De-coding Gossip

    Most of us have the general notion that gossiping is what women do and have a negative feeling against it.  Women who gossip are looked down in the society as not being subtle. But have you asked yourself whether men gossip or not? If yes, then why this social stigma towards it?

    Historically gossiping has been a part of human evolution. In fact it is one of the factors that has contributed for the human evolution. Before we could develop proper channels of communication, majorly gossiping was used to share ideas and thoughts. It has been in existence from a long time in one form or the other right from the hunting and gathering community to the modern day society. Gossiping gave humans an opportunity to develop ample communication skills. When we compare the communication skills of humans and animals, we will be amazed by our detailing. Even animals communicate, but with lesser detail. An animal can make a particular sound for a particular danger. But humans are able to go into a greater depth of detail like the colour of the object, the size of the object, the distance of the object, etc. All this is because of our highly complex brain system.

    The patriarchal mindset is the one in which a man dominates a women. Controlling women's action and speech is one way of domination. In order to maintain male dominancy, various attributes in the society were introduced like shyness, tenderness, subtle, smooth, less-talkative, obedient, etc. for women to be followed. The concept of treating and equating husband to God came from this. One might ask why should males dominate? The answer is simple. To constantly satisfy the ego complexity! Males tend to feel happy when they dominate. Even a least successful man will be confident when he is at home because there is someone who will obey him. In fact in one way we can say that men have been using women to compensate for their failures outside! Yes of course there are other successful men who will dominate women but that's to satisfy their ego and years of societal norms embedded within them right from childhood.

    Gossip is also one form of patriarchal control exercised on women. Yes it is a fact that women talk more than men, they have a different view of life and they can see life more colourfully, but even men gossip; these gossips are given some fancy names to show it's an intellectual discussion. But of course negative gossiping should be curtailed whether it's a man or a woman. This is because our mind has a complex process of attachment to negativity. Once attached, it forms an endless loop. So it is time that we break the myth that men don't gossip and continue to be on a positive side of gossip.