feminism today

This last month, two news items regarding women came into the public notice. One is the ruling that women workers will be allowed to work night shifts. I think it was also suggested that proper security be provided to these women labourers. And protests followed. An outraged group asked how could women be allowed to work the night shift? The other is that all dance bars were closed down in Mumbai this month. Thousands and thousands of bar dancers went out of job. They protested but no one heard. The reason being that these sleazy joints were a cover for prostitution.

Women working night shifts? Probably the first thing that would go through the worried father, or husband’s mind is sexual harassment. Some others could say it is a step towards professional equality, some others could argue that it is unfair to treat men and women equally since they come from different social structure even while living in the same society. And of course the one about the break down of the family because the women of the house would be out at night.

While the Mumbai dance girls are out of job. But will the government really care about their woes. They were probably prostitutes anyway.
This society (as most others) makes a definite distinction between the good girl and the bad. The good girl who can get sexually harassed at work place and should be thus protected, and the bad girl, who provide sexual favours in exchange of money, and who cry for their old jobs even when the state has put an end to their exploitation.

In reality, the thin line between these two kinds in so thin, that it can be crossed very easily by any girl, no matter what class or caste.







Woman or Whore?

The legal definition provided by court is as follows: ‘sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexually determined behaviour (whether directly or implied) as: physical contact and advances, a demand or request for sexual favours; sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of sexual nature where such conduct would constitute discrimination if a woman has reasonable grounds to believe that objecting to the conduct would be disadvantage to her recruitment or promotion or when it creates a hostile work environment.

The core of this definition is the word ‘unwelcome’. The sexual conduct must be unwelcome and the onus of proving that it is so, lays with the complainant, the woman. This means that the complainants sexual past, mode of dress and conduct can be used to show that the harasser was incited and that the blame also lies with the complainant herself. Even her profession can be used as sufficient evidence to disqualify her claim of sexual harassment. Bar room dancers, waitresses, performers, are all vulnerable to such claims.

These are similar to the experiences women had had with the rape laws. A rape victim’s dress, speech, sexual history, chastity have all been deployed to undermine her claim that she was forced to have sexual intercourse against her will or without her consent. She could have asked for it.

This is another of numerous examples of how laws, originally drafted to help women protect themselves, take on the role of protector and champion of chastity.


In a society like India’s, there is a clear distinction made between women who are prostitutes and women who are not. But both in practice and in discourse, slippages are being made between these two types of women.
In India, women from all the classes marry for financial security. Women stay in bad marriages for the same reason. They have no choice than to stay with their husband and carry on their ‘wifely’ chores.
Many women confess to having had sex for ‘favours’.
A lot of college students have sex in exchange for expensive gifts.
And of course the description of women accused of promiscuity as whores.
Thus distinctions between the two categories of the respectable bourgeois and the prostitute are continuously blurred.

Evelina Giobbe, a prostitute activist, observed, “prostitution isn’t like anything else. Rather everything else is like prostitution because it is the model for women’s condition.”

In India, women’s groups and prostitutes who represent the prostitutes or parties who are taking a step on behalf of the prostitutes, everyone agrees that the prostitute has to be decriminilised. Either because it is the right of the individual to engage in sexual transaction with mutual consent, or because of the recognition of the double standard at work when the prostitute is penalized but not her client.

One group lobbies for stricter regulation of prostitution because it is usually steeped in the criminal system. Prostitution can exist only with the support of pimps, brothels, crime-mafias, sex-tourism operators and other 0rganisational middlemen. In order for the state to take part, in any way, in the question of prostitution will be to recognise it. And that makes prostitution closer to legalisation. ------------(1)



The other group says that though now prostitution is immersed in criminal activities, legalisation will only improve these activities. They do not want state intervention in the form of police control or health checks. They contend that prostitutes themselves can organise amongst themselves and look after the collective right of the prostitute. ------------(2)

While (1) take on the human rights approach, (2) prefer to focus on the legal right of the woman in prostitution. Rajeshwari sunder rajan calls them radicals and liberals respectively in her article, ‘The Prostitution Question(s)’.

Even in the west, it took some time before prostitutes could speak on their own behalf. In 1983, a workshop was held in Rotterdam, called ‘International Feminist Networking against the Traffic in Women: Organising against Female Sexual Slavery’, whose agenda was to insist on the forced nature of all prostitution, and organise a campaign against its removal. All participants were activists and researchers from all over the world.
There was only one prostitute, Margo St James, who was there as a “resource person” and was to share her experiences with all the participants. Kathleen Barry, the chief organiser, refused to appear on a television programme with Margo St James, stating, “The conference was feminist and did not support the institution of prostitution.”

Feminists have been accused of choosing to ignore the realities of sex-trade workers’ lives and experiences. It has been said that women who work as strippers, hookers, and porn artists feel isolated not only from the society but also from the women’s movement, that has ignored or dissociated itself from them.



It is indeed true that campaigns on behalf of prostitutes have never asked them to participate. Prostitute conferences now point out that feminists have maintained a distance from whores. Margaret Baldwin recognises this as not only a matter of feminists claiming high moral ground, but also the tacit recognition that “a woman’s claim on justice, crucially depends on her success in proving that she is not and has never been a prostitute.” It is easy to see how accepting prostitution could be a problem for feminists. Prostitution is based on the acceptance and support of the man’s right to vent his sexual need.

In the film ‘tale of night fairies’, a movie about lives of sex-worker-activist, a feminist asks the question of a prostitute about how she feels being exploited by men. To which she replies that she is doing her work and having sleeping with only those men she likes, and getting money for it and that nobody is forcing her, so how is she exploited? Another sex-worker states that her mother was a prostitute too because she had to sleep with her husband in order to receive monetary support.

The feminists are still divided. Those who want to reform the prostitutes, end up sounding like moralists. Those who talk of legalizing prostitution, face the charge that they are in this process supporting those with vested interest in it like those of sex-tourism operators, crime mafia, pimps, etc.

Radical feminist activists concentrate on promoting welfare, rehabilitation, legal assistance, job training, and pushing for more stringent laws against prostitution.

Liberal feminists and prostitute activists oppose police excesses, social pressures, and discriminatory legal decisions, agitating for improved conditions, benefits and protection for those in sex- trade.


Human rights groups, feminists and political activists need to focus their energy on promoting the idea of sexual rights. In our society, such a strategy might be faced with suspicion and be declared anti-cultural. But it is important to do so because the focus is constantly on sexual wrongs (in rape cases, child sexual abuse cases, sexual harassment cases), which promotes the idea that sex is bad per se, and that all good people must be protected from the stigma of sex, whether consensual or not.

Sex-workers and other sexual minorities are the only ones who are claiming sexual rights. They have to be supported and this movement has to be mainstream, because after all there is a very thin line between good women and whores.

FEMINISM FRIDAY (WELL SORT OF)

Europecentricism for centuries have alluded to this fact, that there is probably only one way of philosophy, The European way. Assumptions of European superiority arose during the period of European imperialism, which started slowly in the 16th century, accelerated in the 17th and 18th centuries and reached its zenith in the 19th century. The progressive character of European culture was contrasted with traditional hunting, farming and herding societies in many of the areas of the world being newly explored by Europeans, such as the Americas, most of Africa, and later the Pacific and Australasia. Even the complex civilizations of the Islamic world, India, China and Japan were considered to be underdeveloped relative to Europe, and were often characterised as static. For many European writers of this time the history of Europe became paradigmatic for the rest of the world. It was thus thought to be uniquely responsible for the scientific, technological and cultural achievements that constitute the modern world. Furthermore, scientific models for understanding the world were deemed to have replaced religious or speculative accounts. The extent to which science itself can be considered to be specifically "European" is still debated.
The colonizing period involved the widespread settlement of parts of the Americas and Australasia with European people, and also the establishment of outposts and colonial administrations in parts of Asia and Africa. As a result, the majority populations of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand typically trace their ancestry to Europe. For this reason a Europe-centered history may be taught in such countries, even though their populations are now far removed from Europe itself, but have nevertheless been brought up into what may be regarded as mainly European cultural traditions. Countries such as Australia defined their nationhood entirely in terms of an overseas extension of European history. It was, until recently, thought to have had no history or serious culture before colonization. The history of the native inhabitants was subsumed by the Western disciplines of ethnology and archaeology. In central and South America a merger of immigrant and native histories was constructed. The Orient or Far East is east of Europe, whereas the West is described west of Europe. Although many of these terms are not intentionally designed to relegate other groups to a subordinate role vis-?-vis the people of Europe, the effects of Eurocentrism create a self-sustaining belief, that Europe and Europeans are central and most important to all meaningful aspects of the world's social values, and cultural heritage. Other examples of Eurocentrism as part of education and the world of letters may be found in reference works such as encyclopedias.
In an overview of 17th century history, say, it would be Eurocentric to list numerous dates, events and political figures from the many states of Europe, but only brief mentions for the Manchu conquest of China or the Mughals in India, or the Aksum Christian period in Ethiopia. Then, as now (and for most of human history), well over half of the human population has lived in Asia.
Achebe, the doyen of modern African writing in English, is also an interpreter of men, society and literature and believes in art-literature that is in the service of man. He, like Wordsworth and Arnold, rooted in his own history and culture, has assumed the role of a teacher to re-educate and regenerate his society, to restore to Africa its pride, dignity and confidence lost during the colonial period. In this novel, A Man of the People, he makes Odili’s shallow intellectualism come out with the help of English. Achebe’s deliberate use of the Igbo proverbs and mannerisms lend African flavour to his writing. He has successfully formed a new diction and provides his characters with an impressive range of speech styles --- formal, appropriate to the highly educated, dislocated broken English to the less educated and the illiterate. Achebe has employed with great professional competence Pidgin English in his novels, a language spoken by non-native speakers of English. He has used pidgin for both verisimilitude and comic effect in this novel. “Mr. Nanga always spoke English or pidgin; his children…spoke impeccable English, but Mrs. Nanga stuck to our language—with the odd English words thrown in now and again”. When Odili visits the residence of the Nangas, the body-guard at the gate stops him and asks “make you park for out-side. I go haskam if he want see you. We tin be your name?” Nanga’s idiom which is pidgin reflects his sense of the degree of formality of the occasion. When he and Odili visit the house of Hon. Simon koko, minister for overseas training, Nanga tells koko “Ino follow you black whitemen for drink tea and coffee in the hot afternoon….whiskey and sodas for me and Mr. Samalu”
African women are making meaningful contributions: as lecturers, professors, and presidents of universities; as commissioners and ministers, senators and governors, and chairpersons of political parties; as directors and others involved in literacy movements and campaigns against forced marriages, clitoridectomies, and obsolete widowhood practices. But this novel deals with women in mostly a stereotypical way. Elsie, the slut. Edna, the convent educated school girl type. Mrs. Nanga the faithful bush wife.There are images of women playing traditional roles such as singers and dancers, or women adoring rich politicians like Chief the Honorable M.A. Nanga. Mrs. Eleanor John, a tough party woman and board member -- rich, independent, assertive -- lamentably is cast as a semiliterate businesswoman with no noteworthy role. We see Chief Nanga's wife, a beneficiary of the colonial, utilitarian education, dissatisfied with her husband's extramarital relationship and impending marriage to the young Edna. Mrs. Nanga complains to Odili, but when the latter sets out to unseat her husband, she reverts to her traditional role of helpmate fighting to retain her precarious social and economic position. Consequently, she remains a dependent, peripheral figure, deriving validity as a human being only from her husband.
A strong characterization in Man of the People is Eunice the lawyer. She is the fianc?e of Odili's schoolmate Max, and founder of the Common People's Convention that opposes corrupt Chief Nanga and his ilk. When Max is shot by thugs of a political adversary, Eunice takes decisive, retaliatory action: "[S]he opens her handbag as if to take out a handkerchief, [takes] out a pistol instead and [fires] two bullets into Chief Koko's chest”. To this strong portrait, Achebe adds pointedly: "Only then [does] she fall down on Max's body and begin to weep like a woman . . . A very strange girl, people said" . In a story of the total breakdown of law and order, where looting, arson and political killings have become rife, a single act of retaliation by an injured girl is considered "strange." Given the intensely patriarchal nature of traditional African cultures, African feminism cannot be considered radical. For white European and American women, feminism has predicated itself on ending gender discrimination and demanding equal job opportunities and voting and property rights. For African and African-American women, feminist ideology reflects specificities of race, class, and culture. It is for this reason that the former has failed to make any lasting appeal to Africa and its Diaspora. Because African women do not wish to alienate men, because African women do not wish to alienate the bulk of their tradition-based sisters, because many traditional African customs and mores are worth preserving, most African feminists espouse womanism, which Alice Walker defines as a philosophy that celebrates black roots, the ideals of black life, while giving a balanced presentation of black womanhood . . . . [I]ts aim is the dynamism of wholeness and self- healing.
Colonialism which is a fact of history is the moving force of the novels of Achebe that has revolutionized African life and tradition. The novel as other history novels, has a tragic ending, tend to re-interpret the African past and advocate an ‘anti racist-racism’. In his novel, the cultural conflict between the two divergent systems is depicted through a powerful and convincing dramatic relation ship between the principal characters.

UNIVERSAL TRUTHS???????

There are 3 billion women who dont look like super models and only 8 who do.

FEMINISM FRIDAY

ff
SAMEERA:
"Would you call yourself a feminist?” I still remember the last time someone asked me that question. I was on a long train journey with a group of lively young men and women – most of us in our mid- to late-twenties – returning home after a strenuous trekking expedition. We must have run out of conversation or food, or both, for suddenly one of our male companions turned to the girls and loudly asked, “So, are you feminists?”
“Of course not,” scoffed one young woman, an advertising executive. “No way!” replied another, who worked for a multi-national corporation. And so it went down the line. The fitness trainer, the doctor, the investment banker, each one dodged the label. “Feminist? No that’s not me!” said each young woman quickly before she turned to look at the others. It wasn’t just the certainty of their answers that took me aback. It was also the meaning implicit in their replies – that somehow it was not good to be a feminist and that those who were feminists were somehow misguided and incongruous beings.
“Why not?” I asked the investment banker next to me. “Because feminists are aggressive, angry and bitchy women, who hate men and are against marriage,” she replied quite easily.
Sameera Khan reviews Paromita Vohra's film AND RECOUNTS THIS INCIDENT.

ME:
when we began our course in feminism in third year of our graduation under the banner of literature, our lecturer, a feminist herself started the class with quite a defensive stittude. ours was a mixed class. as in only girls but girls from all walks of life, all religion, all class. and she was recieved with a mixed reaction too.
she hated us, cos she thought we would be like her last class wherin someone had said that she still planned to get married and did not want to pay too much attention to the class incase she beacame.....horror of horrors!!!! A Feminist!!

This lecturer got used to us and liked some us and tried not to scream at the rest. poor feminist!

my friend recently joined my college as a lecturer herself and her now colleage, our old pol science lecturer (who is perhaps a closet feminist) asked my friend about me and if i were a feminist!
I was so thrilled she realised from afar that i was what is was.
but my friend had a problem with it and said, something like" no she is not a feminist, she just believes in the equality of women".....or something like that. anyway, so recently this this first year student in our M.A programme was heard saying......"what is all this feminism crap, i dont believe in all this"......she doesn't Have to believe but I wonder if she would have been sitting on the tank of our post-grad college campus smoking a cigarette,a nd saying tjhis if not for feminism......



anyway as i was saying.


WELCOME TO FEMINISM FRIDAY.