A recent protest by Mizoram Congress workers in front of Vanapa Hall in Aizawl has exposed a deeper issue of gender prejudice beneath the state’s progressive image. The workers were protesting against Chief Minister Lalduhoma’s remark on the Inner Line Permit (ILP), accusing him of undermining its significance and the Mizo Peace Accord. They demanded a public apology, giving him until August 15 to retract his statement.
The opposition’s grievances are legitimate, and the CM’s statement is worth serious public discussion. However, the protesters’ choice of displaying a large poster of the Chief Minister wearing ‘Puanfen’, a skirt worn with pride by Mizo women, has raised eyebrows. The move appears to invoke a familiar stereotype that femininity signifies weakness and political incompetence.
The insult did not stay confined to Vanapa Hall. Edited images of Congress workers themselves in female attire began circulating online, a retaliatory joke that mirrored the original poster’s logic back at its producers. Thousands of netizens participated in the meme cycle, sharing and remixing the images further. This shift is worth attention, as it proves how widely shared the assumption is that dressing a man as a woman is self-evidently degrading and that femininity itself is the shameful category being invoked.
As a proud Mizo woman, witnessing this discourse is hurtful. The fact that ‘Puanfen’ was repurposed as a political insult feels personal. Mizoram has been declared as the first fully literate state, and women actively participate in education, employment, and public life. Yet, educational achievement does not seem to dismantle the deeply entrenched patriarchal values displayed in front of Vanapa Hall and in digital space.
The insult only works if femininity itself is already understood as something shameful. A skirt is not a sign of weakness, nor should it be seen as such. There were countless ways to voice this grievance, and the fact that a skirt was chosen says less about the CM than it does about what still passes as an acceptable insult.
This incident exposes how easily our politics fall back on misogyny in its search for humiliation. When femininity is deployed as a political insult, it does not feel like a relic of the past. A skirt was never an insult; it only exposed the underlying prejudices that still exist in our society.
