and What Is Genuine?

WRITER | Aser Humeidi

What does it mean to be masculine? This was the question I asked my friends, acquaintances, and random strangers at JIBS. Strength, confidence, and leadership were the answers I heard most often when I asked about masculinity. When it came to femininity the most common answers were niceness, being emotional and being supportive. The funny thing about the answers people gave for both femininity and masculinity was that they were all neutral qualities. They were neither inherently masculine nor feminine.

Take for example

Is a man who supports his friends or family automatically feminine? Should a woman who is confident not speak up about her ideas out of a fear of appearing masculine?

I’m sure these examples seem incredibly silly to you dear reader, but it’s equally silly to treat these things as either strictly masculine or feminine. Why must we create a rift between masculinity and femininity and then assign incredibly rigid gender roles that dictate things such as “Men shouldn’t cry” or the age-old “Women are just more emotional”.

I’m sure you’ve realized by the incessant barrage of questions in this article that it’s incredibly silly to think of masculinity and femininity as exclusive to men or women respectively. What is more important to you, adhering to a particular set of patriarchal norms or is it actually embodying positive qualities like courage, confidence and leadership regardless of whether they are masculine or feminine? People should focus on what they want to do instead of concentrating on a nonsensical system of categorization that prevents people from doing certain things simply because they do not conform to society’s perceived notions of masculinity or femininity.

A great example of the active harm caused by the contrast between masculinity and femininity can be found when we look at the early programming scene in the United Kingdom. Before World War II, programming as menial labor that consisted of operating these unfamiliar machines for long considered unimportant and therefore delegated to the women in the UK unchanged until the end of the second world war, after which computers society. From governments to banking to construction, programming important and demanded job. As the importance of their job programmers were seen as unsuitable for such an important positions they held. The UK at this time needed programmers that ended up failing miserably as programming had many programmers but would not hire women because did not want to work “a woman’s job”. This ended overseas before finally relenting and employing its

At the end of the day, categorizing certain qualities way to live our lives. You as a human being while trying to be the best person you can that don’t make sense with even to do with your motivation programming was viewed long hours at a time. Such work was UK who excelled at it. This largely remained computers became much more integrated into British programming now had its status soar to be an incredibly grew, lower class women who made up the majority of the important job and therefore a lot of them ended up losing whatever programmers and tried its best to recruit male workers for the job but had an image as a woman’s job. So, at this point, the UK needed because such an important job was “a man’s job” and men at the time ended up costing the UK greatly, as it first had to recruit workers from its local female programmers. qualities or professions as either masculine or feminine is a terrible being should be able to pursue what makes you genuinely happy can be. These silly norms, created by contrasting constructs even the tiniest bit of scrutiny should have nothing motivation to do what you want to do.

P.S. For the guys reading this, here’s a great way to see how wonderful life is without gender norms: try those aesthetic, fruity drinks at a bar. It’s much better than slamming shots at AKA only to regret it 20 minutes later (not speaking from experience).

WRITER | Amrita Bhowmik

Finding Love in the 21st century has become more challenging than ever with us having so many dating apps and social media that in one swipe you might have matched with your soulmate. However, can dating online always nurture true romantic relationships and can it ever replace meeting someone in real life and falling in love with them organically?

Traditional dating is hard to replace as meeting someone in real life helps you to experience their personality and establish if there is any chemistry between two people. You can understand how a person behaves, how they carry themselves and learn more about their pet peeves and triggers. Real life dating also helps you to get a sense of your potential partner’s physical appearance and lowers your chances of getting catfished. Intimacy is crucial for building a deep connection and is possible when dating in person because you are in the same physical location. Also, you would have a delightful story of how you two met to share with your friends and family. However, real life dating can be restrictive too with a limited dating pool, we might be unable to find our desired potential partner in smaller communities and limited social circles. Personally, rejection is much harder hitting and scarier in real-life dating than online, which is why people hesitate to pursue and approach others in their day-to-day life. Overall, real life dating can be quite time consuming but at the same time it is much more exciting and rewarding than online dating in many ways.

Approaching people in real life can be intimidating and awkward especially for shy and introverted people. That’s when apps such as Tinder, Hinge or Bumble can come in handy. Online dating is quite convenient as one can find their soulmate through one swipe on these platforms. Internet dating is quite easy since you can discover your soul mate with only one swipe. Furthermore, dating apps provide you the opportunity to communicate with individuals from all over the world that you might not otherwise run into in real life. In contrast to traditional dating, dating apps are a lot more upfront as people who are open about preferences and what they are seeking in a partner, whether it’s a hookup or a long-term relationship . Dating apps provide their users greater control to filter possible matches, read profiles, and take their time getting to know someone in-depth before meeting them in person. . Nonetheless,

Online dating can have a number of drawbacks, too. For instance, dating apps provide users the chance to alter their online profile, starting with their appearance. Dating apps provide their users greater control to filter possible matches, read profiles, and take their time getting to know someone in-depth before meeting them in person. Nonetheless, Online dating can have a number of drawbacks, too. For instance, dating apps provide users the chance to alter their online profile, starting with their appearance. One can easily fall victim to catfishing by those who falsely represent themselves on their profiles by including outdated or misleading information and images. Oblivious users of these apps may fall victim to fraudsters and con artists who can swindle them of their money. Additionally, Dating apps can be highly addictive as they are so convenient and one might get addicted to the instant gratification of getting matches. Finally, online dating gives us the illusion that we have an infinite potential matches which makes us want to continue swiping as we feel that if we keep swiping we might find someone better, this makes it difficult to make meaningful connections with our existing matches making online dating just an overwhelming and exhausting experience. Hence I think the possibility of finding emotionally available and mature people online is one of the most difficult task. In my opinion most people choose dating apps as a last resort in their effort to find someone or download such apps right after a breakup in order to get a little ego boost and feel appreciated and less lonely. Although there are exceptions and you will find people who are genuinely interested in getting to know you and date you but it’s on very rare occasions.

In the end, online dating and in-person dating are rather different experiences, so when determining which approach to consider, a person must take their individual preferences and interests into account. While some people might like the spontaneity and potential for an instant connection that come with in-person dating, others might favor the ease and flexibility of online dating. One strategy may work better for some people than the other, while both may work well for others. It’s crucial to be open to both approaches and experiment to see which suits you the best.