On Tuesday, I came across news of a protest by Mizoram Congress workers in front of Vanapa Hall, a public demonstration site in Aizawl. The news itself is not unique — it’s a routine display of democratic practice.
Now and then, one group or another occupies ‘Vanapa Hall Kawt’ to voice its stand on an issue. Just weeks ago, students used this same ground to stand in solidarity with CJP’s protest against the NEET exam fiasco, and the videos went viral for their peaceful demonstration, earning praise online.
On Tuesday, however, it went viral for something else entirely different.
Congress workers were protesting CM Lalduhoma’s remark on the Inner Line Permit (ILP), accusing him of undermining the significance of both the ILP and the Mizo Peace Accord. They demanded a public apology, giving him until 15th August to retract his statement.
The opposition’s underlying grievances are legitimate, and the CM’s statement is worth serious public discussion. To make their point, the workers displayed a large poster of the Chief Minister wearing ‘Puanfen’, a skirt worn with pride by Mizo women as a marker of their identity.
The choice appeared deliberate. By dressing the CM in a ‘Puanfen’, a garment proudly worn by Mizo women, the protesters invoked a familiar stereotype: that femininity signifies weakness and political incompetence. But isn’t it ironic that while they demand an apology from the CM, they also insult women along the way?
The insult did not stay confined to Vanapa Hall. In the days following the protest, 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. What started as one poster aimed at one man became a meme cycle online.
Thousands of netizens did not merely witness this exchange; they participated in it, sharing and remixing the images further.
This shift is worth our attention: the original poster relied on a shared cultural assumption to land as an insult, but the meme cycle proves how widely shared that assumption is.
Each share, each laugh, each new edited image is a small vote confirming that dressing a man as a woman is self-evidently degrading and, by extension, that femininity itself is the shameful category being invoked.
The insult scales precisely because thousands of people already agree, without needing to be told, on what makes it funny.
As a proud Mizo woman witnessing this discourse, it hurts me to the core. Living and working in Bangalore, I have proudly worn puanfen at various office occasions.
I embodied it and displayed it as a marker of femininity and my ethnic belonging. I have always proudly claimed how Mizo society is a modern society with fairer gender equality than the rest of the country. Seeing Puanfen repurposed as a political insult felt personal.
Only recently, CM Lalduhoma declared Mizoram 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 as evidently displayed in front of the Vanapa Hall and in digital space.
The insult only works, however, if femininity itself is already understood as something shameful. A skirt is not a sign of weakness, nor should it be seen as such. As a woman, I don’t see a skirt as a weakness- I see it as an embodiment of everything right with being a woman.
There were countless ways to voice this grievance. That a skirt was the one they chose says less about the CM than it does what still passes as an acceptable insult.
I had thought we’d moved past an era that produced proverbs like “Hmeichhia leh pal chhia chu a thlak theih” (You can always replace a woman like you replace a worn-out or shabby fence.) and “Hmeichhia thu thu ni suh chakai sa sa ni suh” (A woman’s word is not worth anything, as the meat of a crab).
I was wrong. When femininity is deployed as a political insult in 2026, these sayings do not feel like the past. A skirt was never an insult. The only thing it exposed was how easily our politics fall back on misogyny in its search for humiliation.
Views expressed are that of the author and do not reflect EastMojo’s stance on this or any other issue. Dr Embassy Lawbei teaches at the Department of Liberal Arts, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru. She is engaged in teaching and research on media, conflict, communication and human rights.
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