The Prez is a woman, so is the Speaker of Parliament, and from Wednesday we have a female Justice-in-Chief. There is therefore understandable fear among menfolk that at the rate the country is feminising, and if present trends continue into the near future, it will not be long before members of the male species will be extinct.
Those fears are unwarranted. We can easily set aside a national park for endangered men, and if that doesn’t work, keep some speci-men in a zoo to protect their jeans pool.
But wait, the last time we looked there was still a male Commander-in-Chief and Prime Minister in this country. This won’t do. Are we serious about going beyond tokenism in this country to have women in positions of authoritarianism or not? Are we really serious about the gender agenda? If so, I propose that KP Oli step down and be replaced by Auntie Suzie. And Mrs Deuba would be much more effective kangresi party president, chair of the parliamentary party and prime minister than Mr Deuba.
As men get fewer and far between in positions of power in our Federal Matriarchal Republic we will have to guard against them masquerading as women and perhaps even getting a sex change just to land a job. We need to be vigilant, therefore, and have mandatory DNA tests of all female civil service applicants to ensure that they all come equipped with Y chromosomes.
And the place to start will be the Miss Nepal contest. Is the Miss Nepal finalist really a Miss? This is important because it is no longer politically incorrect as it was during our revolutionary past to have beauty pageants. The Mao Buddies were ideologically against the Miss Nepal contest because it represented patriarchal commodification and sexist objectification of women that reinforced traditional gender hierarchies within the homogenised global-Western neo-liberal value system of cultural imperialism, neo-colonialism and bourgeois pseudo-nationalism in a backdrop of antagonistic contradiction between hegemonic transformation from the status quo, habeus corpus to quid pro quo and, it goes without saying, it directly led ipso facto to ad nauseum.
Today, the venue of the Miss Nepal contests has been converted into the nation’s Legislature Parliament and at this year’s pageant at least one ex-arsonist was among the jury members. So strong was the feeling that beauty contests objectified women that it became an annual ritual for underground guerrillas to set fire to Miss Nepal billboards.
They proved that they could shed the shackles of male domination and turn the contest into a burning issue. By sabotaging the annual event, the firebrand revolutionaries proved that they would not be tempted by fame and glory since they could have easily qualified for, and perhaps even won, the Miss Gunwoman, Miss Extortionist or the Miss Missed Opportunity titles hands down.
But they didn’t let such temptations distract them from expressing in no uncertain terms their firm opposition to anyone daring to have gorgeous and stunning hair at a time when the country was sinking into a quagmire. The protestors had reason to be mad as hell: they never stood a chance to ever be crowned Miss Nepal. Because many of them were men.
Fifteen years later, some of these same men were back at the Miss Nepal contest last week, sitting on the front row applauding winners in the Swimwear Competition which included the Udder and Hindsight Categories. The organisers had to include those rounds: how else could they confirm that all participants were in fact of the female persuasion? In this manner, through a process of natural selection, the girls finally made it to the pinnacle of evolution, which was the climactic moment of the make-or-break Most Photogenic Belly-button Category.
What I want to know is how come the gals get to have all the fun? When are us men going to have our own Speedo Round? When is someone going to judge us boys by our looks? Why isn’t anyone interested in the size and shape of our pectoral fins? Why can’t I enter my gluteus maximus in some competition and be crowned Mr Ass? It is a travesty that in this day and age, when all known genders are supposed to be equal, there is not yet a Thong Round of the Mr Inner Beauty Himalayan Hunk Pageant for us trophy hunters.