#nosgbv Men, and the matter with including them

I want to write about men. 'Men and boys,' to be specific.

In the years we have been doing this gender violence awareness work, it has become quite a mantra to say, "Oh, we must include men and boys..." and I am always ambivalent. Today, Prajnya's event was a panel and discussion (I do mean that) on the theme 'Men Talk Consent' and so, given that writing a little bit to reflect on what we are doing, this would be apt today.

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So why this ambivalence? After all, society will not progress if one part of it is kept behind, and that part cannot move forward unless everyone is on board with the idea. So yes, of course, men and boys matter.

I think I worry that patriarchal habits die hard. I worry about how well-trained we women are, even feminists, to take care of men that we may roll over and let them play, once we let them in. I worry about how much we worry about them. But, one by one...

Patriarchy looks after its own. That is how it has survived for yugas, not just centuries. So we say to men, you are the good guys, you are our allies, and we let them into the safe spaces we have carefully built. In their presence, we reproduce the politics of the world outside--of heterosexual sexual politics, of currying favour, of taking care, of pandering, of deference. We share our secrets because they are our allies. But does that empower them to dominate us further?

I worry about who we become when men are around. We become girls. We become mammas. We stop being the whirlwinds that will sweep aside injustice and iniquity.

I worry that we will let men in and then because they know everything, they will mansplain our lives to us, simplify feminism to binaries, organise the work-flow, make the money decisions, and run the movement--like the world we are trying to change.

I worry that feeling obliged to listen to how men feel about how we feel about ourselves will make us edit and dilute the very articulation that strengthens our resolve. When I am in a workshop and women ask--always the women--about the misuse of laws that are supposed to protect women, I want to say, "Men have a law that protects them. It's called patriarchy." Sometimes, if I am tired or hungry, I crabbily snap, "You know, I really don't worry about men." But usually I talk about the probability of abuse, the likelihood of wrong use... and I hate that. I worry that all our work time will be like that.

I worry that including men will make feminism about them. It is about them, too, but it is so hard for us to find any space where our voices are primary. I begrudge them that of which I have so little.

I worry about our tendency to praise and reward men for every small thing--from making beds to making feminist revolutions. Will we fall over ourselves trying to make the men feel important and special?

And then there is a strategic worry--in a cosy domestic feminist universe that admits male allies, those women who are paired with the allies will have strategic alliances, but what about gay women, trans women or single women? If men come in and take over feminist spaces, we will be left on the margins. Again.

Patriarchy is like that. You give a photo of an inch and it acquires the entire football field.

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And so I overstate my case just a little (just a little).

Today, we had a panel of three men and a male moderator and an audience that was fifty percent male. And they were asked to speak about how adolescents learn about masculinity, about being men and about navigating the yes-no minefield. About consent. All of them talked about never having learned to talk about this--about not even having heard of consent till they were adults.

And as I listened to the conversation, I knew that we needed to take this much further. But for men to be able to talk about these issues, we really need to create safe spaces for them too--to say the wrong thing, to not be performing for women--and we need to bring them to the point where they can take the conversation about consent and connect it to a larger conversation about privilege and entitlement. They need to have the awkward and bumbling personal sharing that has sharpened feminist analysis. They need to find the words that feminist have been tap-tap-tap-tapping and waiting for them to learn. With the best hearts, men still have a long feminist journey to undertake before they can be fellow-travelers, leave alone allies.

But how do we get them into those spaces? Surely not through celebrity concerts and VIP-led programmes. For women's organisations, this is the puzzle. Whatever we design and set up, it bears the impress of our perspective and our agenda--just as the rest of the world reflects a patriarchal perspective and agenda. If we want men to journey on their own and arrive where we are, we cannot be plotting the route for them. Or can we? I don't know.

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I guess we need male allies to reach men and boys, but can we keep them in their own quarter in our feminist safe-havens, unable to roam around and mix freely, dipping into this interesting confidence or that important decision-making conclave? Let's allow them to stay but show them their place. (See, I told you, patriarchy's lessons are hard to shake off! )

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Full disclosure: I run a feminist organisation which has an all-woman Board, a mixed Advisory Panel and several male volunteers. I am also part of a feminist women's peace network which does not admit men, although they are invited to participate in some of our public programmes.

What's wrong with being a feminist?

In the last two or three days, I have met several people who want to reassure me that someone or the other is not a feminist. Since I AM a feminist, this puzzles me.

I have always been a feminist, before I knew the word, before I knew there was theory to go with it, before I knew much about women's movements. The marvelous definition that Cheris Kramerae and Paula Treichler came up with ("Feminism is the radical notion that women are people") resonates in any time and space (which really is most of them) that dehumanizes women.

In the US in the early 1990s, I learned that it had become very un-cool for young women to be feminists. I did not understand it, but as all international travellers learn to do at some point, figured, "It's their culture."

It is beginning to bother me now. When someone assures me that they or another person is not a feminist, I hear a justification for middle class male assertiveness and bullying. A couple of years ago, at a seminar in Chennai on violence against women, someone had the temerity to say: "I do not understand what women want. Young girls these days are not even willing to make tea!" Now, this gentleman was only saying aloud what many people think, I suspect. When I hear statements like that by Pratibha Patil's Government Law College classmate (which I cannot find to link here) that she is not a feminist, which we are told is not something he finds appealing (do I care?!), then I go back to that moment at the seminar. It's an experience like nails scratching a blackboard.

When a woman tells me that she or someone else is not a feminist, I hear a quiet pride that makes me want to cry for all those feminists that made it possible for her to stand up and say anything at all and for all those women and girls who still need her help. I hear the contemporary public space equivalent of young middle class Indian girls who are raised not just to sew, cook and clean for their future sasuraals but also to sing, dance, play instruments and paint--to never have any of those gifts encouraged again. I feel like the woman is trying to curry favour with some patriarchal standard that should not exist in the first place.

And how can feminism not be relevant still in an age when reporters trying for the human interest angle on this presidential nomination, are getting us certificates for Ms. Patil being a good wife, a good mother, a modest lady, traditional looking but of scientific temperament. What a relief! What a tragedy if our woman-President should be dignified, competent, brilliant and experienced but not any of these things! Would India survive?

I have a pretty decent memory and it is now more than thirty years since I started reading newspapers with comprehension. I am pretty sure I never learned the answer to these questions so I will ask them now:
1. Was S. Radhakrishnan a good father?
2. Did K.R. Narayanan worry about disruptions in schooling when he was a diplomat?
3. Was V.V. Giri a good husband?
4. Was Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy modest?
5. Was Rajendra Prasad traditional-looking but scientific?
6. Did Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed do a good job of juggling household responsibilities with a political career?
7. And this is very important: did Giani Zail Singh fast a few times every week?

And some feminist ones too: Did any of them beat their wives? How many gave or took dowries? How many of them tried like Insy Winsy spider to have sons? How many observed rituals that were demeaning to women in their lives? I am going to give in to temptation and ask, how many were fit to head a state with a declining number of women?

Now, I don't mean to malign our former Heads of State. I am simply trying to point out that now that a woman has been nominated (and everyone wants credit for this "progressive" gesture that makes me want to curtsey with Eliza Doolittle and sing, "How KIND of you to let me come!"), we are being given all sorts of information about her that has no bearing on her appropriateness for that office. And if it is appropriate, did anyone ask these questions of the men that went before her? What's sauce for the gander, is sauce for the goose too.

A feminist consciousness would allow us to respect and discuss our Presidents and Presidential nominees without making reference to their gender, their adherence to gender stereotypes and standards and based, as we like to say in India, on the merits of each case.

Once, in another lifetime, an Indian man (a friend, even teacher) said to me, half in jest, half as accusation, "You say all these (feminist) things, because you studied abroad." I said to him, "No, it is because I have been meeting Indian men all my life." Now, I assure you that some of my best friends are men, but I must say, that there is no better grounding for feminism than a large circle of male acquaintances. But I am not a feminist because I know obnoxious, abusive, annoying, pompous or tedious men.

I am a feminist because I am alive and I can see, hear, think, have empathy and feel. Being a feminist is not a grafted set of preferences but the natural outgrowth of seeing women treated as less than human in many settings, of being silenced, patronized, dismissed or elbowed out (or seeing others treated that way), of growing up around strong women and not knowing I had a place that I had to know. Being a feminist for me has been and remains being a woman who will exercise the right to think for herself, to have her own preferences on all matters across the board, to disregard limits and limitations placed on her and to act when moved to do so. It is the right to dream without a framework and the right to make my dreams come true. It is the right to speak my mind when something is wrong and to speak for something I feel is right. It is the right to be a person.

What's wrong with any of this? What's wrong with being a feminist?

The Inexplicable 30%: A Postscript

Postscript to "And what if their baby could choose?"

The newspaper that carried that report conducted a poll whose results as of this morning were depressing: 47% favoured sex selection, 47% opposed it and 6% could not decide. By the time the poll closed, this had, happily changed, although not enough: 70% oppose, 25% favour, and 4% cannot decide.

What accounts for this 30%? So much in a poll depends on phrasing. What if the question posed was: is it right to abort a foetus because it is female? Would it have been so hard for the 4% to decide?

So much in a lawsuit depends on the frame of the argument. What is truly disturbing about this is its choice of a right to freedom of choice frame. It subverts the liberal opposition to any modification of the pre-conception and Pre-natal diagnostic tests (prohibition of sex selection) Act by using its language to further a very fundamental discriminatory attitude built into our society. It obfuscates what is to most of us a very obvious choice. And it raises secondary issues about the conditions in which the decision to abort (or in the mirror image way the issue is framed in the US, the right to choose to abort) is acceptable if this is not.

The campaign against female infanticide and foeticide has been waged with varying success across several planes--the legal, the moral, the intellectual and the political. A sampler of this campaign is available here.