#nosgbv #LetterboxResistance: Two poems

#nosgbv Note to Self

"I write myself a note each day,

and I place it in my hat.

The wind comes by, the hat blows high

but that not the end of that

For ’round and ’round the world it goes

it lands here right behind myself,

I pick it up, and I read the note,

which is merely to remind myself

I’m Hans Christian Andersen,

Andersen, that’s me!" (Frank Loesser, c. 1952)

I heard this song in my teens, as part of an album of Danny Kaye songs, and have loved this idea of reminding oneself of who one is. Too much of our intrinsic self is altered by the world around us. Physical and sexual violence are not the only ways in which one can be diminished. One is also diminished and damaged by the ways of the world.

For instance, a crawling infant picks up an odd-shaped, bright colourd object lying within reach. She puts it in her mouth. Someone calls out, "Girls don't play with cars!" She does not know she's a girl, she does not know it's a car. It's handy. It's bright and attractive. It has an interesting shape and texture. It may have a good taste, or better yet, make for a good bite. But now we've begun to place limits on her curiosity. At fifteen, when she would rather play a game than read the news, we will reverse our instructions, and say to her, "You must show an interest in the world." In both instances, we will expect that curiosity to follow set patterns. She should show an interest in these questions and not those. With a little bit of luck (to borrow from another song), she will pay attention neither at eight months nor at fifteen years.

There is also our running commentary on physical appearance. Who the baby looks like; is the toddler tall for her age or not; does the boy have girlish eyelashes; is the girl too active for her own good--even little children are not spared. Puberty unleashes the worst in us. "Better take care of those pimples or you'll be scarred for life." "15 and still such a girlish voice?" And this before people move on to temperament and skill-sets--can she cook yet? why are you letting him choose a subject without job prospects? I want to say that we are changing, but I suspect that is still largely an affirmation. 

By the time we reach our 20s, what is left of that infant--blithely unaware of gender, curious about everything, accepting of everyone? Gone. Long gone. Doesn't matter. 

What matters is what is left within us. We are full of do's and don'ts, taboos and inhibitions. We convince ourselves of what we cannot do, for one reason or another. So many of us do not feel entitled to dream. We would like, very politely, a good job, a decent partner who is not too abusive and a good life. We would love more, love to have it all, but in our station, our dreams must be drawn within the borders of a limited space on the universal canvas. 

By the time we reach the middle years, it's hard to find ourselves--our truest selves, our best selves--in the middle of this mess of strictures and strings. And so today, as part of #LetterboxResistance, Prajnya's 16 Days Campaign activity of the day, I want to write myself a note--an aide-memoire. 

Dear Self,

Clear the clutter. 

Cut the crap.

Throw out the don't's.

Be ruthless with should's.

Sort out the do's,

and discard what you won't use.

Dust off the cobwebs

of duty and fear.

Find your true self,

bright, unafraid

and full of heart.

And hold on tight,

that's the hard part.

Through storms 

and fires and wars

that wage, stay still,

glow steady,

refuse to be caged.

From, Your Shadow.  

#nosgbv That feeble no

We have been talking about consent since yesterday, and the infamous 'feeble no' judgment has come up just once--maybe because we've really been talking basics.

But I want to reflect a little bit on the 'feeble no' that you know and I know is out there. It's the feeble no we teach our daughters to say so that when they visit someone and are asked, "Would you like some tea?" they know how to simper and say, "No, Aunty." It just needs to be loud enough to register as a polite answer. One level up and it would be too boisterous.

In workshops on sexual harassment, I hear that 'feeble no' all the time. I ask young women what they would do if someone propositioned them, and how they would communicate lack of assent. They reply, with the energy of a two-day old bouquet without fresh water, "No." That no. Then I make them repeat the 'no' with more and more energy and feeling till it brings the house down.

It's not their fault. They've been told to be seen and not heard. To be useful and not impose. To serve and to please without consideration for their own needs and feelings. To efface themselves.

Aunties and Uncles and Akkas and Dadas of all descriptions have felt free to pinch their cheeks in childhood and comment on their physical growth in adolescence. "Big girl you've become, aaah?" And then of course, "Come, give me a hug, I have a teddy bear for you." The girl that says 'no' audibly is the one who is a brat, a disgrace to her parents and watch out, will go nowhere in life thanks to her bad temperament.

That feeble no, carefully calibrated so as not to be heard, is the one that gets the most practice and praise all of one's life.

"Do you want another piece of dhokla?" No, thank you.
"Do you want to watch another channel?" No, thank you.
"Would you like some more tea?" I wouldn't mind. (Not, "I would love some!")
"I love you. I think you should go on a date with me." No. Please, no.

We tell girls that adding the word 'please' is wrong. That assailants hear the 'please' and nothing else. That they think it's the no-that-means-yes. 'Please' enfeebles 'no.'

There was that whole piece in the judgment about how educated women should be able to come up with more than a feeble 'no.' Agreed. The problem is educated women are also raised in a patriarchal society to be nice girls. And educated women are also afraid of assailants provoked to even greater violence. And educated women think, let me get away with the least physical injury.

I don't know. The truly mysterious element in the whole consent conversation is what goes on in an assailant's mind when he pushes past the push-back, the no, the attempted escape--to force himself. How do you not read the signals when someone does not want you near them, touching them, on them or in them? How self-obsessed do you have to be? How entitled?

And that's really what it is. Entitlement. Entitlement makes consent irrelevant.

"I love you. I think you should go on a date with me." No. Please, no.

It's not the 'no' that is feeble. It's the inner "But naturally!" in the assailant's mind that is too loud.

***

The distaste for 'no' runs very deep. We wanted to make a word-cloud graphic for the Twitter chat Prajnya had today on consent. Several attempts later, we realised that the various softwares we were trying were filtering out 'No' and 'Not' from the artwork. We figured out how to re-set the filters to get the image below. But... art imitates life?

***

As I write this almost-frivolous blogpost, Hadiya's right to choose has been dismissed as irrelevant. Rather than allowing her to pick where she wants to live and what she wants to do, she has been assigned a guardian. Women are too silly and emotional to choose and must be infantilised and protected. So not only are men entitled, but women are also less than human. How then can their assent or dissent matter to anyone?

And this is exactly why people feel free to make decisions for women--including whether they should have intercourse forced on them. They couldn't possibly be able to arrive at a preference on their own. And as for rights, those are for equal citizens.

***

The tone of these blogposts is a little flip, maybe, but I realise as the words tumble out that there is a clutted and overgrown forest inside my head, accumulated over the years of reading about these issues. I get to write and speak about them all the time but in sanitised, palatable and formal ways. Where does all the clutter and confusion and incoherent fury go--because, believe me, it is in there, dictating these words faster than my fingers can make them appear on this screen.... they must find a home in order for better ones to appear.

#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.

***

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.

***

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.

***

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! )

***

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.