I'm not a feminist but...

This is something that came out while I was attempting to write an essay forGender, Media and Culture, a course we do in third semester. While the word and category "feminist" has come to be appropriated by different people in different ways, for me it continues to indicate an idea that is inspiring, definitely engaging and something I agree with. But would that make me a feminist?

***

Last night I had a long conversation with my mother. She wasn’t very comfortable with me meeting my partner (who lives in a different city) every now and then, and was concerned about what his family would think of me. She felt that we needed to “formalise” our relationship which basically translates as getting engaged. Somewhere I knew this was coming and that it would just be a matter of time before implications of my actions upon people’s (and often people I have not even met yet) perception of me would be brought to my notice. Just the fact that such concerns are supposed to trouble me and not my partner got me thinking about what it means to be a woman in 21^st century India. All through my childhood and adolescence I have believed that I belong to a privileged section of my gender which has comparatively more freedom, not only of expressing what one feels but also of doing what one wants to do. The elder one of two siblings, I was thoroughly pampered as a child and when the time came for me to go to college, I was allowed to apply where I wanted to study, to study what I wanted to study, unlike a lot of my friends who were “told” to continue with science lest their intellectual capabilities be doubted or diminished. But it wasn’t as if all was nice and good. I went to an all girls convent school, and an all girls college, not out of lack of options but because my parents thought it better. Only when post graduation happened, after three years of staying on my own away from home I reached a point where any negotiation about the choices I wanted to make for myself became a contention.

The reason why I chose to take this instance as an entry point into this discussion with myself was because today I look back and say that not much has change, only my perceptiveness has. Personal experiences coupled with the different environments that I was subjected to have all come to make me what I am today; a bundle of contradictions. In undergrad I was exposed to a lot of feminist theory and was greatly influenced by what our teachers, several of whom were practising feminists, said in class. I reached a point where I began to see a fault in every relationship, organic and inorganic that I had formed with anyone from a person with the opposite sex. But taking time off from college helped me understand how far I agreed with what they said and believed in, when it came to the life outside the classroom. It was true that my parents’ marriage was an unequal deal, that life was definitely easier for my brother than for me. But at no point could I categorise myself as a feminist, radical or mild, militant or liberal.

***

Contemporary society might seem progressive but it still has undercurrents of age old dictums and even though we as women might be freer to move out later in the night and our parents might be alright with us choosing partners for ourselves, but the fear that comes with being a woman is far from being reduced. The fear of transgressing too far, of annoying someone, of harming yourself physically or emotionally or even attracting any threat of making yourself socially unacceptable are concerns that still plague the mind of every Indian woman. In this context, a big part is played by the several media images around us. Advertisements play on the idea of the confident young woman who is free to do what she wants. Of course, this freedom comes from her looks and her fairness, the traditional markers of a woman’s competency. The freedom and emancipation that popular culture proclaims comes deeply entrenched in age old conventions of beauty and desirability. So that the girl who goes on to get a job for her own self and makes her parents proud attributes her success to her fair skin and the confidence that comes as a consequence of it. Through the ages popular culture, the Hindi cinema, the television post globalisation and of course, the circle of women we are all surrounded by have contributed equally to our beliefs and conceptions of womanhood. So even though the woman can sleep as she wants when her periods are on and can even take her prospective husband on a tour of the city (accompanied by her younger sister of course), she needs to take care that the signs of her menstruation are disguised as much as possible. This takes me back to how every time I ask for sanitary napkins at the chemist shop I’m handed the packet quickly in a black polythene bag lest someone notice what is inside.

Indian (Hindu might be more appropriate in this context) society’s anxiety with women’s sexuality dates back to the Mahabharata where issues such a menstruation and pregnancy are discussed in great detail. The larger assumption was that women have a naturally tendency towards promiscuity. To protect the purity of the lineage of the high castes women were to be kept inside the house, away from any male contact from the outside. The anxieties may have lessened but the traditions have percolated down the centuries, these practices only to be appropriated by other explanations by the more dominant patriarchal community. Today the concerns are coupled with issues of premarital pregnancy, STDs and pre-marital sex. Concepts such as choosing a partner and being in a sexual relationship may be more acceptable in the metros but for a larger population, they are still a taboo. However, sexual health is still nowhere in the priority list of the medical sciences. More research has been done in the area of female contraception than on male contraception, thus placing the onus of preventing anything “untoward” on the woman. Especially with the invention of the emergency contraceptive pill, this prevention is made dangerously simplistic and convenient, without any reference to the implications of common usage of such a drug upon the user’s reproductive health and potential. But of course, how many of us know about this option, or others and when they can and cannot be used? I am reminded of how women are often likened to nature and men to culture. The logic behind such an equation is that just as a woman cannot control certain processes in her body, she is closer to nature and just as men are absolved of such concerns, they come to be proprietors of what may be called as human culture. Leave alone the question of sex for pleasure. That domain is still restricted to men.

In a context as varied and diverse as that of ours, society’s concerns with the female sex cannot be investigated in isolation from other collectives that they are invariably a part of. Gender works in relation with caste, class, religion, nationality in addition to the level of economic independence of each individual. The question of access, not only to objects of relative freedom but also to knowledge (and correct knowledge) about these is limited to a very few among us. And nor does there exist a direct relationship between any of these collectives and the status that each accords to its women. It is at my post graduate level of education that I first came to share a common space with students of the opposite sex. I admit it was a bit awkward in the beginning but maybe because we were a smaller group and the fact that from the very beginning we had been included in discussions that entailed issues that I could never imagine discussing with guys outside class helped raise my comfort levels. However, as students of a so-called liberal social science institute we all have an intrinsic understanding of the gender dynamics at play at TISS; not only outside the class, but also within it. It is true that in our class women form the majority and men are only one fourth of the total population. Even then I can safely say that we are a close knit group and that there are no distinctions between both the sexes. However, I was very surprised to find that when, for a few submissions we were asked to divide ourselves into groups of two, the boys tended to work together, always. I wondered what could’ve triggered such a seemingly natural response from all of us. Was it a question of comfort level or of plain intellectual compatibility? I don’t know.

I feel the freedom to interact with the opposite sex and to study at the same level might seem as a big achievement but the tensions and undercurrents of gender disparity also become more palpable as the ability to discuss such issues openly increases. I must have the confidence to confront the opposite sex and walk at the same level as my male counterparts but an education must also mean that I come back to my family, and serve all the purposes that I must as a woman, a wife, a daughter and a mother. In this context I feel, the woman of today is more confined than ever before, not only because she has greater opportunities but also because she must use these privileges to perform her function within the larger patriarchal set up with more prowess. Media images only serve to accentuate and reinforce these notions. When I first saw Dev D for instance, I was thoroughly impressed with the way it was made and the autonomy it claimed to accord to the female lead. However, after several discussions with friends I realised that even within such an emancipation lay an intrinsic understanding of the woman’s function, as the temptress, the love interest and the one who cheats and even in her freedom to transgress bears a threat to the man’s authority, which remains the ultimate one. This takes me back to the thin line between decency and indecency, between what is proper for a woman and what is not. The definitions vary not only from individual to individual within a society but also within a person’s own lifetime.

However, the greatest injustice is done when all these questions, contradictions and the confusion are not allowed to reach the level of articulation. This is where my discomfort with feminism comes in. My understanding of feminism is as a movement that vouches for equal rights of men and women and the establishment of a sexually and gender wise egalitarian society. However, I see that it means more than just that and the fact that different women have come to appropriate the term to their own understanding. However, this ability to understand the injustice in society, to be able to talk about it and to figure out ways around it are clearly based in a small territory that excludes the concerns and experiences of a larger population of women in India. I agree with most of what the collective that calls itself “feminists” say but I beg to differ when their version of the utopian world and the means to attain it begin to resemble the tenets that patriarchy operates on. You might disagree with me and my understanding of feminism. But personally, as long as I am able to articulate my stand on certain issues and not use my standards to appropriate the solutions to other women’s problems, I am comfortable with not belonging to a certain group, feminist or otherwise.

***

Back to the Basic: Experiencing a multiplex flick in a small town movie theatre

As I grapple with my thoughts to give coherence to them, I am reminded of what Chucks told us in one of his classes. We were all relating our first memories of watching a movie and as he pointed out, going for a movie not only meant looking at story unfolding on the screen but also included the experience of where one was seated, the company, the sounds(other than the movie's) that were audible and of course, the food. Last week I went to see Vishal Bhardwaj's Kaminey at a cinema hall in Dehradun with my parents. It was after a long time that I was going to watch a movie in Dehradun (which does not have any multiplexes...yet) and memories of movies watched earlier were soon replaced by the anticipation of when the doors to the balcony would open. When they did finally open, I was greeted with a mad rush of people from the back and hot gust of stale, sweat and popcorn mixed air from the front. But all was well. We managed to find out seats unoccupied and sat there.
I dont know whether what I experienced was "norm-al" or had just became more palpable post my joining the race of the multiplex goers. As people kept trickling in, several minutes after the movie began, I felt my irritation rising. The dialogues were unclear, people were unabashedly crossing in front of me and some lights in the balcony were still on. And of course, the hooting and the whistling was a regular sound effect courtesy some of the enthusiastic (and the very expressive) among us. But strangely enough, half an hour into the movie and with the Dhan De Dhan song on the screen, the impulse (and the ease) to join them was greater than I could have ever allowed myself to experience in a PVR or a Fame.
Kaminey, in my opinion, is clearly a movie made for the multiplex. As Jerry Pinto once told us in class (and that's the only thing of that session that I have allowed myself to keep with me...), the most authentic opinion about a movie entails the first few words an audience mutters to itself as it rises from its seat. Having seen Kaminey in conditions that allowed me to only see the potentialities of the what Bhardwaj was trying to achieve through his experimentation with camera, lights, colours and sounds, I feel confused whether my desire to watch the movie again, and this time in a multiplex, erupts because I'm now used to being pampered by a cushiony seat that promises not to let me "down" and the air conditioning, the dolby sound system, and the price on my ticket ensure that I get to see the it the "best" with a certain class of people that can afford the same priviledges as me; or if its just that I want to see those potentialities reveal themselves in the context of the story that brings Bhardwaj's effort meaning. Or maybe just to watch Shahid once again.
I don't know. But as long as I get to see it again, to derive the scopophilia it was meant to deliver, it doesn't really matter :)

Of traditional anxieties and non-traditional forms of protest: Revisiting the Pink Chaddi Campaign

A society that is steeped in masculinity can only be shaken by unconventional forms of protests. A society in which the situation of men and women is binary opposites, men and women cannot use the same forms of protests.
- A woman blogger on BlankNoise

The Pink Chaddi campaign was started in February 2009 as a response to the attacks on five women in a pub in Mangalore by members of a Hindu fundamentalist group, the Sri Ram Sene. The attack was preceded by a series of similar incidents across Karnataka, establishing the presence of a new moral brigade in the state. The campaign launched by a group that was headed by Tehelka journalist Nisha Susan and going by the name of “A consortium of pub-going, loose, forward women”, aimed at sending pink underwear to the Sri Ram Sene office on Valentine’s Day. The campaign was promoted mostly on Facebook and the official blog of the group and received notable participation from people across the country and attention from the media and the politicians alike. However, soon after the campaign took off, the Facebook group began to be attacked by trolls and was eventually broken into. Consequently Facebook disabled the group account.
The blogosphere (both Hindi and English) was rife with opinions coming from both ends of the spectrum. While some respondents were more articulate about their stance, most others were plain and simple angry. Those opposing the campaign were seen as “uneducated and backward” by the other group. However, all these belonged to a certain class of obviously literate and educated individuals who had access to this form of protest via the internet. In that sense, the campaign, extended only to a certain group of individuals belonging to a certain class. The Consortium chose to document only cases of upper middle class employed women in their database of evidence against the Sene’s moral policing. A century worth of violence of other kinds against women, employed and unemployed, were either ignored or consciously excluded
The Media also saw a divide in the responses. While the Hindi mainstream media did not pay much attention to the issue, its English counterpart was more supportive of the enterprise. However, both were unrelenting in playing the footage of the attacks again and again for the country to see. No one thought of blurring the faces of the victims. Several publications like India Today lauded the Pink Chaddi campaign as a marker of the growing online activism in India. Business Standard saw it as a positive step in the direction of social and political change in India and was quite sympathetic to what Susan faced. However, there were also some who disagreed with the enterprise. Sagarika Ghose (for HT) warned against this promotion of choosing “lifestyles that are desi imitations of the sex and the city” and Kanchan Gupta (The Pioneer) wrote against the “moral bankruptcy”, “double standards” and “libertarianism” of the campaigners. Beside the mudslinging within and without the media there were some journalists like Jug Suraiya chose to find humour in the fiasco that was created.
While some politicians (including the Home Minister, P Chidambaram) and the National Commission for Women denounced the attacks and the sudden preoccupation with the preservation of Indian culture, the Karnataka CM was quick to defend the efforts of the Sri Ram Sene to bring some “cultural” propriety to the state. As far as the Pink Chaddi Campaign was considered, most politicians were tight lipped whereas Renuka Chaudhury, the Minister of State for Women and Child did not shy away from encouraging women to show up at pubs on Valentine’s Day. Some supporters of the fundamentalist group even saw the Pink Chaddi campaign as a ploy by Congress (who was allegedly supporting Nisha Susan) to embarrass the right wing Sangh Parivar.
***
The Pink Chaddi campaign and the debates around its ideology and functioning have brought to the fore the anxieties of the new India, which continues to walk the tight rope between what are largely considered “tradition” and “modernity”. While issues of gender inequality and “unhealthy” western influences dominated the discussions that defended and opposed the logic of the movement, another issue that was thrown up was that of the India-Bharat divide. For several activists and supporters of the campaign, the movement was one by the “educated India” against the uneducated one. The definition of “educated” was obviously not simply limited to the level of literacy but existed at a level of class and access to mediums of articulation and expression of opinion. The anxieties that were raised ranged from women’s sexual promiscuity to the possible extinction of “Indian Culture”. Many of those who argued against the campaign were women. The divide between opinions, in the State, in the media and also amongst the common man, showed the intricacies of the argument. Why only a certain class of women was were seen as victims, and why was a medium like Chaddi used to make a statement? What part of the women population could be included into a program like this? The limitations of a campaign like this cannot be ignored in the larger context. But neither can it be denounced. The right to equal access of public space, issues of personal safety and our own notions of “decency” and “tradition” were some of the several nuances of our existence that were pointed to. This project to reclaim public space by a group of men and women might not have a lasting effect but one cannot deny that it made the nation stop and wonder, if only for a few weeks, about its politics and the spectrum of ideologies that make our nation and its subjectivities.

Of split second decisions and unplanned cups of coffee

One thing that has miserably failed to find resonance with my existence is the idea of plans. When I plan, I simulteneously create the possibility of its failure. The latter is not a deliberation. Its just a law of nature. Last night as we deliberated the validity of going to meet a sick friend of our's who was admitted in a hospital in Parel (which is at a considerable distance from Chembur), I finally gave way to the logic of not going because it was already 9:30 in the night, and that no hospital would let us in at any time later. But at 10:15 p.m. I see a mad rush across the corridor and a voice calling out my name, saying that we had to leave in 5 minutes. "What about the college deadline? And isn't it too late now to go all the way to Parel? Can't we see her in the morning?" Apparently "we" did not want to and the next thing I know, six girls packed in a red maruti 800 were cutting across the eastern express highway at 90 kmph.
The city looks different in the night. Very different. When the traffic jams are gone and shops are shut, a new race of people become visible. As I struggled to keep my face straight against the wind, I felt an emotion that I hadn't felt in a long time. It wasn't fear, but a strange kind of awareness of my freedom and the possibility of dangers that come with it. But as it turned out, my apprehensions were of no consequence. We met our friend, took a cab back, wading back across the city, soaking in the "nightlife". Binging on sandwhiches and coffee at one in the morning, chatting up till 3 in the campus and fighting with the gaurds thereafter until my body gave way... This unplanned experience was quite something. And I haven't been able to do justice to it through these words.
The conclusion: Sometimes, crazyness works and unplanned cups of coffee with friends in the middle of the night can prove to be quite therpeutic. Actually, a little more than that :).

The dilemma of rights and wrongs

For so many of us, who stand at the brink of adulthood, presumably armed to plunge into the big bad world with our nascently acquired wisdom, the strings of familial love and worry hold us back into a coccoon, a shelter, that is comforting and at the same time restricting. Being a woman, the force is even stronger, having been fuelled by societal norms and dictums of propreity for our sex. I admit that my generation is much better than the previous one, in the sense that a considerable number of us can and have opened our hearts and minds to our parents, much more than they ever had to theirs. I can have arguments with them, can tell them what I like and what I don't like and negotiate upon certain issues. But yes, only certain things. Revealing the rest of my subjectivity shall most probably come at a heavy price. The thin line between friendship and authority can't be tread upon so easily without acknowledging the threat of irreparable damage to trust, faith and even to the image one's parents have of their children... and vice versa. So when this evening I spoke to my mother (who is the "more approachable" parent in my case) on one such contentious issue, I was able to have a long conversation and was allowed to put my arguments on the table, but to no avail. The final verdict was given. It was a NO. And the matter was conveniently kept from my father, who would've responded in the same monosyllable (minus the part where I plead my case).

Thus, the progress that we, as children from well-educated and reasonably priviledged middle-class families, have made in bridging the gap with our parents is worth noting. But the fear of the over-powering, almighty and omnipotent SOCIETY is far from extinction. And while the fear of what "others will say" remains, the dilemma of whether to stay the "good child" and curb our wants, or tow the line and take a chance will continue to be a cause for many a sleepless nights.

After a long pause...

Half a year down the line, I've managed to find my way back to this blog. Monsoons in Mumbai, an impending high tide, the threat of leptospirosis and a host of other un-explicable rain-related diseases, impatient monkeys and ever-hungry dogs on the campus... I wonder what finally got me writing. Playing a game of badminton after a gap of four years, attending my first General Body Meeting, painting my nails green, staying up real late and watching movies at one go, coming to class having read up the prescribed articles... a lot has changed. A strange, unsettling emotion that rages up and settles down the next moment. A blankness that doesnt hurt not does it allow me to celebrate. A strange loneliness that feels empowering and the same time saddening. A continuous rush of desires, expectations of the present and the future, dreams and hopes, questions and possible solutions, catching up with old friends, looking for what i may call my "passion", finding new interests, reading Walker, enjoying classes, cherishing my relationships... and still an emptiness. A void. I'm not sad but nor am i happy. A strange calm... but not quite contentment. People are changing, I am changing, life itself is on the run. As seasons change, i stand around the bend, not sure of where I'm heading and how it'll be. Leaving behind the Past, holding on to the Present, plunging into the Future...I' trying to find Myself.

Intro

I begin by giving due credit to Limp Bizkit for coming up with an (not so great..i think...but ur perceptions may vary..) album whose name has become the title of my first blog. Well, it would be wrong to say that this is my first attempt at trying to make this work but i sincerely hope that i wont find myself writing this line yet again...

I shall make no tall claims about how regularly i shall post and come up with new ideas. Its not that i dont think; its just that i'm too lazy to articulate my thoughts. One of the reasons i'm attemting to do this is in order to push myself to figure what is it that i am thinking and want to think... to disentangle this conglomerate of thoughts, viewpoints, opinions that i have come across, imbibed, got influenced or repulsed by or have come to hold myself.

I know that blogging today has become a full time, reasonably lucrative, intellectually taxing, and a very competitive profession. In that sense, for a person like me to be writing a blog amidst thousands of other "professionals" might seem hopelessly ambitious. But then , my blog isnt here to create history. Its just a common person's point of view, her grappling with whatever is going around her. And no, i dont expect to change the world or anything. Just figure things out for myself.

Here's to another attempt at blogging... hoping the results WILL vary this time around.