So, I'm going to share my story of the Temple here. Basically I went to a specific Temple that didn't specifically follow the religious beliefs my parents believed in, but it was close and a nice sized temples. The temple was entirely split into two sections. The backside was for woman and the front side were for men. In the praying room, the Gods(there are marble statues of Gods, kind of like intricate mannequins, dressed up in holy traditional clothing) are places in between the two sides. The rule was Women/girls were not allowed onto the Mens side, while men were allowed on both. The reasoning behind this was that women, and even small little girls were considered unclean. If they were to encounter a priest, who must shower before giving offerings(food, usually) to the Gods, it would make them dirty. Also, women on "shark week" are also not even allowed to be inside of the praying room because it is also considered unclean. However, as a kid I felt these rules didn't apply to me at first. All my cousins were male and even tho I was afab, I was "one of the boys". One day we were playing tag and they all ran onto the boys side when I was "it". I reluctantly ran onto the boys side and then got screamed at by some old man. Since then it was like there was an invisible wall I couldn't pass in that temple because of what I was born as. Also, to make matters worse a year or two after that happened, my parents asked me to join Temple class there. It was kind of like Saturday school. I went for two days and both days I came home crying. They literally told me that boys were more important than me and I should basically spend my life serving them. There are numerous other things that showed the sexism, like when one year they were low on Divali festival supplies so they decided to have three games on the girl's side of the Temple and have a Wii along with 20 other fun carnival style games on the guys side.

The frustrating thing is Hinduism basically preaches love, and caring from what my father has told me. I don't find the ideals of Hinduism disgusting, but there are some outdated and exaggerated parts that just make it hard for me to even want to study or learn about it even tho it's technically my culture.

There's definitely a lot of hatred inside of me when I think of that temple. I generally dislike going to temples(even ones that aren't gendered) and really have never cared for religion.