On Sexism

After reading this post on 'Sexism at Mood Indigo,' I thought I must add my bit too - something that I have discussed with one of my friends here. Luckily she is a girl, and was completely in tandem with the arguments I had. There is no doubt that most of us in India are horribly sexist. To my understanding, 'sexist' would be someone who discriminates on the basis of sex. Historically, men are understood to be sexists.One of the definitions I found is that a sexist is "a man with a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women." There is no argument that 'men' are more prone to be sexists, and the article I refer to in the beginning confirms that.

Several personal circumstances that have taken place over the last one year have compelled me to jot this down finally. First and foremost has been my own cross-cultural encounter with the US, which made me realize the probable shades of sexism within my own self. I am not sure if my thoughts too had strands of sexism before coming here. I want to wrestle here that such thoughts are not as much to do with a modern education, but a particular social & cultural upbringing and a social mode of thinking. The Indian society predominantly thinks in terms of gender roles, which not only conflict with the basic ideas of humanism, but can also be extremely condescending to people in general.

I was first faced with such a situation when leading a class on Urbanism at Yale. In this session I happened to discuss with students that there was no reason to think of 'house-wives' as 'non-contributors' to the society at large, and I believed that home makers played an important social role. My comment was seriously misunderstood by some students, thinking of me to be sexist. All I genuinely attempted to question was the capitalistic undertones of the idea of "contribution". I meant to provoke the default condition that makes us read the idea of 'contribution to the society' primarily as 'economic'. (I was thinking in terms of the Foucault-ian reasoning why mad men, crippled, diseased, handicapped people were historically segregated from the society essentially because they could not contribute to the capitalistic production). In my claim that "house-wives were as important for societal balance," I was being misread as "Women must take on positively to domestic roles." However, I had no intention to suggest the latter. Rather, I wanted to assert that "home-making" itself was scientific, methodical and a logical practice that was not recognized, as much as the professional's role.

But that was my first brush with being slap-tagged as a 'sexist'. I have become more sensitive to discussions since then. Especially in a place like Yale (read" most educated, liberal and elite free thinking confident individuals in the USA), you better not leave any room for the slightest of mis-communication. In the above case, perhaps I was trapped in my own attempt to come out as non-sexist. I was talking through a culture I was raised in, trying to overturn those ideas in another culture that had long bygone those issues. As much as I apologize to the student who reviewed me as 'sexist' in the evaluation, I also thank that person for making me aware of my unintended sexist undertone.

This cross cultural experience has lead to the second serious reading on sexism that exists back home. The subconscious way in which sexism operates in our society can be understood through daily conversations that are exchanged over several interfaces. Recently, emails, sms-es, facebook or messenger services have allowed us to tap into people's mental thought structures. I want to merely make a mention of an ongoing archive that remains a strong proof of the deep-throat sexism that exists within many of us.

My family members began a messenger group over a mobile app to keep connected to people scattered in different places. The group contains individuals young and old, males and females, married and unmarried, brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters-in-law - all kinds of relations who have access to this application and are willing to indulge in periodical 'non-sense' as a means of staying in touch. This kind of an interface has brought into communication distant cousins who hardly spoke to each other, different groups (brother-sister; brother-in-law -- sister-in-law; even husband and wife) into unexpected conversations.The group shares several messages, greetings, conversations and birthday / anniversary notifications. The bulk of these messages however contain jokes, quotations and wacky one liners on a range of subjects. Since the group predominantly contains both members of married couples (who otherwise do not talk face to face in a traditional Indian family setup) and those who are soon going to get married, there is a high traffic of gendered jokes. The volume of husband-wife jokes is the highest in the group. I want to take merely one random example from the group for close analysis. (Needless to say that there are hundreds of laments, pictures, jokes, comments that fill up this messenger-group-archive).

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From "D*******s" group on Whatsapp:

A female married member posts:

"Hritik Roshan and his wife Sussane have decided to separate.
Moral: Even a superhero like Krrish cannot handle a Wife"*

*(Hritik Roshan is a famous actor in the Hindi film industry who plays the character of a super hero in a film "Krrish"; and recently may have decided to split with his real-life wife Sussane for some personal reasons)

A male married member responds in 3 emoticons:
(a thumb - meaning 'best', the three fingers - indicating 'super', and a namashkar sign - perhaps suggesting 'resignation' to the 'wife')

The original female married member:
posts back 3 emoticons of 'laughter with tears in eyes.'

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In the above example, note that a joke that originally seems to be a male prerogative thought, has been posted by a female. The joke talks about an Indian film actor who plays a 'superhero' in a film called Krissh, and mixes this fictional account with a real-life tragedy of splitting with his real wife. The joke interprets the split-up as a decision of the male (the truth of which is not known), and imposes certain stereotypical ideas about the wife on its readers. In addition, the actor (read 'hero'), playing a superhero against a non-filmy wife polarizes gender equation. A lot can be said about this skewed construction (I have a problem with such jokes anyway, and will leave it since it is in the nature of a joke to skew facts).

What remains striking to me is the decision for a female to post it on the group. To me, this suggests an internalized condition of self-activated-suppression. The wife, who is assumed to be 'powerless' in the joke-content in the first place gets the status of being 'powerful'. Remember that in 'applauding' over the 'joke', the married male respondent doesnot submit to the 'power' of the wife that is caricatured as 'unhandlable', but rather encourages the woman to believe in a fabricated truth - that is her powerlessness. The subsequent comment by the female knowingly or unknowingly rejoices this powerlessness, in the process of enjoying the joke. In simple words, the woman-respondent, who is also a wife, has happily made a joke of herself, and the other male, who also is a husband to another woman, further reinforces this powerless position of the woman.

On a personal front, I despise husband-wife jokes. They are not only existent in these messenger forums, but all over the popular Indian television shows, comedy shows, soaps, social networking websites, etc. To take another quick example, my brother and mother highly recommended me to look at recent episodes of "Comedy Circus", a stand-up comedy show aired on TV channel in India. Out of boredom, and strange "suggested watching" on my list from YouTube, I looked up a trail of them. I was extremely annoyed after watching 3 of these acts - all anchored around husband-wife jokes. I believe that comments and jokes that become abundantly available through such media like stated above, quite quickly and subconsciously become an active part of self-imagination through which gender roles are not only confirmed, but also stereotyped and denigrated. In other words, they trigger a strong undercurrent of sexist thought.

Not only this, today, the imagination of a husband-wife relationship also thus comes with a set of presumed biases. What makes the young, educated, seemingly liberal newly married men to blanket-ly categorize their wives as spendthrift, quacky, bitchy, demanding, irrational, and so on? Note that these values of the 'wife' and 'woman' soon become interchangeable as a part of not only male, but also female imagination. How many men ever sincerely think, or even like to think that their wives may not, in reality, confirm to such stereotypes? What I may seem to be missing is that we are seriously discussing a 'joke' - but what I want to suggest is that in a 'joke' likes some of the most serious preconceptions of a society.

And even if men do think their wives represent in totality what the jokes represent, aren't they aligning to the scripts that have been injected into the society by media? In that case, are they merely putting up to such jokes so that they have something to blabber in social gatherings? Now how constructive is that? I have hardly seen any one who stands up against such stupid stereotypical behaviours that sometimes are far away from reality.

Unfortunately, as much as we escape this fact, our societal mode of thought is deeply influenced by popular thought to an extent that it has become a part of us. We have subconsciously begun to imagine ourselves through popular jocund discourses like comedies, jokes, laments that constantly put down nuanced gendered behaviours and keep strengthening sexism in our thinking.

In my past 18 months in the US, I have not come across even a single joke making fun of a serious relationship like marriage, or even judging someone based on their sex or gendered behaviour. And that doesnot mean that there is not other content for jokes in this society. Humour here in the USA is much more evolved and goes beyond narrow sexist ideas, at large. Atleast around Yale (which I use as the lens for understanding of a modern, advanced society), making judgement on any one's any personal trait is almost offensive. It is commonly agreed that people inherit physical personalities and no one has the right to comment about any one's physical personal traits, as much as their private lives. There have been several instances where I have been sensitized about such things - and I have come to learn a lot about myself, or things like 'sexist' comments that we almost take for granted in our culture.

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Yes, this is one of those instances where you can rightly say I have overanalyzed.
But sincerely, there is a kernel of truth in there!

Last Edited: 3rd Jan 2014

Fire

Last Spring when I was taking a course called "World Cinema" in the film studies department at Yale, I was told by an old lady, who auditing the class, to watch "Fire" - a film by Deepa Mehta that was banned the screening of which was stopped across theatres in India, but an original copy of which could be secured from the Yale Film Study Center. When I got a chance to attend the screening of this film a few days ago, I made sure not to miss it. "Fire" is a part of the trilogy - by the Deepa Mehta, who as I have heard, originally planned to make a film on each of the five elements that make up our world. Thus we have "Earth", "Water" and "Fire" - without the other two.

To begin with, how do we understand "fire" or the need for fire? What is 'fire' and how do we relate to it? Why is the movie named 'Fire'? If someone wasn't told about the content of the film in advance, what would their conceptions on the idea of 'fire' be? The connections become more contextual and relevant for the film when looked into the discovery of fire. For example, forest fire is the most evident method in which man must have discovered fire. Forest fires are caused due to the rubbing of tree trunks in wild winds, that produce enough friction to burn the trees into flames. Similarly, igniting fire by striking flint stones with each other during the stone age has known to be another way of sparking fire. The rubbing of two bodies, in essence, produces fire, heat, energy - the producer of life, and something that (in the Hindu tradition) ends it too.

Fire, to me, represents this oscillation between life and death. Fire symbolizes the desire for life. Fire is a story of the struggle for desires of the body.

Sita (Nandita Das) and Radha (Shabana Azmi) meet each other after Radha is married to Jatin (Javed Jaffrey). Jatin is a young man in love with another woman of Asian origin, and continues to see her after his marriage. This is not hidden to the family, consisting of an elder brother Ashok (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and Jatin's sister-in-law Radha, along with a grandmother who is paralytic, and thus can not speak. The elders in the family force the marriage onto Jatin who wants to be in a 'live-in' relationship with his girlfriend - rather they do not wish to commit to a marriage. The family sees this as a dubious relationship and eventually arrange Jatin to marry Sita. Young Jatin commits the marriage to put an end to the constant nagging from the family.

Jatin & Sita's marriage sees a hard and ruthless consummation with little/no consideration by Jatin for Sita's emotional or physical feelings. With first time into this 'fire,' Sita goes through a painful experience that she is unable to express to anyone. Where on one hand, she is not able to discuss this with her family, on the other hand she is almost on the verge of depression. She misses home, but at the same time, stuck by her relationship vows. This makes her extremely lonely and unsure about how to consolidate her inner feelings.

On the other hand, Ashok has given up his sexual desires for Radha, since she cannot conceive his child. This suggestion comes from a religious pandit he believes in, who convinces Ashok to give up all kinds of physical cravings that would help him to attain spiritual satisfaction. In practicing this, he occasionally asks his wife to lay beside her on several nights, but himself lays motionless practicing control over his own desires. This ritualistic denial of engagement in any sexual activity over the past 13 years has left Radha extremely depressed and alone.

Thus, both Sita and Radha are burning in their unsatisfied desires. They are limited to mere household or work chores like taking care of the paralytic grandmother, or working at the home-run hotel that the family maintains. There is no room for fulfilling the inner physical cravings that both develop. Their frustration keeps growing with no means to end, until one evening, when they are bonded together by their own grief that finds an outlet through a physical encounter between each other. This unexpected, but extremely essential encounter that fulfils their bodily craving ignites a new fire which they explore further.

Sita and Radha have finally found companionship, more importantly, themselves. They have found a new happiness, and a way to come out of their depressed (and repressed) lives. They start enjoying their work, without relying on their husbands who are busy celebrating their alternately chosen sexual journeys. The growing attraction between Sita and Radha is noticed by the house servant, who is himself taking advantage of the quiet situation at home, in watching borrowed pornography from Jatin's video parlour, in front of the mute paralytic grandmother. The house servant attempts to blackmail Radha when he is caught while watching obscene films at home by her.

Sita and Radha want to get rid of him to erase any future conflicts or evidences about their relationship, but eventually the Ashok witnesses the fire between the two one evening.

Sita and Radha go in a state of contemplation and raise very important questions that lie at the crux of the film. Radha offers Sita with enough support and courage to get her out of her unsatisfying heterosexual relationship so that they can live together. Eventually, Radha finds a way to escape and pursue a new life with Sita.

The film brings up important questions about sexuality and gender through multiple motifs that are layered over this basic story structure. The narrative of Ramayana that runs throughout the film in which cross-dressed tamasha players recite quotes from the epic are the most compelling. This ancient story telling form where men cross-dress as women not only convey a historical fact, but also a message that strengthens the issues of 'gender' and 'identity' that the film raises. This is evident in the role-playing of Sita in the film, who finds interest in dressing up in a man's attire - which makes her feel liberated and free.

Secondly, the conscious play on 'Sita' - enacted by Radha who is the central, feminine character of the film, as well as the victimized Sita of Ramayana make a compelling comparison. The agni-pariksha that the Sita in Ramayana is made to pass through becomes the motif of two important metaphors for the film. Firstly, it questions the unfair claims of Lord Rama (the assumed-ly righteous, male) in asking Sita to prove her innocence and truth after her return from the evil Ravana's captivity in Lanka. It attempts to debase the authority of the male, or the forever privileged patriarchy. Secondly, it also portrays the fire of desire Radha (a caricature of Ramayan's Sita) struggles through in the film. These metaphors are united through the scene where Radha is shown to escape from the house in the burning saree by the last scene, eventually uniting with Sita.

Thus the film brings about the multiple themes that justify its title. It paints a picture of the several shades of sexual desires that play out in different ways. In each, it questions our notions of moralities, ethics and ideas about relationships. It brings us close to understand queerness. It is a film that provokes people, yet in an absolutely non-obscene way. The film doesnot portray any profanity, except one scene, which seemed to have been quite aesthetically shot - to mean that it doesnot objectify the female body.

It is almost unfortunate that the film fell into controversial pangs to be available to us to watch in our own country. Fire is an intelligent film - it talks about a subject worth considering seriously.

Knowing the World

These days I remain split between whether I should write (my experiences here on my blog) or whether I must read (articles to enrich my understanding of the world at large). For some time, I was wondering if I had run out of things to write about? However, it's not that I don't have any thing to write, rather I tend to think if the same time was invested in reading (for example the world news, books, novels, academic texts, etc.), would my view of the world be different? It ofcourse will be. But do I want to affect my view of the world through these mediations? This is a hard one to resolve.

I took two courses this semester - one on media theory and the other on globalization space - both taught by important theorists within their domain (Francesco Casetti and Keller Easterling, respectively). Through the Theory of Media course, I have come to understand further how media is 'scripting' our lives. In simpler terms, we start imagining the world in terms of media, in forms of media. Thus the medium becomes the message! Too simplistically put here, but I will not dwell on this idea here, rather go back to my questions I raised before!

The other one "globalization space" got me introduced to so much that is happening around me. There is so much happening around the world that would probably interest me. If I was a traveler, I would go mad absorbing all the information that was coming in front of my eyes and into my brain. But the unfamiliarity to all of it is what made be a bit nervous about myself. Today, as all the students taking the course (who came from different parts of the world and studying different disciplines at Yale) presented their observations in the form of a Pecha Kucha presentation, I found it a bit difficult to understand, rather contextualize much of the information that was displayed. They spoke about concerns from their own homelands - all related to globalization. It was hard for me to absorb the material. Not that I could not have grasped, but it was hard to put them in the already formed large categories in my head. For a moment, I wondered if this must be attributed to my lack of general knowledge about the world.

To talk in my favour to some extent, I do look the format as a hurdle. The content presented in 15 slides scrolling each for 15 seconds with a densely packed background commentary is hard to digest in the duration of 3 minutes. I wonder if it was the as difficult for others in the audience. For that matter, I can not understand any thing that I do not spend sufficient time with. I am anyway not so good at small talk, and I can not talk about things merely on their surface. I have a compulsive habit of either getting to the root of the discussion, or just leaving it there, untouched.

Thus my experience of this Pecha Kucha for the class was a mixed one. I would have loved to know more about a lot of the presentation contents, but now, I remain at the risk of forgetting all of them since I could not penetrate them further beyond the screen shots that lasted for 15 seconds! Such unrest made me dig into the Times of India online immediately after I came back to my desk after the session. I looked up headlines on Mumbai Mirror, Rediff and so on to perhaps try and make myself upto date with my own hometown, or country. Ironically, no news fascinated me. this was largely because I could not place them in their own histories (which is also supposed to be mine), and secondly because I could not relate them to my own personal history, of how they affect me!

I am certain they do intersect in some way. It was evident when  I clicked by the small converter within the online newspaper website: "Find out how much is 100 rupees in US dollars today?" I was captivated, and  got pulled into it instantly, at once realizing the importance of world economic dynamics and the way it affected my own journey. But I still can not fathom the amount of information existing in the world. Some people are extremely good at accumulating a gist of everything around themselves. I wonder if they are living scripted lives (imbricated by the media!)? Many people are well traveled, many of them are well read, many are further informed by the media they have consumed. I seem to be lacking on all fronts, yet trying to find my confidence in my own limited view of the world!

How relevant is it then, to know the world? Or how do we make it relevant? Or rather, do we try to make everything relevant to us once we have consumed it, only because we have consumed it? It is human nature to force connections into whatever is there in our heads. We connect all dots, like we make constellations out of starts that are so distant from each other in the void of the sky! We connect everything, such that it becomes meaningful to us. Meaning thus, is constructed out of relationships to other things happening around us. In other words, meaning is merely a relative act of understanding. Yet, meaning is so important to exist. But can meaning be self-referential? Can the orientation of meaning be inside-out rather than outside-in? To word it simply, does the world become what we make of it, or do we become what the world wants us to be?

I know these are hard questions. We construct our lives within the dialectic of this 'inside' and 'outside'. But this is an interesting contradiction between the two courses I took this semester, rather I must say courses through which I look at life. Media and the global - as much as they split each other, they also bind. As much as they set apart, they bring the places close.

Probably this will be a lifelong struggle. I can never make up my mind about "how much one should know?" Aren't the definitions of "intelligence", "wise", "smart" - in other words, all socially acceptable, morally positive codes of behaviour scripted within that question? Sometimes I feel more knowledge makes us dumb, since it makes us behave in a more and more scripted behaviour. Scripted behaviour, to understand simply, is a behaviour that is not natural to you or your bodily existence - it is something that the world wants you to behave like!

I think the American short answer to this question would be: "F*** the world!"

Let's accept it for the time being.