Feminism
What’s with this bra colour business?
There’s a meme doing the rounds on Facebook, ostensibly to spread awareness on breast cancer. I have received at least 5 messages since Friday, asking me to put up the colour of my bra as my status message. Forgive me if I am being conservative or orthodox, but I would rather not lend fodder to the already overactive imagination of my male friends on FB, by telling them what colour I wear.
That apart, how exactly does revealing the colour contribute to awareness on breast cancer? The bra is an essential garment, of course! It gives shape to the body and is worn for purely practical reasons. But the rest of the hoopla surrounding it is largely social in nature. The bra, at one point, symbolized oppression and a denial of rights to women. The corset, worn during the better part of the 18th and 19th Century, was so restrictive that women could not even bend to pick something up from the ground. The famous and violent bra-burning campaigns that defined early 20th Century feminism were a fallout of this social conditioning that the bra was oppressive. We have come a long way from that point. But, I still fail to see the connection between bra and cancer.
This campaign is a classic example of how modern day social media is being misused for pointless and completely over-the-top campaigns like this one. Check out this post by Kiran Manral. Food for thought, this! How do I know this is not, as Kiran puts it, “some clever chap’s great idea to get his five minutes of voyeuristic joy imagining women of different sizes and shapes in different coloured bras?” on the whole, I find this entire campaign pure, unadulterated crap! I will probably get a lot of brickbats for saying this, but I find that women who blindly follow the trend, and men too although not in this case, are refusing to use their brains to ask why they are doing something. Just why should I reveal something as personal as the colour of my undergarments just because some random person tells me to? I don’t get it at all! If you do, please feel free to enlighten me!
Children and “traditional values”
I have been meaning to write this since Sunday when I first came across this article in The Hindu via @calamur. Something kept coming up and I kept postponing the post, until I saw this blogpost, which addresses pretty much the same issue. Our children seem to be bombarded every single day with television soaps, cartoons, and even ads that reinforce age-old stereotypes.
Take the first article for instance. Latika Gupta cites three television soaps that reinforce the idea of the docile and obedient bride. I have personally never seen any of the three soaps mentioned, but let me tell you; any soap that reinforces and promotes unconditional and blind obedience is bad. When Latika Gupta talks about the little girl refusing to meet her eye and behaving like a conventional “nayee bahu”, it’s deeply saddening. This might be a one-off incident, certainly. But, it is still distressing to see little girls wrapped up in “ghunghats” and veils, pretending to be coy and docile.
I remember protesting at D calling me innocent. But, you know what’s worse than innocent? Being obedient. Why is obedience such a virtue? IHM mentioned in a comment to an earlier post that she hated the word obedience. I totally get her point. Why are we, living in the 21st Century, teaching our girls to be submissive and docile? Why are we insisting on blind obedience even in this day and age? Would it not be more advisable to teach a girl to think for herself and take the best possible decision, given the circumstances? Would it not be better if we could teach our daughters to be courageous rather than docile? Who knows what challenges lie ahead? Aren’t boldness and courage desirable attributes in a human being, irrespective of gender?
Soaps like “Baalika Vadhu” and “Sajan Ghar Jana Hai” make me want to puke. What values are we teaching our children by not only allowing them to watch soaps that reinforce and perpetrate archaic and completely unacceptable ideals of “Patni Dharma”, but also actively encouraging them to emulate those examples? I simply cannot ignore the gender perspective in this issue. While, as Latika Gupta puts it, little boys grow up wanting to become doctors, engineers, pilots and lawyers, little girls grow up wanting to be nothing more than perfectly traditional, docile, obedient wives? What is wrong with us? Why are approving of this?
Cartoons, aimed specifically at children and playing on channels such as Pogo seem no better than these soaps in television. As Aishwarya says on her blogpost (linked above), the show (Chhota Bheem) has only one major female character in Chutki, who is feminine, docile (useful isn’t it?) and does a lot of art work and housework. Indumati is the second character in the cartoon series that Aishwarya doesn’t mention. It is interesting, and infuriating to read the description of the said characters on the series’ official site. While Chutki is homely, docile, feminine, loves to cook and clean and feed Bheem, Indu is the quintessential damsel in distress. Bheem seems to keep saving her from some danger or the other. What’s worse? Chutki and Indu are rivals in their attempts to win over Bheem’s affections! For goodness’ sake, stop it! The two female characters’ lives revolve around our beloved hero. Whatever happened to their lives? Do they even live it? Or does everything depend on our hero’s approval?
Perhaps the most distressing aspect of such social conditioning via the media is the fact that most parents seem to approve. They seem to think these serials teach them traditional values, never mind if those values are actually stuck somewhere in the 17th Century. Will this ever change?
Feminism…with a bit of religion and atheism thrown in!
This post is an outcome of conversations with many people. Added to this, is the fact that I just started reading “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins’ atheism and my already firm convictions on feminism are making me pensive.
My conversation with a friend (let’s call him SK for convenience’s sake) was the start of my reflections. He was appreciative of the fact that I am a feminist, and don’t hesitate to be called one. Yes, I am. Not the bra-burning, man-hating feminist, but if feminism is about equality of opportunity irrespective of gender, if it is about being free to choose what you want to do, then I am a feminist. His questions set me thinking. Why am I a feminist? First, because I see that there is injustice. Injustice in the way the world treats women. I see double standards. I see that what is sauce for the goose is not sauce of the gander. And this, my dear readers, violates my sense of justice. As I said sometime earlier, I can ignore, or choose to fight. I choose to fight because ignoring would mean silent acceptance.
SK is an atheist. At least, he calls himself one. I would prefer to call him a rationalist who doesn’t see the rationale behind religion. Indeed, there is absolutely no rationale behind matters of faith. He said he saw religion as the major stumbling block to the emancipation of women. Do I agree? I honestly don’t know. It is true that practically every major religion discriminates against women. But then, I have a problem with the word in itself. Religion is made, nurtured, organized and promoted by men. I don’t use the word men as a generic term for human being. I mean it as a term to denote the male of the species. Most religions are male-friendly because they were invented by men. Women are often incidental in the making of a religion. In fact, their existence is a bit of an inconvenience, conflicting often with the concept of God the Father. So, it’s pretty normal that they be discriminated against and be treated like second class citizens.
That brings us to the fundamental question. Since we know that all is not well with religion, and that it is often used to justify oppression, do we shut up? Do we sit back in quiet acceptance in the name of faith? I think not. Don’t get me wrong. I am a believer. I’ve always been. But, my God is not an old man sitting somewhere up there and controlling my every action. My God does not discriminate against me because I was born female. My God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be doing much about the rampant injustice we see. Maybe he wants us to sit up and take things into our own hands! Isn’t it time we did just that?
The terrible M-word!
I just read this article by Rashmi Bansal. The “White Tiger” reference doesn’t really interest me, but the story makes me think. The lady in question is smart, urban, well-educated, and financially independent. Yet, she chooses to let her parents make a decision on her behalf, without so much as meeting the man she eventually married. She saw him, just as he did, among a hundred other relatives. And she chose to hand over her life, her likes, her dislikes and her independence to him. All because Papa told her to. This makes me wonder if we even make the effort to speak up. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that women enjoy being emotionally enslaved to another. But, we are often too resigned to our fate, because there is no other way this can be.
Then, there is the question of who is responsible for women being treated as doormats. Upbringing? Society? Parents? Family? Or the woman herself? This lady is a case in point. She worked in a college before marriage. She gave it up for marriage. Now, she wants to work but can’t seem to find a job. She will also not work in the industry because papa told her that it’s not appropriate. And no, I am not criticizing her. But, I really feel bad that other people have so much of a control over our lives. It hurts that women here cannot dare to dream, or even hope; that much of our lives is way beyond our control. This control is exercised by parents, friends, family, society and every other external factor you can think about. It’s crazy how we get so caught up in this idea of duty and obligation that we don’t even stop to think about whether this is what we really want from our life.
This lady cannot fall in love. Forget falling in love, she cannot even think of a man in that way. Because, she is not expressive, in her own words. No…scratch that! She is not allowed to be expressive. Because expressing love, wanting to express it, or wanting to see it expressed is a bad thing. This is true with most Indian families. The touch is taboo. We cannot touch to express how much we love someone, even if it’s a parent or a sibling. We cannot express it verbally either. Because of a rather deluded concept of love being silent. She cannot choose her life partner because parents know better what kind of man is required in her life. So what if he is less qualified, had a string of girlfriends, or arrogant. Parents know better! Sigh! When will this end? When will we stop treating our daughters like cattle, which needs to be sold off to the highest bidder when still saleable?
Maybe I am being emotional here, but that’s just me. Rashmi calls it the hen coop. Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s simply a gilded cage that apparently offers all kinds of comforts but still clips your wings when you wish to fly. I have wings now. I wish to fly. I wish to let my dreams take flight. And for the last 27 years, nobody or nothing has come in my way. I can only hope that it will remain that way. I can hope because unlike millions of other women in this world, I am privileged. I am privileged to have been born in an urban, progressive household; privileged to be educated; privileged to have parents who will not force me to do anything that I do not want to. No, not even get married. Unfortunately, not all women are this privileged. But, this brings me back to my original point. Being able to live your life should not be a privilege. It should be a right. When will the rest of the female half of humanity get this right? Anytime soon?
Ram – the perfect man?
Mahabharata from a woman’s perspective…the conversation with S yesterday set me thinking. I am not familiar enough with the Mahabharata to comment, but the Ramayana? When I first read the Ramayana at the age of 8, I was quite impressed. A dutiful son, a benevolent king, a handsome prince. A perfect man. I was probably way too young to wonder what kind of a man he really was. But, even at that age, I found myself wondering why a prince should give up creature comfort and go to the forest just because his senile and invertebrate old father wanted him to. Obedience is not a virtue for me. It has never been. Discretion however, is a different matter altogether.
When I re-read the epic ten years later, I was less impressed. But unsullied as I was with feminist ideals and ideas of equality, I still did not question the logic behind the epic. But, at 27, it is a different question altogether. Ram, to me, is no longer the dutiful son. He just obeyed his father without bothering to question the logic behind the order. A lack of discretion on his part. How will a man, incapable of analyzing the whys and wherefores of a decision, prove himself capable of ruling a country?
Later in the epic, Ram chases a mirage, the deceptively beautiful deer. He comes back to find his wife missing. She is abducted. Like any other husband, he sets out to get her back. He hunts Ravan down, kills him and liberates his wife. But wait! Something is wrong. Hasn’t the woman spent a good 12 years (Edit: 12 months, not years…) away from him? How does he know she is still chaste and untouched? Sita, like Caesar’s wife, must be above suspicion, mustn’t she? Ram makes her undergo a trial by fire. If she is consumed by the flames, she is impure. If she gets out unscathed, she is chaste and virginal. Like most Indian women, Sita does it. For her chauvinist of a husband! But, let me ask you something. Did Ram not spend 12 years away from his wife too? (Edit: Dad says it’s 12 months…) Does chastity and purity mean nothing for a man? Or is promiscuity and infidelity excused because Ram is a man. What is sauce for the goose is most definitely not sauce for the gander.
To add insult to the injury, Ram is portrayed as asking for a trial by fire for the people of his country. Just who are the people of the country to ask a queen to prove her chastity? A husband is supposed to protect and cherish. A king is supposed to listen, explain and convince. Ram fails as both. He brings Sita back to Ayodhya, after the trial by fire. Again, questions are raised about her chastity. Is she pure? Is she chaste? Untouched? By now, she is pregnant. Ram, being the perfect king, exiles his wife, pregnant with twins, to the forest. After all, what is more important for a king that the wish of his people? Here, Ram fails again. As a husband.
It really gets my goat when people call Ram the perfect man. He is an average man. An average Indian male, who neither respects nor particularly cares for the woman in his life. An average Indian male who has been pampered all his life by grandmothers, aunts, his mother, his wife and other assorted female relatives. An average Indian man who will never understand, or even try to understand what a woman goes through at the various stages of her life. To me, Ram is not perfect.