WERE I 17 AND A POT OF MUSH, “those three words” would mean something entirely different. But as an almost-32- year-old (ooh, how I love announcing an upcoming birthday ) who has seen a bit of life and the world, the three words that get a rise out of me are these: What Women Want.

It has been the title and subject matter of a movie. Blogadda recently declared it the topic of their weekly contest. Freud pondered the question before reportedly labeling women “the dark continent”. And I have a sneaking suspicion it was part of undergraduate coursework in Aristotelian times. What Women Want 101: Enlightening souls, one confused sucker at a time.

My question is: Why?

Why have we as women participated in our own mystification and perpetuated an image of womankind as being enigmatic, conflicted and unfathomable? According special status to women’s supposedly inscrutable desires is a huge honking excuse for men unwilling to make an effort to reach a basic level of understanding about their current/potential partners. It’s offensive to be thought of as so irrational as to be the subject of such pondering. Just like it isn’t a compliment for all women to be called emotional creatures. Is this the kind of importance we need to be at the receiving end of? That my needs are supposedly so divergent from a man’s strikes a false note somewhere.

It’s puzzling. Did I miss a memo? Don’t men want the usual suspects—health, happiness and fulfillment— too? Meaningful work, a social safety net, monetary comfort, interesting experiences, solitude, overall well-being, learning and personal growth, the opportunity to contribute to the planet, perhaps a partner/family of one’s own/casual relationships? Are these really gender-specific? Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m curious to learn whether there is a gender divide when it comes to human wants, so do share in the comments section and specify your gender. Until then, this niggling feeling of sweeping generalization and gross gender stereotyping won’t go away. If there is something I do want, it is for people to realize that it is frequently okay to divorce your gender. I write this as a person. And this is what I want.

The Initiation

Dear students and colleagues,

I am emailing to inform you that I will be taking the lead to organise a weekly 20-overs-a-side cricket match with tennis ball (our facilities don’t allow hard ball cricket yet) each Saturday morning, between 9 AM and 1 PM. We need at least 22 players for a proper 11-a-side contest. The idea is to mix students, faculty members and some campus-based non-teaching staff members in creating two teams on the spot every Saturday morning and to play with the gusto and spirit that die hard lovers of the game thrive on!!

So, please RSVP about your participation in this Saturday morning’s inaugural game to me. I hope to hear back from at least 22 of you so that we can have a rollicking start!! The plan is to make this Saturday morning tennis ball match a regular fixture that students and faculty will look forward to as a form of bonding, competing and… of course, exercising!

Cheers,

Prof. A (male)

————————————–

Dear Prof. A,

This sounds very exciting. I wonder too whether some bonding experience might also be organized that would enable the inclusion of female students and faculty, particularly considering that not only is sports generally played by men – but cricket in particular.

I am sure regulating female participates to the sidelines was never the intent – but nonetheless the side effect. I also understand how central cricket is to Indian culture. I hope to engage all faculty in this challenge.

Thanks.

Prof. B (female)

————————————–

Dear all,

I completely second Prof. B. Even the most declaredly gender neural spaces and categories – especially something like sports – turns male by default – so much so for cricket.

Warmly,

Prof. C (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

I’m excited to hear about Prof. A’s cricket plans. I won’t be able to make it this Saturday, but I’m looking forward to being a part of it from time to time on future Saturdays. I don’t think there’s a gender issue with having regular cricket games on campus. Prof. A’s initial email made it clear that all students were welcome.

I understand there was recently an all-female meeting of the Women’s Law Society (WLS), and a decision to only allow female students in the future. I don’t know that there’s any automatic problem with that, although it raises some serious concerns. This may be an area where there is room for discussion and formulation of a non-discrimination policy. At many universities, official student groups are not allowed to exclude any members of the student body based on sex, race, religion, etc. We may want to consider a policy here.

In any event, at this stage in the development of our university, it is important to foster a wide variety of student initiatives, to ensure that there are activities that appeal to a diversity of student interests. To that end, I am excited about both of these recent initiatives and I look forward to hearing about many more in the weeks and months to come.

Regards,

Prof. D (male)

————————————–

The Instigation

Dear Prof. B,

Very valid concerns indeed. The cricket we are planning will be competitive and fast, i.e. all male in likely composition. How about the Women’s Society you are forming getting together and deciding on sporting or other activities that can involve female students and staff over the weekend? I wish your endeavour good outcomes, especially considering that you are an athlete yourself.

Cheers,

Prof. A (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

Speaking from personal opinion:  I don’t think anyone’s slamming Prof. A for his love of cricket. I think the issue was more about disparate effect and institutional sensitivity. E.g., if the cricket match is the primary informal means of interaction between students and faculty, then we need to think about additional options.

Regarding the WLS, there are reasons of disparate effect and unique perspective that militate towards varying degrees of exclusion– as in almost all racial and religious societies. In my opinion, until the legal profession and educational system changes, arguments of reverse discrimination are misdirected, and take focus away from the purposes of such groups as the WLS. That said, any critical inquiry remains an important safeguard.

Best,

Prof. E (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

If more of us had been witness to the first meeting of the WLS (though that might have defeated the point), perhaps this discussion would have taken a different turn.  Luckily for me, since our research centre called the first meeting to session, I was able to attend it.  I was surprised at our large turnout, considering it was after a long day of classes and immediately after another meeting.  I was also surprised at the participation of every student in the room, something I have never quite been able to accomplish in the classroom.  And, I was surprised at what had drawn them to the meeting.  The students were so relieved, it seemed, to finally have a safe forum to discuss what had been going on in their lives, and on campus. They talked about the attitudes of male classmates and how the male students always assume females can’t do things, and that males can.  They talked about how they wanted to show the male students how prejudiced they sounded.

It is important for female students to have a space to meet, without judgment or interference.  Unfortunately, as Prof. E noted, we are in a society and a profession prone to exclusion.  The WLS is one way to help mitigate this.  Another is to foster an environment where females are included in the activities which bond faculty and students.  As someone who spent years being excluded from corporate golf, whiskey, and after-after parties, I can attest to this from experience:  what happens outside the classroom (or the boardroom) inevitably drives what happens in it.   If we exclude female students both from bonding activities and from even bonding together, we are fostering the patriarchy outside and inside the academic setting.

I think it is important to have stronger faculty-student relationships, as the first meeting of the WLS taught me.  I saw students who had never spoken up in class in an entirely new light.  I am sure a cricket match would work towards this too, for some people.  I just want to make sure that those whom it doesn’t work for, and those whom it might actually work against (those excluded for not being fast or competitive enough), have spaces and activities that do work for them as well.  And that when the cricket does happen, it is done in a spirit of inclusion by welcoming (as opposed to allowing) anyone to play.

Regards,

Prof. F (female)

————————————

Dear Prof. F,

Thank you for your email.  While I recognize and appreciate Prof. D’s point that many law schools have adopted policies that prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, religion etc. with respect to membership of student organizations, I want to share with you my experience in private practice.  Large law firms, recognizing both the importance of gender diversity and the business potential of senior female attorneys, have adopted a number of women’s initiatives to foster the professional development of women in big law.  These initiatives are generally available only to women for the reasons that Prof. E and Prof. F have already recognized- namely, current systems of professional and business development take place in traditionally male spaces.  Some the largest U.S. law firms have recognized that while keeping organizational initiatives open to all members of the organization is an ideal goal, the realities of the organizational environment necessitate certain gender specific initiatives in order to attain the ultimate goal of greater inclusion of women in the senior attorney ranks.

If the goal of our university is to provide an education to Indian students that allows them to compete on a global basis, there is no way to escape the critical component of providing an educational space that empowers the female students to compete with their male counterparts, within India or globally.  It certainly is not a given, and I don’t think there was any suggestion by any faculty member, that such an educational space must exclude male students.  Rather, the realities of the university environment at this point in time may suggest that such an educational space for the female students is best created by the WLS that includes only women.  For example, the university has an uneven the ratio of male to female students, female students grapple with a cultural and familial context that may not be supportive of their professional ambitions, female students don’t have upper class/senior students to whom they may look for guidance, and, based on Prof. F’s email, until WLS, female students had not had a forum to discuss their experiences on campus.  As these things change, perhaps in the future the WLS can be opened to both male and female students.  However, at this point, it may be premature to take a context-neutral, gender-neutral stance on the WLS.

Warmly,

Prof. G (female)

———————————-

Dear all:

Ah, now we are speaking! One mention of gender and you can see how things shake up – that’s the power of subversion. Apart from the WLS providing a much needed safe/ non-judgmental space for women on campus, it disturbs the neatness with which we want to go on with our lives within a ‘global’ space, seduced by the promise of emancipation.  It’s the old, still unresolved debate on special rights/ privileges vs. equal rights/ privileges. No space or policy can be gender-neutral or non-discriminatory if the very structure and architecture of that space/ policy is not. And our university is no exception – by the sheer imbalance in the male to female ratio of faculty, students, admin staff, construction workers, service providers.

This of course is not the only marker as Profs. F and G have convincingly pointed out. As I mentioned in my last mail, even declaredly gender/ caste/ sexuality/ disability/ race/ religion-neutral spaces are by default male/ Brahmin/ heterosexual/ abled/ white/ Hindu, and there is an almost unquestioning internalization of that fact – it disciplines us so smoothly that we don’t even recognize it.

Talk of non-discrimination in a space that is structurally unequal will only reinforce the gender hierarchy. I see no reason why the WLS should be looked at as an exclusive space – rather it’s the first step towards turning our university inclusive – making it substantively equal for its women students. It’s not factionalism, it’s solidarity. The very fact that WLS’ formation, or a move to include women students in the gender-neutral Saturday cricket fixtures unsettles us (surprisingly only men!) means that a hierarchy was already in operation. As Foucault has eminently reminded us, resistance to power, is what makes us recognize it. The WLS has done exactly that.

Having said that, as a feminist deeply committed to queering any form of essentialism – I’d like conveners of the WLS to respond to my question about whether a Hijra student can be accommodated within the WLS. This is a question with much larger purport than the WLS itself – of whether we are on the slippery slopes of biological determinism when we create women-only spaces to undo the gender hierarchy which in itself is predicated on biological determinism? How powerful is our subversion if we continue to operate within the binaries of male/ female? Are we subscribing to another hierarchy which places gender above sexuality on the arc of historical disadvantage?

Looking forward to more unsettling discussions.

In solidarity,

Prof. C (male)

————————–

The Closure

Um… excuse me? Could you guys with your subtle post-essentialist analysis and managerial double-speak please stop trying to bring sense into this? I am still hoping to see a grudge match between Profs. A (male) and B (female). If Prof. B wins, the women of our university get to be free of their oppressive masters. If Prof. A wins, we’ll join the British Raj again, wear white for the rest of the year and pay “triple lagaan.” No? Arm wrestling? Push ups? Why am I the only one laughing?

Cheers,

Prof. H (male)

—————————–

P.S.; No one continued the thread beyond this email. The cricket matches have become a hit – though participation of female students is negligible. The WLS meets every week. On the occasion of the 100 years of International Women’s Day they organized the screening of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Deathproof’. Was it a feminist film? You need to watch it to find out.

I JUST ATTENDED the Queer Nazariya film festival in Bombay and I loved the experience. In the discussion about queer communities, law and culture, Ponni Arasu, a gay rights activist from Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, spoke of the need for the queer community in India to redefine itself and its goals after the groundbreaking Delhi High Court judgment against Section 377 of the Indian Constitution which criminalizes homosexuality. In some senses only the idea of being queer can actually encompass the reality of sexual processes. Sex is funny and inescapably queer. I’ve been a part of the amorphous queer community in Bangalore (via workshops at Sangama) and have witnessed the Queer Azadi city marches (vicariously for various reasons) and then the subsequent mobilization around 377. It feels like a beautiful journey and we have a long way to go.

I have claims to this cause, as does everybody. None of us can deny that issues of love and sexuality are wrapped up with belonging and community, and that acceptance is a prerequisite to survival. As a feminist, I have a problem with patriarchal and hetero-normative sexual mores. I feel resuscitated and enlivened by such spaces where there is no barrier on love or the exchange of it.

I thought that the films represented a raw and challenging new post-modern body of work set to redefine norms of seeing, of sex and sexuality, of history and culture. If you want to see where relationships are going in the future then this movement is one of the places to look at. Among the films that stood out were Rex Vs Singh by Ali Kazimi, Richard Fung and John Greyson, Proteus by John Greyson and Jack Lewis and Journey into Kafiristan by Fosco Dubini and Donatello Dubini. The novel series Fucking Different by producer Kristian Peterson which featured work by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi and transsexual) film-makers on LGBT issues was entertaining.

Curators Smriti Nevatia and Sophie Parisse need to be congratulated  not just for the engaging fare but also for the pertinent concerns that came through: queer activism in the developing world and the need to engage with larger struggles for identity and self determination and against racism and fundamentalisms, religious and otherwise. Aesthetically, queer practices and perspectives create fresh and new ways of expressing and celebrating sexuality, and the films managed to achieve this.

To us!

***
Raheema Begum is an artist, writer, poet and performer based in Mumbai. Her work on labels, an art and entrepreneurial project has looked at the notion of identity with a specific focus on religious identities in the Indian subcontinent. As a feminist, she is deeply interested in deconstructing and dismantling patriarchal structures that inhibit the feminine consciousness and works with dance and dance therapy to break through and heal from sexual violence and subjugation. She can be reached at theunderscoredhood[at]gmail.com and her blog is Kauntext.

Now before you assume I speak of the sexual, let me assure you I am merely referring  to the way she sat. Her wide thighs spread apart, printed cotton dresses hiked up beyond the knees, tapping her finger to keep time with the keys, Miss Printer cared a whit for the proprieties of womanhood. If one was writing their lessons at ground level, her mammoth bloomers would greet anyone who bothered to stare (and I was witness to many a curious young boy who did). Back home, lessons in ‘ladylike behavior’ weren’t complete without a reference to the disgrace that was Miss Printer and how a future of single misery awaited me if I didn’t rein in my knees.

Miss Printer has been dead 16 years. A new century has rolled in. At 31, I’m a girl no more and the ‘lady’ tag my grandma worked so zealously on is a grey area. I don whatever garb I please, jeans and pants taking preference over traditional wear. My legs are long and take up space and I don’t usually give a thought to how I sit (I’m sure a star called Nana is cringing somewhere up in the heavens) but occasionally, those words come back to chant in my ears and I find myself hurriedly clicking knees together, adjusting my skirt and feeling just the tiniest bit guilty for letting my ‘good girl’ guard down.

Such is conditioning. And I’m sure it’s been inflicted on many of you too. Do share. I’m curious to know how many women experienced something similar and whether men were at the receiving end of something comparable. Good girl or otherwise, this is one legacy I hope not to perpetuate. The world can do with one less pair of knees posing as Siamese twins.

Even as I write this, I am NOT, repeat NOT PMSing. I understand there are some women who experience physical and emotional fluctuations in the days preceding Leak Week. I, fortunately, am not one of them. I do not cramp, I do not moan and I certainly don’t have my menstrual cycle whirring my tear ducts into overdrive. Tell me I’m PMSing, though, and I’ll ask you how you’d like your eyeballs for breakfast.  (And yes, I vaguely get the self-fulfilling prophecy here.)

When exactly did it become kosher to fling PMS in a woman’s face? In my experience, the worse the man’s behavior has been, the more likely he is to resort to the PMS argument, probably in the fervent hope that the woman in question will fall prey to the crazed hormones theory and let him off the hook. And in that case, not only have you offended my estrogen, but also my IQ.

The man-rational/woman-irrational stereotype has been done to death and Ballistic Betsy is so 1980s, so what’s next? Whatever happened to disappearing behind the newspaper? Can we have escapism back, please? It’s less messy, for one thing. And everybody goes to Hell with their eyeballs intact.

What about you folks? Have any of you been at the receiving end of pseudo PMSympathy and how do you typically respond?

Oh, and while we’re talking about our bodies, here’s Go Girl that tells us not to take life sitting down. Now can we finally scrap penis envy from those textbooks?

The festival will be held at the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore on 26, 27 and 28 February 2010.

The BQFF 2010 is a non-ticketed free event aimed at providing a venue to screen films based on themes related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBT or Queer) communities across the world. This is the second edition of the Bangalore Queer Film Festival.

The event is presented by Good As You (a support group for LGBT people, est. 1994), SWABHAVA (a non-profit organisation working with LGBT issues in Bangalore, est. 1999) and WHaQ! (a support group for queer women, est. 2009).

While sincerely apologising for this short notice, the organisers request you to send in films for consideration/preview as early as possible. For more information please contact the organisers at blrqueerfilm fest[at]gmail.com. 

YESTERDAY, I WAS LOOKING

It reminded me of this time I was talking to someone about writing for UV. She’s a quiet, dark-eyed girl who rarely gets emotional. On this occasion, she did. ‘What’s the point of all this talk?’ she said suddenly. ‘We just become more and more aware of our rage. And don’t know what to do with it.’

This sense of inchoate rage twinned with helplessness — I’ve often heard feminists talk about it. I suspect it’s why more women don’t write for UV (but maybe they just hate the super, dynamic masthead). God knows there’s hardly a dearth of issues to talk about in this country.

The feeling intensifies, I think, when the problem is at a remove. Not only is there a sense of ‘what can I do?’ but there’s also the fear that one doesn’t know enough or really understand. It can make one feel like a tourist in someone else’s battlefield. A bystander who’ll tell the story, then brush its dust off and walk away unscathed. This adds guilt to the dense mix. Robert Hass has talked about this problem of feeling like a voyeur or a tourist in relation to writing political poetry but it can be applied to any writing. Especially for a site such as this which does have an express political purpose. It affects what some of us choose to write about. It certainly affects me. How to talk about problems that have never touched my life, and most likely never will?

It’s easier to stay silent, stick to a few safe issues. Easier to talk about the personal.  Easier to remain within the margins of one’s limited knowledge and even more limited control. Yet this can lead to a baffling silence about other things, a disturbing silence. A silence which at its heart may just be careful, but in its effects may end up being plain wrong. As a blogger, I’m constantly conflicted by this. I don’t think I’m likely to find any answers soon but I wanted to put it on the table, a live thing for us to look at.

At any rate, I do believe in this: even when there are problems that we can do nothing about, it’s important to know. To note. To remember. Because forgetting would be the last nail in the coffin, the final bone burned to cinders.

So here are the excerpts:

• India holds the last position (134th) in the health and survival subindex. A huge factor contributing to this is poor maternal health, with only 42% of births in the country supervised by health professionals. Close to 300 Indian women die every day during childbirth or of pregnancy-related causes.
• India also has among the worst sex ratios at birth in the world. The strong preference for sons and the disproportionate sex ratio at birth make India one of the few countries where males significantly outnumber females and the imbalance is getting worse.
• Close to 245 million Indian women lack the basic capability to read and write. Almost twice as many girls as boys are pulled out of school or never sent to school.
• Women’s labour force participation, is at 36%, less than half of the labour force participation rate of men (85%). Women’s estimated earned annual income is less than a third of men’s income. Women make up only 3% of legislator, senior official and managerial positions.
• Over time, we’re closing the education gap but the health gap is getting worse.

You can download the full report here (pdf). There’s lots more info there including some cheerier stuff like the high level of political participation. Here’s an interesting related report at IPS. And she’s hoping Clinton will help change things.

The world premiere of Eve Ensler’s ‘I Am An Emotional Creature’ was some things expected and many not. It began regularly enough, with the usual spine-tingling statistics on female abuse, neglect and violations. Essayed as a relentless spiral of separate pieces without an intermission, the portrayals of women from around the world shifted from mediocre to spectacular as the play progressed. Moments of intense pain in “Free Barbie” were interspersed with a more defiant stance in “The Refusers” and stories of prostitution in Eastern Europe, military sex slaves in Ghana, bulimia in North America, child labor in China and forced cosmetic surgery in Iran tumbled out unapologetically, amidst joyous expressions of dance and womanhood. Woman cried, laughed, screamed, spoke, vented, explained, twirled and chanted their right to be emotional creatures and engage in the feminine act of dance as a form of expression.

Which left me wondering if this wasn’t stereotyping my gender just as much as any other descriptor. Are all women truly emotional creatures? More than men? Do we feel more intensely? Need to express more urgently? Or are we as much victim to this erroneous belief as to the acts perpetrated on us worldwide? Do all women desire to dance? Is feminine expression primarily manifested through physical acts? I, for one, certainly feel no need to plunge into a waltz each time I absolutely must say what I feel.  I am born of a mother who clicks her tongue at being “too emotional” and believes it clouds practicality and better judgement. My friends are women who rarely cry, even when they have much reason to. Are performance and feeling necessarily the domain of the XX? Could we not be harming ourselves by tarring all women across the world with the same brush and insinuating that a woman’s natural response to a situation is based on her feelings first and intellect later, if at all?

I could empathize with individual tales but not with the premise. And while I wish women power to overcome their tormentors, human and situational, I also hope that they strive to stand apart from the cluster of characteristics that haphazardly—and often thoughtlessly—define their gender.

~~~

To view a short clip about the play, go here.

My Kannada is not good enough to catch the nuances, but the emotions could not be missed. They sang of the families they had built for themselves, among people they could be themselves with – when everything else is denied to them. We have no mothers, no fathers, no sisters, no brothers, no work, no family, no home – except our own community, they sang, and even through through the underlying sadness, the sense of pride in the community was evident.

Then, a slightly built woman in a white kurta and jeans, began the ‘main’ performance of the evening. She started telling her story, a powerful one that kept everyone in the audience enthralled, despite the absence of any props or instruments. Told in the first person, in direct and evocative Tamizh, this was the story of a young boy’s journey to understanding his own nature and the long road to his finally becoming a woman. The life of the Aravani community, their challenges, their origin myths and their family dynamics were all part of the story, but the most powerful part of it was her longing to be a woman, and the desire for it which is so powerful as to enable her to endure the ritual castration, done by a traditional healer without anaesthesia. The performance was all the more gripping for its blunt edge, though laced with plenty of humour and witty dialogue.

So gripping was the story and its telling that I assumed it was the performer’s own story. Only at the end did we learn that the performer, Pritham Chakravarthy is not herself part of the community, but a theatre activist and researcher who has spent considerable time researching the stories of the Aravanis, and brings them to a wider audience through her story-telling.

One question remained at the end of the performance, which I was somehow reluctant to ask, but now regret not asking! Something which came up repeatedly during the performance was the attraction to objects traditionally viewed as marks of the Indian woman – saris, bangles, flowers. In urban India, at least, the markers of femininity themselves are in a state of flux.  In that context, is the Aravanis’ ideas of womanhood a constant or how is that changing? In other words, how closely is womanhood for them linked to the outward symbols of femininity and in particular, to these symbols? Do they need the ‘display’ of womanhood or is it simply enough to feel woman to be a woman? In this context, I thought blogger Deborah’s piece on the cluster-concept of being a woman was worth reading.

Ad 1: A little girl whines about how her hair isn’t as long as her mother’s was in her childhood. The mother apologetically mentions that she has to work while Nani (her own mother) was “at home all day.” As she drops her daughter off to school in a car driven by her, the girl whips around and retorts in Hindi, “Then don’t go to office!”  The situation is resolved by the mother saving the day, her job and her relationship with her daughter by producing a satisfactory solution, namely a bottle of Clinic Plus shampoo.

Ad 2: A schoolgirl, not much older than 8 or 9, boasts to the camera about how her mother is special because she lost oodles of weight on a Special K cereal diet that requires one to eat two bowls of cereal, twice a day as one’s only form of nourishment. The mother comes in at the end, smiles indulgently at her and then the audience and fondly asks “Bahut bolti hain na?” (Speaks too much, doesn’t she?).  And the ad ends with them sharing a cuddle.

So let’s think about this:

1. Mummies must primarily attend to their children’s every whim, to the point where their own needs/career aspirations must be sublimated. Vanity and shimmering hair over all else!
2. Little girls think it’s okay to be terribly proud of not-so-skinny mums turning skinny (so if they didn’t, would they be unhappy or embarrassed?)
3. Even if it’s half-jokingly, a girl who speaks “too much” must be chided, especially by her own mother.

Some ridiculously naïve part of me kept watching in the hope that the mother in each ad would rectify the daughter’s misconception but really, are the folks selling shampoo and breakfast cereal listening to a feminist rant? Three guesses, people.

On a more heartening note, take a look at this post on Saffron Tree. As a preschool educator, I constantly struggle with poor female representation in narratives and often create my own stories to compensate. But of course, the telly will keep beaming what it will as long as cereal and shampoo sell. Knew there was a reason they call it the idiot box.