Choice Feminism Is Capitalism In Slick Packaging-It's Not Worthy of You

"Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression"- bell hooks

There is no one single stream of thought in feminism and there have been different phases of the movement, both abroad and in India. Locally the women's movement has had a very different flavor  compared to its European counterpart, and with good reason. The concerns and life struggles of Indian women differ vastly from those elsewhere in the world. 

Within the movement, there are academics and activists. Academics study and decipher history, literature, social codes and norms, our economies and art in order to discern how patriarchy was built, and how it holds on to power through systemic and structural placements which place men in positions of power. They envisage the methods through which the patriarchy may be dismantled and women earn greater rights. While academic feminists theorise, activists do the work on the ground. They are not cut off from each other, rather there is a continuous exchange of ideas between them. Many of them cross over from one side to the other or some exist and thrive in both fields. There is a continuous exchange of ideas between them. There are myriads of women who are fighting for their rights in multitudinous ways of existence and they each negotiate the patriarchy in different ways.

Some of these acts are individual, they may achieve liberation to an extent, and enable them to extend freedoms in certain specific ways. Certainly, those particular negotiations are feminist acts in themselves.

 Big media, the advertising industry, the fashion, clothing and cosmetics industries which thrive on and amplify each other. This close nexus between these. Feminism has become newsworthy of late and these entities have latched on to this. It's where the big money is.

Capitalism and it's handmaiden the beauty industry which encompasses fashion and advertising, keep you wondering about your worth, and your focus on trying to achieve this unattainable ideal. Desirability is a trap women work towards achieving all their lives, but never actually get there. You keep yourself devalued- it's a harsh critic, the voice in your head, which examines you for fuckability, and finds you failing, time and again. 

"My choice is like my fingerprint" spouts Deepika Padukone, ironically, yet aptly for an advertising campaign for a fashion magazine, very obviously titled, My Choice. But of course, your choice is not unique! None of our choices in today's world are; either because we are choosing from a limited bouquet of choices, where we are denied access to many choices, only a  few are on offer.  In reality, a great deal of the choice on offer to consumer-citizens is illusionary. All the posturing at empowerment seems to only just strip away the word of any power. The hoopla around the word "empowerment" has made it to such a sorry pass where the sound of the word grates on the nerves. It's now a shorthand for a lot of things, save power to women.

Besides, in order to go on living in the materialistic, capitalist society, we have to pick our battles. For example, as a professional, you're expected to dress a certain way, in what "women's magazines" call " formal wear" or "work wear". The fashion industry organized around this, makes multiples of crores of rupees. 

You would ignore these unstated rules at your own peril. You not only risk not being taken seriously, sidelined, but also probably lose your job. This woman who came to work as a receptionist, was sent home for not wearing heels  in a story that seems equal parts to illustrate the lack of common sense and senseless objectification. Let us not even get started on the aspects of emotional labour  women in the service industry are expected to put in. 

So often so many hard won freedoms by our foremothers may enable us to exercise choices which may not have existed even half a century ago. But making a choice is not a feminist act in itself unless the playing field is level and the opportunities available to women were equal to those available to men. For example the wage gap or the fact that women quit well paying jobs to stay home to raise babies. These acts are often justified as feminist because the woman chose to do so. That would have been a real choice if both partners earned an equal amount, and the man taking time off to stay home with kids wouldn't be sneered at and it was no loss to the family in any way, regardless of which parent stays home. In an ideal world, they could probably take turns and none would lose out at work, by being devalued because of absence. Indeed in a feminist world, people would be living a life of dignity, not as corporate slaves and wouldn't be nervous wrecks for having missed a day of work.

Chasing the illusion of "having it all" while pushing through "the second shift" cannot be the life women dream of having. 

Women continue to be paid less and so many of us depend on lowly paid workers to hold up the home front and provide care and house work, at very low costs, while we "get ahead". Do we realize we our role in passing on the oppression?

It is easy to forget that the struggles of upper class feminism are not the only feminist struggles. There are other feminisms and they are thriving, and they are also fighting capitalism and neoliberalism. 

The Chipko volunteers and the Bangalore powrakarmikas, the Dalit Women Fight activists are all pushing the feminist agenda everyday. Women Irom Sharmila and Essar Batool are fighting the hegemonic Indian state that wants to rule with violence, under the shadow of draconian laws. 

They do it quietly, away from the media glare and floodlights. These are the real assertions of worth. Feminism is alive, in a myriad of shapes and forms. 

Dear Amit Shah, We Don't Need Anti-Romeo Squads

 As the campaigning for the Uttar Pradesh election was underway, Bharatiya Janata Party supremo Amit Shah was quoted during an election rally in Meerut, saying that the BJP will form "anti-romeo squads to protect girls  in Uttar Pradesh"

The statement underlines a total disregard of the state's law and order apparatus whose job it is to tackle cases of sexual assault. How will the police respond once groups of random men are vested with extra-Constitutional authority?

As activists have pointed out, because of the terrible manner in which their concerns are addressed, many women prefer not to report sexual assault.

That the "protection" and safety of women always trumps all other considerations is well established. Our media and discourse are rife with stories and articles alluding to the lack of women's "safety". The latent, unstated fear is that women will be sexually harassed or assaulted when out and about in public spaces and it is from this that they must be kept safe.

Why protection only of women, dear sir, and from whom?
At the core of this mindset lies the assumption that women need "protection" because, they need to defended from attacks by the strange men on the streets, mostly the indication being that "lower caste" men and men from the minority communities would be lurking in public places. This assumption totally ignores the fact that women face greater violence in their homes than they do outside it. The real reason behind this is, what if, god forbid, they exercise their right to choose their own partners for marriage? The horror! It is only reasonable to assume an adult should be able to take care of herself. But calling an Indian woman "a girl" is nothing short of an insult. Till the time she's married, a woman continues to be addressed as "girl".

This statement of Amit Shah's is nothing but dog whistle politics, signaling to his supporters the bogus  "love jihad" claims of his party. A phenomenon which exists only in name, cooked up by the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh and its affiliate bodies, is yet another stick to beat minority men with, specially Muslims. This propaganda has been around since the days before Indian Independence. Charu Gupta has written in the Economic and Political Weekly in detail about the unproven allegations that Muslim men were abducting Hindu girls in the 1920s. Yet it is a bogey that refuses to die down.

Good Hindu upper caste girls are expected to remain virgins till they are married to men of their parents' choice. This custom underpins the caste system. Caste is built and maintained through purity of the bloodline. Ensuring the paternity of the offspring to whom property will be passed on, is crucial. It is paramount to ascertain the virginity of the bride.

The worst form of dishonor that a Hindu man can imagine is that his daughter chooses a partner of her choice. Had it been really women's rights or their safety that our political leaders or elected representatives cared about, hundreds of crores of money allotted to the Nirbhaya Fund wouldn't lie unused, year  after year.

Besides, once the genie of vigilantism is unleashed with groups of men taking the law into their own hands, who knows where this will lead? It's a slippery slope best avoided. Besides, violence or its threat as a solutions to social ills have never worked.  It's high time we call out our politcians on their attempts to curtail women's autonomy in the name of safety. We are adults and we are free! Get used to it, uncleji!

(This piece was first published in Feminism In India ) 

Are Families Above Women?

Recently the Hindustan Times published a piece by Shashi Shekhar called Modern Families: Let's Keep Our Loved Ones Close.
Some aspects of the piece were quite bothersome and while attempting to decode it, I present my point of view here.

let's scratch the surface and take a look: what does the glorification of the family mean and who does it benefit?
The traditional definition of the family is: two or more people living together, related by birth, marriage or adoption. As members of a unit, they are supposed to support each other, in their general pursuit of a life of dignity. What if the unit turned against one of its own? 

Let us remember that historically, women were bound into the heterosexual, monogamous family to further the rights of men over their property, so they could be certain that the property they passed on, went only to their own offspring. Men leaned on the assurance of monogamy to ascertain that the child he called his own, was indeed his. The family has evolved to harness women's productive and reproductive labour for the benefit of the family and the man at its helm.

In the Indian context, the family has served as the basic unit of caste. Endogamy is the device used to ensure the perpetuation of caste. Endogamy or marriage within the same caste (while prohibited within certain kinship i.e. gotra) keeps the caste system thriving. A prerequisite for this is ensuring the virginity of the girl being given in marriage and even now in the year 2016. You need only glance at the matrimonial adverts in national newspaper to ascertain this. You'd be forgiven were you to think that you'd been transported bak in time. Certainly nothing gives away the fact that you're in 2016.

The normative heterosexual family is the unit of the state and it has been well established that the modern state functions in the image of the family. The power structure of the family is replicated at the state level and the sate defends the existence of the family and safeguards its interests.

Parsing through data collected by government agencies like National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), we find that among all registered cases of violence against women, the largest share was cruelty by husband and relatives. Women are most at risk with their own families. The safe haven that is the family, is certainly a mirage as far as countless married women are concerned.

Large numbers of women are are kidnapped every year and forcing a woman into marriage continues to be the chief reason to kidnap her. As per NCRB data, just last year, in 2015, close to 54% of all abductions of women were carried out to force them into marriage. 

The report also says that police sources said much high numbers of kidnapping are probably due to the fact that parents of girls who eloped for marriage often registered cases of kidnapping against the man the girl eloped with. That's the loving family for you, which refuses to accept a woman's right to choose her own life partner. The unmarried woman is unsafe with her own family.

When harassed for dowry, a woman is left to her own devices, often facing torture and cruelty not just at the hands of husband but also her in-laws. Parents usually tend to have used up every resource on organizing the wedding, hence a return to the natal home is out of the question for most women. Often, women don't survive the torture and are either killed or commit suicide. 

Over the last three years, 24,771 dowry deaths reported which translates to roughly one dead woman every hour and that is just according to the government statistics. We know that the number of case reported are only a fraction of the real numbers. 

While the writer pines for the elusive happy family, all this freely available data makes not a dent in the carefully constructed halo around the sacred entity.

Let us look at a few of the statements made in the piece.
1. "The police suspect that even after coming out of prison, they wouldn't desist from such activities."
This reference is to youth who commit crime and have been to prison. If our concern is to have them desist from crime, they must be provided with appropriate tools,  such as counseling, set up with alternatives for a job, and everything else required for their rehabilitation should be provided. 

2. "Even our law enforcement authorities find themselves helpless when it comes to bringing misguided youth back into the mainstream." 
This is what happens when we confuse the job of one person with another. The police aren't counsellors or psychologists. 

3. "The rapid pace at which India's family traditions are breaking down, also has sociologists worried."
Really? I thought change was the only constant and societies and their structures have always changed and will continue to do so.

4. "Here we shouldn’t forget that Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra have higher literacy levels than other states in the country. But that doesn’t seem to have an effect on the incidence of disputes within families." 

The higher number of disputes in educated families indicate only one thing: women are asserting themselves. With education and a paying job comes economic independence and this helps women to assert themselves. They may have a greater say in how their families are run, specially economic ones. Having become contributors to the home economy in different ways, they may also take part in the decision making. Is that so terrible? 

5. "The Hindi heartland might compete with these states in the spheres of industrialisation, per capita income or literacy but they are not too far behind in cases of marital discord."
No sir, a woman asserting herself, her individuality, to gain economic independence or just to live life in her own terms, is not bringing about "marital discord". The traditional marriage, is set up in such a way as to be heavily loaded against women, and men have disproportionate power in the relationship.

That a mainstream media house would publish such an anti-woman drivel today is not surprising. To discuss the family without discussing the welfare of women who are its integral part, while blaming them for the dysfunction of the institution is myopic at best.

The piece clearly stresses family over women. This plays into the mindset that results in untold atrocities against women, across the country, everyday. It wouldn't be a stretch to assert that the family ordained murders of women called honour killings  and burning of brides for dowry and killing 2000 baby girls everyday  (usually female fetuses in the womb) are all extensions of the same mindset which stresses family over women. 

Traditions which dishonour a member of any group group need to be amended or, better still, discarded. It is time we looked up a new version of the family or like other endangered species it will also become extinct.  Good riddance, says my feminist heart. 

A version of this post appeared first on the website of  Feminism In India, here

My Life, Your Honor?

 Just a few days ago, a woman was stabbed to death by a stalker in Delhi. Though she'd complained to the police, as the report states "the two families had reached a compromise". Other reports state that the attacker had promised to mend his ways. The woman's parents had opted to believe him. When women are stalked by men, parents and police all advise them to ignore it.

On the other hand, when a woman leaves home with a man of her choice, the police and woman's family go into overdrive, report marriages of choice as rape  and do everything in their power to track down the couple. A woman asserting a life choice is to be hounded, but a man harassing a woman, even putting her life in danger, is free to do as he pleases.

 In Pakistan, Qandeel Baloch, a self made social media star, and a model was murdered in her own home by her brother, because to his mind, he had brought dishonor to his family. 

To many of us in this part of the world, it's nothing new, nor too horrifying. We even give it a nice name to decrease the horror of it; we call it "honour killing" so we can turn away from the momentary shock and go back to our normal lives. We ignore the huge risks women face everyday, at the hands of those who are closest to them, even those whom they trust.

As per the Indian National Crime Records Bureau data for 2014 (PDF), out of 37,413 rape cases, in 32,187 cases the offenders were known to the victims accounting for 86.0% of total rape cases during 2014. Women are at greatest risk in their own homes, or in their neighborhoods or workplaces. 

A woman is expected to uphold family honour by maintaining chastity before marriage and sexual loyalty to her husband, afterwards. Any deviation from the norm is strictly regulated and punishment for the same endorsed by all sections and all classes. Such is the cultural conditioning that even apparently well-educated people fall into the trap of clubbing women into slots, judging them for respectability. So a senior woman politician who has lived abroad for years, has presumably seen a more liberal side of society, tweeted thus. 

                                 

Let's not assume that women are above sexism or that they don't want a share in the spoils the system promises them if they follow the rules. 

Since at least the second millennium Before Christ we have records telling us of laws that classed women into categories based on their sexualities, segregated into honourable women and the disreputable ones. 

The sexually available woman was to be despised, even though masculinity couldn't do without her, yet her very existence was begrudged her. 

The honourable woman had a home and a husband and her sexuality was the possession of her husband alone. Such a woman had been given in marriage by her father, having kept her virginity intact till the time of marriage. 

At the other end of the spectrum were the slave girls whose bodies could be used by their masters in any way they saw fit, by anyone they wished to oblige. They could be used to bestow favours upon or to pay back dues. Basically a slave woman was a commodity at the hands of her master.

In both these cases the sexuality of the woman is owned by a man. 

The only women who had any modicum of agency over their own bodies or sexualities were prostitutes. The segregation soon came to be enforced geographically and the sex workers were restricted to a quarter of the city, where 'respectable' women wouldn't be caught dead.

The biggest trick patriarchy played was to thus pit women against women, having them fight for the limited spoils of men's attention, their only recourse to any kind of value or source of power. 

This system worked as the male is not only enjoined to keep it in place but also enforce it with violence. It is in this that his "honor" lies. 

In modern day Indian sub-continent these same notions of honor tied to women's bodies continue to persist. The individual's identity is tied to the honor of the family, and that in turn is tied to the women's sexuality. The family honor outstrips loyalties to any individual. Killing a sibling is a reprehensible act, no doubt, but one which it is his unpleasant duty to perform. Family honor trumps women's lives every time. 

Unless  this mindset changes, no matter how many laws we pass, our women are not safe. All rhetoric of "women's safety" will remain just empty words without aggressive campaigns to change the  minds. Many more Qandeels and Karunas will continue to meet the same fate. 

 A version of this piece was published by Feminism in India, here

Movie Review : Parched, Of Women Thirsting For More

In a lovely sequence in the movie, Parched, two of its four main characters, comfort each other. Rani, played by Tannishtha Chatterjee (wow! what a powerhouse performance!) applies a soothing lotion to Lajjo's (played by Radhika Apte) wounds. Lajjo has once again been beaten by her drunkard husband.A range of  emotions flit across the women's gently-lit faces as they explore each others' injuries. In a sense, this scene is at the heart the movie:  it's a chronicle of women's attempts to make sense of their scars, while exploring their sexualities, and trying to meet the world head on.

The two other protagonists are Bijli, played by Surveen Chawla and  Lehar Khan who plays Janaki. While Rani, Lajjo and Bijli are friends, Janaki is Rani's daughter-in-law, a child bride. In a heart wrenching scene, just after Janaki has been raped by her husband, Rani rebukes her for sleeping late, throwing the usual taunts of 'didn't your mother teach you anything?" As the child limps towards the bath area my heart all but leapt out of my chest. Rani is as much a product of the society she lives in and mistreats her daughter-in-law the same way she was treated when she herself had been a child bride.

Later, in a poignant monologue to her mother-in-law Rani narrates her life events, most of it a tragic unfolding of events beyond her control. She states quite matter of factly, that despite assurances of an improvement in their situation, nothing does.

Bijli, the hard-as-nails sex worker, is saved from looking stereotyped only by Surveen's impressive performance. Though she may appear bindaas and carefree, she longs for a "regular" life. Despite the fact that she sets the terms of sale of her body, she is unable to stop violence and abuse. I'm yet to see on the Indian screen a sex worker with true agency. The portrayal seemed problematic to me for a movie so progressive at heart.  

In one of the heart-gooey-making sub plots the women of the village band together to successfully get a satellite TV dish  installed, despite opposition from the men. The other interesting sub plot is the love story of Kishan, a local guy and Naobi, a Manipuri woman. Kishan is also Lajjo and Rani's employer. Their marriage causes much consternation among the menfolk of the village.  With every blow to the patriarchal order, I sent up a cheer. Dear director Leena Yadav, hope you have many more to come! 

While the older men disapprove of Kishan's marriage, the younger boys sexually harass Naobi. One of these harassers is Gulab, Rani's son. He has scant respect for his mother while stealing money she is saving up to repay loans she took for his wedding. Rani finally finds it in her to stand up to him and steps in to stop his abuse of his wife. 

Adil Hussain plays a nameless dream lover who helps women discover their bodies while giving them huge orgasms, it seems. Slight eye roll happened there. Lets face it ladies, does such a man really exist? Here's an apparently homeless man with nothing to recommend him save his great sexual prowess. The sequence of love making, however, is very beautifully shot. 

Another gorgeous sequence is the women frolicking in the water in the dark, sharing laughter and camaraderie, something not seen in Bollywood or Hindi language cinema-at least that which I'm familiar with. 

Here is a movie which lets women speak in their own voices. We watch them negotiate their lives, struggle with the realities of gender and discover the pleasures of their sexualities as they traverse the course of the movie. These women may not always be triumphant but they try; they are active agents in their own lives.  In the end, they all don't come out flawless, but each woman grows with the arc of the narrative. That's  what a feminist movie looks like!

This article first appeared on the website of Feminism In India, here

Pressing the Panic Button on Women's Autonomy

Ever since the horrific incident on 16 December 2012 in the bus in Delhi, several measures have been taken both by the governments at the centre and in the states, for the cause of women's safety. For example, the enactment of new laws based on the suggestions of Justice Verma Committee. 
Some of the fallout, however, may not have been beneficial to women.

For instance, the government of Delhi had promised a surfeit of surveillance cameras  on DTC buses and bus stands to intimidate attackers and deter crime against women and hopefully help bring the perpetrators to book.What remains unsaid in this intent, is who will police the police? experiments in other cities have shown that survelliance rarely acts as a deterrent. Instead, knowing how our law enforcement works, we should wonder if the invasion of the privacy of millions of women is worth the rare chance of catching culprits and deterring crime. 

There has also been a suggestion for a national women's helpline number. Most cities already have a functioning emergency helpline number so what purpose is a separate one, dedicated to women, expected to serve, isn't immediately clear. Where the additional resources required for this, such as manpower and gadgets, will come from, has not been clarified either.

It has recently been announced that mobile phone companies have agreed to install a panic button  and for women in distress, and that police help will soon be available with just a press of finger on their phone. 

There are two problems with this. How many Indian women own smart phones or even mobile phones, for that matter? Out of the total 612 million female population, only 28% own a mobile phone says this report in live mint. 

Secondly, what happens once the panic button is pressed? Sadly it doesn't connect us to a spanking new, efficient and empathetic criminal justice system. Response times is such situations are crucial. Not to forget, a perceived threat by the perpetrator may lead to further endangering the victim, rather than help her. 

As Rukmini Srinivas wrote in this piece in The Hindu,  on the rhetoric surrounding rape, that women are far more likely to be assaulted by a partner, husband or family member than by a stranger. However, seeing as marital rape is illegal and incest too incendiary a topic for discussion or debate, the days way out is to shift the discourse to stranger rape and harp on the attack on mostly upper class women by men of lower socio economic strata.

The Indian state has always been paternalistic in its attitude toward women, looking upon them as creatures needing protection, with no will of their own. The surveillance cameras and the panic buttons all fit in with this mindset of women being considered helpless creatures needing protection. 

Studies have repeatedly shown that well lit pedestrian areas, street hawkers, good urban design, frequent public transport, are the most effective deterrents for criminals. 

On the one hand, an efficiently conducted investigation, thorough trial and closing the entire process within a certain time frame would help further the cause of justice by bringing the perps to book. At the same time, centering the survivor or a sexual assault or rape, aiding her recovery, physically and psychologically, should be the aim of any civilised society. Both of these objectives can be met by one stop trauma centres.

 However, when it comes to such measures which would have the most impact this is how our government responds; by backtracking and cutting down on crucial infrastructure: just 36 of the 660 promised rape crisis centres are going to be built over the coming years.

Safety, it turns out, is yet another stick which can be used to beat women with. If anything the loud voices harping on "women's safety" on the one hand and only looking at gimmicky, myopic short term solutions, on the other are only working to further limit women's autonomy. With each cry of 'safety' the doors are locked more firmly in women's faces and the bolts fastened more surely than ever. 

(restricting this discussion to women but let's not forget the fact that non gender performing persons/LGBTQ folk are more likely than women to be attacked yet there seems no provision or talk about their safety)