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Gender identity and related behavioural norms are so ingrained in our societies that any deviation from normal is treated with suspicion. But like most statistical progressions, there will always be fewer people at the extremes and more at the centre. But that doesn't mean that those people are deviants or mutants. Rigid ideas of social behaviour or even personal behaviour can have a debilitating effect on the self-belief of people.

But it did not. And men and women struggle to play their respective roles in modern society.

The Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca dealt with this with incredible sensitivity as far back as the 1920s and 1930s. His play Yerma, which means barren, deals with a woman desperate to have a child and who obsesses about it, and her husband, a man not so macho and who is happy not having children and just living his life tending his sheep and orchards. The play took a harsh look at Spanish society and its notions of machoism and honour. Both protagonists were caught in the rage, with one unable to accept a life without children and the other, the man, being forced to show his masculinity by being physically strong, controlling his wife and having a child, preferably male, when he was not so inclined.

But these roles are no longer clearly defined. It is a learning process now. While more and more men are willing to explore their feminine sides, even creating a new breed of men known as metrosexuals, there are still communities where they are viewed with disdain. Women constantly face discrimination, with few men willing to accept women who have their own minds, and are not shy and delicate. If they are successful at work, they are constantly chided for not being good mothers.

And I am not even talking about people with alternative sexualities here. How often have you seen people making fun of effeminate men, calling them teapots, and “butch” women? It is just not considered “cool”. When there is so much information available on sexuality, and we can see changes in ourselves, why are we so scared to accept people with different modes of behaviour? Why is it still viewed as deviant? I don't know. But I tell you, a lot of my friends preferred to play with cars, building blocks and jigsaw puzzles rather than dolls when they were young, and they are a lot more interesting because of that.

It was one of those evenings with friends, sitting around, chatting about things we had been up to since we last met. My friend was talking about a book she had just read. It talked of a scale of masculinity and feminineness with the extremes being extreme macho and excessive delicate femininity. Most people, the book said, would fall around the centre, with both masculine and feminine aspects to their personality. If that is the case, why do we find it hard to accept men who are feminine or women who display signs of masculinity?

Unfortunately, as Lorca himself was a homosexual, most audiences tended to see his work as purely the ravings of a man wanting to be a woman. They ignored the fact that he was in a unique position, and could see society from beyond the gender lines. His understanding of both men and women and the societal norms that forced people to behave in certain ways could have paved the way to a more open society.

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Federico García Lorca Adding comments has been disabled for this video. YouTube RSS Feeds: YouTube Blog: Creator's Corner: TestTube Famous Hispanics in the World and History, a service of coloquio.com a Baltimore, Maryland, web company Works Poetry. Impressions and Landscapes (1918) Poem of Deep Song (1921) Book of Poems (1921) Ode to Salvador Dalí (1926) Songs (1927) Gypsy Ballads (His masterpiece; 1928)