300 women. 

“The faculty believed that such a gender ratio existed because women were less capable of being there. There were lots of instances of boys in my college being extremely awkward around women and they ended up stalking them... they definitely created a sense of harassment for the women visiting or living on the campus” he says.
When Adiya was first told by a female friend that she was molested, he thought of it as just an incident. “I had no idea that gender was a larger issue until Nirbhaya happened,” he says.
In 2012, the Nirbhaya rape & murder case took the nation by storm. Indian youth rallied on the streets to demand justice for violence against women. Aditya felt a strong connection with what was happening and he decided it was time for change.

In 2013, he quit his corporate job and took some time off to volunteer in East Africa. After  returning to India, he decided to work in the area of gender. The same year he started People for Parity (PFP) with his co-founder Arushi Mittal and a small group of volunteers. They started offering a basic workshop on street sexual harassment and also tried to develop an app for women for faster reporting of cases of sexual harassment.
Aditya remembers that having misunderstandings about feminism when he started working on gender issues. But that changed very soon.
In mid-2013, Aditya was selected as a Changelooms fellow. With his corporate background, he was completely new to the world of sharing circles and experiential workshops. “During the fellowship, I got introduced to the concept of gender and patriarchy, the philosophy of youth development and the idea of organised social change work,” says Aditya.

The initial years of starting his organisation also shaped Aditya’s views on feminism. He says, “While I identify as a feminist man, I haven't studied feminism. There are lots of people I’ve met who helped me understand specific nuances of gender. I had several interactions with feminist women who questioned me and gave me a deeper insight. Also, a lot of my learning was experiential.”
Aditya sees feminism as a political movement to establish equal rights for women. He also shares his thoughts on intersectionality. He says, “Intersectionality is an aspect of feminism that allows me to see common ground between various movements for equality but for me, that does not mean that feminism becomes about more than women.” 
As Aditya and his team’s understanding of gender evolved, they redefined their mission at People for Parity - they decided to focus on gender peace. “As we worked on gender issues, we noticed that a lot of work was either informing people about gender inequality or working on remedying symptoms of patriarchy,” says Aditya. 

“We specifically wanted to work on understanding what we can build within our consciousness which would effectively replace patriarchal culture. Gender peace is the cultural alternative to patriarchy. It aims to build alternate behaviours and practices to find an effective replacement for inequality and violence.”
Aditya’s work at People for Parity involves designing transformative experiences which lead to perspective shifts and realignment. His organisation works with youth from low income communities in Delhi, Jaipur and Bhopal.
“The majority of the work we do is with, for and by young adults. We try to maintain an even gender ratio across our programmes because we want to work with women, men and transgender people together,” explains Aditya.
PFP runs a programme called Pratiti which enables youth to develop their perspectives on issues that affect them. It empowers them to address these issues in their own communities. 

“We look at young people as people who can lead and take up issues that are relevant to them rather than as people who can just be volunteers or instruments for the work we want to do,” says Aditya. 
Aditya is all about finding a balance between feminism and youth work. “If we would just focus on feminist education, we would be ignoring what these young people need at that time in their lives. Our work is designed to cater to their urgent needs as much as working towards building equality,” he says.

You can follow Aditya on Facebook | Twitter 
Learn more about the People for Parity here:  Website | Facebook  | Twitter 

Who says men can’t be feminists? It fills us with hope to see these men who are constantly questioning existing gender roles and stereotypes that were handed down to them. Not only have they changed their worldview but are also enabling other young people to transform their thoughts by creating safe spaces and gender equality based programming. 
These men are the representatives of a new era of thinking - a thinking where .....(add something to finish the line please...)
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