Facing up to anti-Muslim sentiment among Sikhs

So to another Pickled Politics thread. I thought I'd entered a parallel universe when I read the comments on the latest piece by Jai, titled 'British Sikh and Hindu groups release joint statement condemning EDL.' Besides the self-explanatory bit, Jai also provided some context with reference to the Sikh BNP and EDL members and set up a spiritual death-match between Guramit Singh of the EDL and Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the tenth guru of the Sikhs.

The first comment was by our dear Rumbold:

Jai:

While it is good that Hindu and Sikh organisations are condemning the EDL, as the EDL is trying to split Hindus and Sikhs from Muslims, a fair number of ‘mainstream’ Hindus and Sikhs are anti-Muslim; in my narrow circle I know three Hindu and Sikh girls who have been cut off by their families for dating/marrying Muslims. It would be nice to see these organisations attempt to tackle this bigotry too (which is, as you point out, against the teachings of the Gurus).

This is a perfectly fair point, and as someone who came to where I am now through witnessing the stunning bigotry of self-professed 'proper Sikhs,' I do agree wholeheartedly with it. I can't even fault the wording of it, really.

Which is where the parallel universe element came in, in comments in response to Rumbold. Firstly, Leon:

@ Rumbold,

I’m not sure why you’re raising this now, if I didn’t know you I’d say your comment looked like spite at best and at worst an attempt to spike the conversation.

There are issues within the Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

We need to support them when they’re doing right, and put pressure on them when they are doing wrong, but doing both at the same time just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

This comment left me aghast for a number of reasons. Earwicga endorsed it, saying 'What Leon said.' With admirable composure, Rumbold responded, touching upon a point I would go on to address:

Leon:

So groups release a statement condemning an Islamaphobic group. Good. I then wonder what they are going to do to challenge Islamaphobia in the wider Sikh and Hindu communities. That seems a reasonable point given the wider battle against anti-Muslim prejudice.

To return to the problems I had with Leon's post... I can fathom why he might have responded as he did (I'm not saying I'm right, merely speculating) - Rumbold being a white, middle-class man, could be seen to be effectively appropriating Sikh/Hindu/Asian concerns and voices. It seems almost as though Rumbold is being accused of concern trolling.

However, while Rumbold certainly cannot speak as a British Asian Sikh - neither can Leon, nor Earwicga. Leon is mixed-race and Earwicga is white. One way in which allies of minority communities - whether they're white, OR of another ethnic minority community - can fuck up is by enthusiastically shooting down people they perceive to be attacking a particular minority so that they, too, end up speaking 'for' that particular minority.

I am a British Asian Sikh - still in many ways culturally Sikh, if not religiously - and I am going to speak in that capacity, with full awareness that I do not represent every Sikh. I do, however, as a woman, represent a section of my particular minority group whose voices are barely tolerated, ignored, silenced and in many cases our opinions are just assumed. Being religion-free is even an advantage here, I would say, as it means I have no overriding interest in protecting 'the community'.

I've addressed the first point in Leon's comment - the defensive reaction to Rumbold's criticism, and I'll now address the second:

There are issues within the Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

This lazily trades on stereotypical assumptions that Pickled Politics itself started out trying hard to combat, with its fight against self-proclaimed 'community leaders'. There are no 'the Sikh and Hindu communities.' There are no closed, monolithic groups of Sikhs and Hindus as this statement implies. The reference to 'issues' is deliberately minimising - there are many 'issues' in Sikh and Hindu communities, just like there are in all communities, and reference to 'good work' is vague - so what? Christian missionary groups do 'good work' of various kinds - does this mean that they can't be criticised? I think not. A much more honest and accurate statement would have been to say:

There are issues with anti-Muslim sentiment within Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done to combat it within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

The problem, of course, which both Rumbold and myself pointed out, is that actions do not necessarily equal words. As anti-racist activists and womanists know, it's easy to release a statement condemning the most extreme examples of bigoted behaviour in a community without addressing much more common casual bigotries. We are constantly told to take white people's condemnation of the BNP, KKK, etc. as proof that we are 'post-racial', for example, which is absolutely fucking laughable when you consider that there is an established, overwhelmingly white movement in the US to discredit the black President by claiming that he was not really born in America and is not therefore American and also that a bunch of middle-class white men on an inexplicably-popular BBC show recently made the most appalling comments about Mexicans - straight out of the Republican playbook - and got away with it in the name of 'humour.'

White people fall over themselves to defend racism (and other bigotries) on the grounds of 'humour,' 'irony', and sometimes evoke the current trendy dead horse, of 'privacy' as in this shockingly shit piece by Charlie Brooker. The fact that the people that they are belittling are equal human beings never seems to count as a serious point worthy of consideration, should make it clear that we are not, in fact, equal human beings. I have seen and heard members of my family make 'humorous' anti-Muslim comments, but on the whole, the anti-Muslim sentiment that I've seen in Hindus and Sikhs comes from deficient self-awareness, massive, massive ignorance about Indian history and the lack of a secular political discourse in India. I probably won't elaborate just now - I'll save it for another post - but these are things which need addressing quite urgently. Since organised religion is about the religious group, not just individual belief, the signatories to the statement need to make sure that they are actively working to combat anti-Muslim sentiment in their communities wherever possible, not just by (in the case of Sikhs) pointing out how important Muslims have been in aiding the Gurus in Sikh history, but by encouraging Sikhs and Muslims to interact socially and not treating religion as a zero-sum game. Just because the Abrahamic religions all have a tortured, competitive relationship with each other, does not mean that Sikhs need to play that game - can we not just set ourselves apart, in the way that Buddhists seem to have done?

On to Leon's final point, while left me utterly enraged. I've split it into two parts:

1) We need to support them when they’re doing right, and put pressure on them when they are doing wrong 2) but doing both at the same time just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

1) Who the fuck is this 'we', and who the fuck are 'them'? Just who speaks for who here? If, as I suspect, Leon's 'we' refers to the likes of Rumbold, Earwicga etc. - then I would say - good, you see that NONE of you has the right to frame this debate. It comes across as unbelievably patronising - somewhat reminiscent of cultural relativism. We don't really understand the Other, and we don't want to be seen to judge, so let's hold our noses and let 'them' self-regulate! I thought Sunny and PP's good work combating community leaders was supposed to expose how contentious all this 'we' and 'they' BS is. Do I not belong to 'they' because I am an atheist? Or because I am a woman? It's just that, the kind of people who have the official authority to issue these kinds of media-friendly statements, don't generally get to where they are by giving a shit about people like me. They generally try to discipline and/or disown me - I have had this happen with the Sikh commenters on PP as well as in 'real life.'

2) Reading this, you would think that the EDL have some kind of direct line to every media outlet, imminently on the verge of being voted into office/picked to present Desert Island Discs/hired to write for the Daily Mail. As Jai's post points out, these are people who are so thick that, despite having a non-Muslim of Indian descent in their ranks, they couldn't tell the difference between Muslims and Hindus:

The EDL’s previous claims to be opposed “only to militant Islam” are further thrown into question by the fact that, for example, in October 2010 they held a large demonstration in Leicester, a city where the majority of British Asians are actually Gujarati Hindus. Furthermore, the rally was held during Navratri, a major annual Hindu festival which is of particular importance to Gujarati Hindus and which occurs just a couple of weeks before Diwali itself. I expect an “anti-Islam” rally by the EDL outside the Hare Krishna temple in Watford is next; and yes, I’m obviously being sarcastic, but you get my point.

While the bigotry of such a group should never be underestimated, we British Asians should also not have to carry with us the perpetual fear that 'something might happen.' This is our country too and we have just as much right to it as fuckwit bigots - our parents and predecessors took on racists more shameless and violent than this, in a public climate vastly less favourable to them (I think it was mentioned in the Sanjeev Bhaskar episode of The House That Made Me that during the Southall anti-NF demo in which Blair Peach died, the police were protecting the racists - I wouldn't be surprised). Central to that is not just highlighting the odd PR moment of 'unity' and trying to educate people about religious history, but acknowledging that people do say these anti-Muslim things in our community and taking them on. Failing to do so simply encourages a 'business as usual' approach where people provide the odd utopian soundbite and then go back to segregated lives of fear, ignorance and communalism.

I have also come to have a major bee in my bonnet about this 'you can't do two things at once' bollocks. It reeks of culturally-relativist arguments, as I said above, laden as it is with the sense of giving cookies. Let me explain the feminist concept of 'giving cookies' (WARNING: no actual cookies involved):

A feminist cookie is the term for the reward some men seem to be seeking for saying or doing something feminist. (There are equivalents for, eg, white people and being anti-racist or straight people and being anti-homophobia.)

In short, when people ask for cookies, they are essentially seeking credit where it's not really due. It's like when my brother thinks he should be thanked for loading the dishwasher, when my mum has done it every day for over 20 years. Even when people/groups aren't or don't seem to be seeking cookies, that doesn't mean they should be given. This goes back to what I was saying about Leon's comment being patronising: why t-f should we give these prominent Sikhs and Hindus cookies for releasing a statement?! How many people in their congregations are going to actually read or process it? Furthermore, how does effectively saying 'Islamophobia is bad, it hurts us all, I despair of it' actually translate to standing with our Muslim brethren? If there are actually going to be efforts in place, from here, to increase understanding between people, then great. My parents and family know that anti-Muslim sentiment is bad, which is why they get so defensive when I contend that Muslims are people too - it doesn't stop them from making bigoted throwaway remarks and going on lengthy rants about how Muslims are 'taking over' which verge on BNP/EDL rhetoric.

As a result of the way I was raised, I had a lot of pre-conceptions about Muslims and apprehension about social contact with them. A co-worker and students at my university helped me to start dumping the dirt from my mind, and then I met ACTUAL MUSLIMS via another job and Pickled Politics and a former Islamist is now one of my best friends. I still have my issues with Islam, but I have TRIED to challenge what was presented as reality to me. That is the kind of thing we need if we want to make a difference.

Ironically, given the reference to 'divide and rule' in the statement itself, Leon employs that classic tactic against dissent when he says that:

doing both at the same time [praising and criticising Sikh and Hindu groups for their reaction towards anti-Muslim sentiment in their ranks] just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

As I said in my angry comment in the thread - this tactic was used against women during the nationalist movement. Indian men emotionally blackmailed women in the emergent women's movement, presenting them with a choice between rights for women and rights for the nation as if the two were incompatible with each other. The idea of women as a transcendent political grouping threatened the oppressive edifice that nationalism was built on - the bodies of women imprisoned within the home, Indian clothes and domesticity. Thus Gandhi could present himself as being on the side of the suffragettes, while he promoted deeply regressive ideas about women that reduced them to a male-created ideal of femininity even whilst fetishising this ideal. The result, as Geraldine Forbes points out, was 'the development of [...] 'feminist nationalism'' in which female activists and their energies were co-opted to the national cause - exactly as happened with British feminists during the First World War.

Furthermore, it is not the '70s and '80s any more. A lot of British Asians feel comfortably settled here now, and the urgency that drove them to overcome their prejudices and unite with people they are normally so dismissive of - blacks, Muslims, etc. - isn't pressing any longer. There is never a 'right time' for criticism, as the Egyptian protests show - you just have to seize your moment, and a moment when cookies are uncritically being given to organisations for being seen to be 'doing' something is just perfect for me. Shocking though it is, I think we are all adult enough to handle the idea of communities as being permanently complex and multi-faceted, not lurching between 'doing right' and 'doing wrong' and capable of doing only one or the other at once. Implying that questioning - not even criticising - the groundwork beneath a PR gesture, is somehow selling everyone out to the racists, is rather low.

I'll try and return soon to elaborate on the problem of anti-Muslim sentiment among British Asian Sikhs (and Hindus), and consider the misunderstandings that fuel it.

Putting Things Right

A while back, I had a go at Laurie of Penny Red. I feel pretty bad about that now, to be honest. Not that there wasn't some truth to what I said - but really, what was I expecting? That she should be able to represent the likes of me? Of course she can't; and it's totally unreasonable to expect such a thing of her. Furthermore, although I hope she ends up as an investigative journalist (I imagine she'd be super-duper at that!), she can do what she likes in the meantime. The whole thing did perhaps come off harsher than intended; essentially what I was saying is 'you can do better than this' when it comes to some of her writing...

But who made me an arbiter of what is good? Who am I to tell someone else (especially someone who ain't listening, haha) to 'do better'? This - this post right here - is about me trying to put things right. There's a lot that needs to be put right. This v. good and simple post on PR has inspired me to try and begin to do so, if nothing else.

What I was expecting of her is the same thing I expect of myself. To do better. To strive for perfection. To achieve consistency all the time, blah blah blah. As her post so ably describes, we are all prone to this tendency. It is worse in some ways for women, than it is for men. They're not free of it either, though.

I appear to have indulged in classic projection and lashed out at a fellow struggler rather than stopping and thinking about why I did that. Having said that, I do still want her to go on and become a Socialist Superwoman, and I sincerely hope that she won't lose sight of herself in striving to achieve success. That is a genuine warning, because in trying to sell an unpopular cause to people, one can find oneself unexpectedly compromised. Everyone knows that... I am also developing some rad-fem tendencies, thanks in large part to this blog (and the assholes on Cif but also seemingly EVERYWHERE ELSE on t'Interwebz!), and so I got a bit unfair on someone who I felt didn't have to be quite as 'feminist' as me.

How stupid is that, eh? You live and you learn, though, I guess. I think that is true of many Asian feminists though - there is quite a gulf between what they, and their white (middle-class...) counterparts are concerned with. That is nobody's fault. We have to deal much more with really barbaric things like honour-killings, and the pressure of being sandwiched between liberal society (not free of misogyny and sexism for all that...) and conservative families.

For example, Laurie mentions in her post how:

I've just been watching Meera Syal's documentary about self-harm, in which she asks, amongst other things, why Asian women in particular are so very high-acheiving and yet so desperately unhappy - being the group statistically most likely both to graduate with high honours and to deliberately hurt their bodies.

There you go. We have more freedom to work than is still permitted in India, Bangladesh, China et al (though those countries ARE, in some cases, getting better for women...) yet in many cases, our cultures don't sensitively adjust to this. Instead, it is expected that women will work full-time - AND be perfect slave housewives. It's not just the job market, but also the marriage market, we have to grey our pretty little heads over. British middle-class society also still has this mindset in many cases, but not in the same way as the Asian community.

Paradoxically, no-one wants to touch with a bargepole any woman who doesn't have a high-powered degree (that means I'm out of the running, eh?) - think Biomedical Sciences, Accounting, Medicine, Law... teaching as well. Yet in most cases, she also has to be a housewife. Getting 'lucky' involves all or any of the following:

a) Your husband doesn't hassle you about housework (for the most part) and/or sometimes even HELPS (aka my father).
b) You don't live with your mother-in-law.
c) Your mother-in-law doesn't expect you to become her.


Quite simply, you're not allowed to be thick, dark, rebellious or lazy. Given that I am both rebellious and lazy, my mum actually used to mutter: 'Thank God you have fair skin.' My mother has also tried repeatedly to break my spirit, claiming that she's just preparing me for my mother-in-law. Alongside this, she harangued both my sisters to learn Indian cooking (including how to make a full dinner in one go, even though NOBODY I know, us included, ever eats that). Despite both successfully doing so, she subsequently tried to blame all marital problems, especially my eldest sister's, on cooking.

So, my second-eldest sister and I have a lengthy discussion with my mum about how our brother-in-law is a psychopathic abuser, who enjoys publicly humiliating my sister and refuses to either let her come see us, or come to see us with her. This may last 20 minutes or longer. Mother nods agreeingly and even participates. Two minutes later, she is ranting about how it is all my sister's fault, and talking about cooking. (Although she dropped cooking-as-cause after about a year-and-a-half of ongoing strife...)

The thing is: my mum means well. 'Nine times out of ten,' she informed me with a faded bitterness, 'the woman must bend.' It didn't matter that I actually had a boyfriend at the time who cooked for me and shared the housework (at one stage when he briefly lived with me, just before finishing his degree, he was actually preparing every meal and doing all the washing-up while I worked on a project). She had seen what it is like for us Punjabi women, the sham of Sikh equality, and she wanted there to be no hope to so cruelly give way, treacherously feather-light, to betrayal and disappointment.

Despite having a decent boyfriend at the time, I could see myself falling into the patriarchy's tentacles. I sincerely believed that I would never make it to 21, and that if I did, I would find myself in a marriage that would eventually drive me to suicide. How could I continue my mother's cycle, and raise children that I resented? Why would I want to raise another child like myself, plagued by self-doubt and devoured by the family pack?

I was so hellishly afraid of this happening to me that I clung to my now-ex, despite not being happy. The fact that he largely didn't mean to upset me became a handy guilt-trigger, for when I wondered how the hell I could ever love him. I went through my degree, picking up Firsts and even winning a prize. The initial hostility of my family to my education choices gave way to a less-antagonistic but not-much-more-satisfying complacency. They told me 'Well done,' and then would add that I SHOULD be getting marks like that. Their congratulations were always severely compromised by the fact that they neither understood, nor particularly cared, WHAT I was good at. There was also an underlying assumption that what I was doing was not really that difficult or worthwhile.

This last attitude infected me deeply. It birthed in me a painful and schizophrenic feeling. I regarded my mute and detached contemporaries in seminar rooms with a kind of superior hatred. How many of them had been told that they would study English 'over my dead body' by their sisters? How many of them had earned the right to be there, like I had, and were capitalising on it feverishly, like I was?

Even as I felt like this, I kept myself 'humble' by reminding myself always, in a back corner of my brain, that I wasn't doing anything useful or important. But I was also doing French! But I wasn't going into business with it. Even though I hated the French part of my degree at times, it gave me a further edge over the other losers. Were they struggling like I was struggling? Did they have to dilute their favourite subject, just to be taken remotely seriously?

The evidently gigantic chip on my shoulder was carved into deeper by this 'humility' I enforced on myself. One of my best friends inadvertently contributed to it when she joined in with my mocking of other students saying that to those kinds of people, she would say: 'I'm doing SCIENCE, bitches.' I must never get above myself because literature was not essential to the world the way science was. Yet this attitude allowed me to mock those who were fanatically devoted when I didn't understand things - they were out of touch. They didn't see, like I saw, that science mattered more!

Ironic, really. I had tried to take science at A-level, had found it a nightmare (though definitely interesting) and then made a defiant show of taking arts at uni, because other people got to, so why shouldn't I? Deep down, though, I had internalised my family's beliefs and knew that I had failed at perfection. It was bad enough that I was lazy and rebellious, aware of the sexual inequality around me. Now, I had to mess up the career thing too. I was not ambitious enough to reply 'journalist' quick-fire when well-meaning people Qed me about what I would do afterwards.

The one thing that galvanised me above all else, was injustice. Especially the treatment of women by our community. I knew this wasn't exactly a 'career choice' though, and I resented that it was so deeply embedded in my being. I resented others, as just described, because they were normal. I superficially belonged to their world, but behind the facade of shared interests and economic/educational status or political views, lurked That Bloody Awareness. My aunt abandoned. My cousin, believed to be murdered. My other cousin, forced into marriage then deceived and abandoned. My sister, pushed into marriage when she was not, and might never be, ready.

These women were in me and with me, and I couldn't relax and make small talk like normal people. I'm still very socially inept.

[Interlude: My mother just came down because I am STILL up, and when I told her I was writing and that I had to do it, called me 'weird' and said 'You'd better come down to Earth, you're flying around in the clouds.' Thank you, mother...]

I was, and still am, wrong wrong wrong. Odd, and wrong. I'm the lightest in the family. I'm the only one who didn't pursue a science degree. I'm the first child (and until my brother, the only one) to have lived away from home. I'm also the only agnostic, and the only one to date two very 'wrong' men. One, a non-6-foot, non-Punjabi atheist. The second, a 6ft, fair-skinned, believes-in-God dreamboat... only he's a) white b) a historian, with a penchant for reasoned debate on just about everything. Given that my parents like to subscribe to Daily Mail worldviews and a, er, 'Sikh-centric' view of history, it's going to be interesting (i.e., the other day, they were watching a man talking about how Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a saint, and totally right to agitate for a separate Sikh state...). If they ever meet.

So ja, I am a spectacular failure. I plan on raking myself over the coals some more in later posts (ooh, what fun!). Even my body is all wrong for a supposed 'Indian' woman. I'm slightly taller than a lot of the Indian girls I see (despite being about average for a British woman), and I don't really look Indian at all. I'm most frequently mistaken for Iranian and Greek, but also Spanish. I'm not tiny and petite and delicate-looking. To quote Laurie again:

I weigh almost nine stone; I have fat on my upper arms... I have d-cup breasts, which I despise, and a tummy which no amount of sit-ups will flatten.

Sorry, Punjabi Sikh community of Britain! Sorry British society! I don't fit either of your notions of 'conventionally attractive.' Believe me, the shops have drummed it home by now that an apple-shaped body is NOT GOOD. I'm not Kelly Brook, and I'm not Freida Pinto either. I didn't trade in my plait and glasses for feathered/layers and contacts as soon as I hit 16. I want to aim for more than a car, a house near my parents and a husband that doesn't hit me. I won't pretend stoically that the guilt and shame that keep us locked into deceiving our parents and beating ourselves up are to be respected or tolerated.

Call me pathetically feminine if you will, call me 'coconut' and 'posh' and whatever else. I will cry in your faces about the fact that I have been, and still am, hurting. No 'put up or shut up.' How about 'fess 'up, or fuck off'?

Sex Before Marriage - Bring It On

I have been moved to write this by a series of comments on a note I posted on Facebook. An American who took a bizarrely thorough interest (not romantic, just general) in me and who I fell out with/stopped talking to via the Internet a while back assumed that because I said I don't believe in waiting till marriage to have sex, that I am no longer a virgin:

'the mistaken.. version was...."I'm just saying that I don't believe in sex
before marriage"...i would be relieved.....if the contrary was not approaching
the end point....then u may say. why...to be blunt or direct as i call it... the
answer is:.because u were once a sweet virgin girl..!'

The implication being that 'once' I was 'sweet' and a 'girl' and now I'm not, apparently (Might I just say that I am so not disclosing any details of that here, it's my business and no-one else's).

That was precisely what infuriated me about such a comment. Where is the need to extrapolate from a general view of mine and then try to apply it to me? The ongoing discourse is only making me angrier and angrier, which at this time of sadness-prone-ness, is welcome.

More than anything, it made me angry because it reminded me of the wall that we South Asian feminists come up against - and will continue to come up against - when we try and deal with things like this directly. I know enough of our society to be fully aware that throwing up your hands and saying 'This is who I am, take me as I am' doesn't work. It might make you feel better, in that you'll stop living a lie, but then the bigots will regroup and bear down on you again. That's the precise problem - you can't reason with bigots whose beliefs are rooted firmly in their irrational, emotional prejudices.

I will just say that the fun didn't stop there. I replied, saying:

'.because u were once a sweet virgin girl..!'

Er, how can you presume to know about my sexual status just because I've said I no longer believe in sex before marriage? Nice jumping-to-conclusions there.

I know a lot of men, particularly those of South Asian descent, just love the idea of the virgin bride. However, knowing increasingly more about the realities of Indian marriages (at the very least), I find the thought of waiting until marriage quite terrifying, as do many women. Especially, as is usually the case, you don't know your partner very well, or even not at all.

And here is the rest of it in full. Him:

"the death of virginity at ur age begins.. when u no longer value it.."
i didnt quite pressume....i infer from the absence of a clarity...
i hope u dont find it rude...
i wonder if ur field research.. of "lot of men" and "indian marriages" reduced to ur CENSORED .."lot"

Me:

No. How did I imply that, even directly? I simply replied that my 'field of research' isn't necessarily as narrow as you seem to be assuming, and that I have based my opinions on judging for myself, things I have overheard and directly discussed, and my knowledge of what it is like trying to do things 'the traditional way.'

Him:

so are saying.. the ppl above 30 yrs of age... born and raised... in the "3rd world" have endoresed ur present view..? are including ur parents... u discussed this with them..


when did u come to ur current view point on this precious matters....?
did u include ur parents in this discussion..?

I stopped responding here, and then deleted him from my friends list. I was absolutely furious, and my ex even said 'What a dick.' I just could not believe it. A man in another country (America), who does not know me, who has no real link to me whatsoever and whom I have nothing in common with save for the fact that we both, as far as I know, 'originate' from India, policing my sexuality?

This is where anti-feminist wackjobs would leap in and say 'How is he policing it? He's simply asking if your parents are aware of what their daughter is up to, HAVING CONSIDERATION FOR THEM.'

To which I'd say: read the whole thing, fuckers. Where exactly does my stance (disapproving about waiting till marriage to have sex) cross over into my private life? At what point did I stand up and say 'YEAH, I'VE LOST MY VURGINITY AN IT WOZ GRATE TOO!!11!!'?

That's just it - I didn't, because contrary to the insulting assumptions being made here, this isn't another story you can write off as 'Oh, she met somebody she wanted to sleep with. Just another slut then!'

See, my 'skinny friend' who I haven't mentioned for ages took it personally when he found out that I'd kissed TL and said 'I thought you were different.' Trans: you turned out to be just another slapper. Note how the same assumption is being made about me by this man, ALSO of Indian extraction. Why, despite my affirming that the two things are not linked, does he persist in asserting that I must have had sex before marriage just because I said I don't believe in waiting? And furthermore, what business of his is it anyway?

Witnessing the break-up of a marriage, being aware of the lack of sex education that women of South Asian descent receive (South Asians in general, but it's worse for women since the obsession with our being 'pure' and 'innocent' means we don't get to participate in the same kind of consequence-free fucking and hence experience-gaining that the males frequently do...!) and considering the things that will be expected of me when I'm married, as well as a comment on Pickled Politics by the commenter Jai (which I won't link to because I have no idea where it was now)... all these things made me think. A big part of my sister's break-up was the fact that the guy didn't want children with her.

I began to think about that. I am a fairly sensual person and I knew I'd want to have sex for more than just procreation, but given my lack of knowledge how was I supposed to know what to do? I will tell you totally honestly that despite receiving some sex ed at school, I wasn't even sure where in me it was meant to go. Yes, I was that clueless. I did research on this (Internet, talking to friends) and was told that in order for it to go in, I'd have to be 'wet and slippery.' 'How does that happen though?' I asked. 'You have to be relaxed and turned on,' I was told.

I thought of a woman shipped over from India, to meet her husband for the first time, or my sister, married to a man she had known for a matter of months, a man who enjoyed slighting her and trying to control her. I thought of the prescriptiveness of our culture that treats sensuality, but female sensuality in particular, with huge doses of guilt and shame, preventing women from being able to understand their bodies and use them effectively. Jai's comment had been that for many women, the wedding night is effectively rape (I think he was talking about arranged marriages in particular though). I thought about it, and hang on, he was right. The 'consent' given was highly dubious - not really given by the woman within the couple, but applied from outside by society, in the form of the marriage ritual.

Far from 'consent,' it was rather submission - a submission which her female relatives, more often than not would groom her for. The patriarchy would make her understand that this was expected of her, because it is a husband's and his family's right to expect an heir. Many women want stability and want children, and then are implanted with so much fear and such low expectations, that they yield. It is a general submission. Learning to live with it is Stockholm Syndrome, not love (though that's not to say that love can't happen in the course of the marriage). When you have to sleep with a man at the start, when you don't know him well enough to be safe OR you do know him but he doesn't understand/appreciate your needs, it ends up becoming rape, does it not? The 'consent' is extracted, not offered freely.

Although, I bet that in many modern couples, the 'wedding night' doesn't happen at that time, because they are probably both too exhausted by the day's events. Ironic really - I criticise the excess of Indian weddings, but I suppose in a way, it's almost doing brides a favour in some instances...

I must say here again that I haven't touched on all the things that have drawn me to think this. Meeting a long-lost friend who had put her daughter's husband and in-laws in jail for their rampant mistreatment of her (including violently buggering her, which my friend only learnt of via the police report, which she couldn't bring herself to finish, understandably), the idea of marriage as prostitution... (I know it's Bindel, but swallow down the horror and just read the interview - she doesn't interject! Thankfully. I think she's probably too overcome with hero-worship, or something...).

Both that American and my ex-friend can fuck right off, because they are just more dull, unthinking collaborators with the patriarchy. Who gives you the right to police my sexuality, ey? It's MY BODY, not yours, and not really my parents' either. To be crude, if I have sex or not, it's MY BODY PARTS that are interacting with another's, not my mum's and not my dad's. Ergo it is only a matter for my parents if I were to get pregnant (H to the E double L no) and have to rely on them financially - because that would directly affect them.

I find it outrageous too that my virginity is assigned a value and deemed as the marker of my becoming an adult. How fucking patronising is that? I'm an adult upon reaching the legal age, though I could emotionally be an adult beforehand. Engaging in a physical act, while undoubtedly a milestone, is not THE milestone for me, thank you. I must ask as well: why is my sex life or lack thereof so 'precious' to you? Is it a heap of gold in which you have a stake invested? Did you 'give' part or all of it to me? No, you did not. So, mind your own business and piss off, if you please.

It really does bewilder me why people do this though. Is it because I am fair-skinned and relatively pretty? Not just that, but I look younger than I am and sort of innocent, which is probably why the weirdos seem to flock to me. I'm also relatively open, friendly and polite, which no doubt encourages them. It infuriates me though, because my parents have always tried to imply that such behaviour is 'weak' and that made me only more determined to stick to it. How dare you think I'm weak? I'm strong enough to admit my own ignorance on many topics, and I'm strong enough to have carried the emotional weight of someone 10 years my senior. It's my body; butt out.

(I just wish I could be one of the Save The Earth Foundation members beating up the Sri Ram Sena wankers who attacked women for daring to go to the pub in Mangalore). This is why I want to make sure I do SOME SORT of women's rights-based work this summer, even if it's only for two weeks. A girl's gotta fight.

THANK YOU to my four subscribed readers by the way, I appreciate the fact that you think I'm worthwhile enough to subscribe to and I am sorry for my general shittiness. I'm really not good with people. :D As to lurkers or random readers - I hope you find something educative here. If not - well, tough titties.

Identity, Culture and All Dat 'Ish

As any fule kno, the um, 'situation' with the Gaza Strip and Israel has provoked a lot of what I can only term sheer utter fucking lunacy everywhere. Pop along to Pickled Politics and scroll down a little to marvel at the sheer volume of articles on it; or if you're a rubbernecking connoisseur, wade into the brain-rotting depths of personal insults and virulent misunderstandings and misinterpretations that tend to make up the comment threads of such articles. Sheesh. I have heard several times how mental people go over I/P, but to see it in action is really something else. Some brave commenters, such as one douglas clark, ventured to say that British Jews should not be forced to shoulder the responsibility of Israel's actions and expected to 'make everything right' from a tiny island far away (I paraphrase). Now, that seems like common sense, don' it?

It got me thinking again on how so much of the danger that comes from having a religious identity (as far as I'm concerned) is in that symbolism. I'm far too timid to say anything like that the world should be rid of religion; I like to throw up my hands on these matters and say, I don't know, and if pressed, I could give you an answer, but not a simple one. I can't ever see myself becoming famous because I don't on the whole do snappy soundbites or 'big ideas' - but back to religious symbolism. It scares me because it allows, nay in many cases, demands the establishment of a connection of oneself with a much larger body of people. The way I see it, many people 'get into' religion for the community and stay for the God (forgive me if that sounds very cynical, and just to elaborate, I'm talking here about the things that keep people born within religion within it, but especially of those who leave and 'come back' or those who enter for the first time...).

Now that is all very edifying and so forth, but it becomes hugely problematic when you start to think about what this means. What it means, as I see it, is a declaration by the individual of surrender to a collective, over certain things and at certain times. In short, it's like hazing or any sort of unpleasant club membership, and even if you were BORN with those privileges, you never know when the tide of mass opinion might turn against you. Hence, though more shored-up than the new convert, you're still forever at risk of being undermined by the very fact of your 'membership', paradoxical as it sounds.

(Might I just say how painfully paradoxical this strikes me as? A significant part of the promise of religion to many is as an access of ready-made identity, culture, history, yadda yadda yadda... and instead it gets to the stage where you're always having to prove yourself. Well, I guess as the popular maxim goes, in life, nothing (but nothing) is free!).

Now, it must be averred that this risk of being undermined is not always greatly present. It tends to emerge handily with the arrival of an Other. I suppose the process works something like this: your 'identity' and 'culture' are threatened, hence you are threatened; by aggressively reasserting these, you refuse the attempt of the Other to undermine you completely. However, as we have already established, this shadowy Other (which may not be as much of a threat as imagined to be, who knows?) will then become projected unconsciously upon your fellow-believers for whom you must perform the rituals of belief. Isn't it ungracious? Isn't it undignified, how the best and brightest of us find ourselves bending the knee before those we know, know, in our hearts and minds to be stupid, ugly, and generally inferior... and yet whom the deranged reach of (oft-bigoted) zeal places on the podium, above us?

I commented disparagingly on a thread about a Sikh 'holocaust' museum, saying that I don't think the word should be bandied about quite so readily. Aye right, I fuckin' don't - the word means 'burnt sacrifice' and was applied to the full horror of the Nazi plan (need I really mention the gas chambers here...?) in light of the specificity of how this plan was implemented. I am a writer; I have the most enormous respect for words and it really annoys me when people don't use them properly, or use them out of context. Fuck you if you think that's precious - you wouldn't say the same of someone like Ben Goldacre seeking to debunk bad science now, would you? Miscommunication, apart from when it's deliberate, has a lot to do with making our lives harder than they ought to be, and the misuse of language is one of those things. Call the suffering of other minority communities 'genocide', call it 'mass murder' - but given how saturated this word has become with meaning - and that too after a prolonged effort by History not to let us forget such an awful happening - don't go bandying it about. Especially when the events in question are lacking in the same scale, type of mass-murder and specificity of evil intent.

(Rumbold helpfully intervened to explain what I was saying before I even could myself, so I have left no further comment 'pon that thread. Please head over to Charlie Brooker to see, fully and perfectly expressed, how I ultimately feel about Internet 'debates'. Ta for that Rumbold, true to form you put it rather clearer and more polite than I probably would've managed... comment threads often fill me with impotent rage, and then I feel dirty, as if I've just rubbed myself all over with The Daily Mail, and vow to do something REAL when my degree is over).

To return to the point - I can't help thinking that such things happening - such ridiculous abuses of language and over-aggressiveness - come, because with things like I/P, people's 'imagined' ancestry begins to come to the fore. Hello, trouble. The collective, baying for blood, seeks its recompense of the individual - now is the time to prove yourself, Sonny Jim! Now show your ideological colours! Lo, and so it comes to pass that people in Great Britain set about each other from the screens of their computers over something which is happening far, far away and to which they are not (short of having relatives in Gaza or Israel) directly connected. I mean, ffs, the link between Jews and Israel is imagined and symbolic, just as the link between Muslims and Muslims in Gaza is imagined and symbolic. Why do you suddenly feel the need to multiply yourself into a fucking representative of your whole religion? Because your people are being attacked here - your people, that's who! Jayzus.

I think here of all the times in the past that I have been forced to say things that I don't believe and agree with statements I find abominable in order to avoid attracting my family's negative attentions. I did it up to a certain age, and then I realised that I didn't have to any more. I could use the power of silence against them. They could infer what they wanted from it; I would not agree, and having got in serious grief on past occasions, I would not condemn either. If this was a coward's way out, I didn't care. My objective was to protect myself and to emerge intact.

My mother has made the observation in the past - very accurate, I feel - that it is only wealthy, middle-class people who have the time to dwell on these things. While this is not entirely true (I'm sure there have been some suicide bombers who weren't fairly financially stable too - or does that only fuel my mum's theory, in implying that poverty only added to ideological frenzy?), there is a LOT of truth to it. While discussing things is all very well and good, I often feel that if you are going to spit blood so, then why the heck don't you get off your arse and do something to help directly? Complain to the BBC, give money to the DEC, hell, fly out there and do something. Just spare me the bitching, and the soapbox-ing, which begin frankly to dive towards unsettling levels of moralisation and dogma, for me. A minority of disenfranchised people will, inevitably, react badly to the injustices that have befallen them - but since when was stooping to that level acceptable? What of all the other people who just want to fucking get by? Like me, they're more concerned with survival rather than ideology. Life is hard enough 'secular' as it is.

Religious fraternity and perspective is not enough when terrible things like this happen. People must remember that we are all ultimately human and that ultimately all the vitriol begets no solutions and no progress. Of course, there are always those who profit from such quarrels, but if people learn to practise a bit more forgiveness and a bit more forgetting, hopefully the planet can proceed on to the future.

Just to bore you senseless a little further, all this really churned about in my brain like clothes in the washing machine when my mum read to me a hilarious, and I fully believe, fictional account of a Sikh wedding (in two parts) from a Punjabi newspaper. Apparently in the duration of this story, some 'sensible observer' remarked how there were far too many women at weddings these days; if you went to the marriage palaces, all you would see was women, and that in the old days, women weren't even meant to be part of the baraat (the wedding procession, otherwise understood as the arrival of the groom and his party at the marriage venue). I immediately stiffened, my brain standing to attention like a guitar-string being pulled taut. My mater had not noticed this; nor did she notice the sudden, emergent incongruity of this remark peeking its ugly, goblin little head from the narrative.

As I glanced idly at the sheet she was holding out before her, a dim sort of epiphany set in. I tilted my head, casually covering the sheet with my gaze - yup. I rolled back my memory to previous glimpses of this paper (I think it must have been the Punjabi section of The Sikh times) - yup. The overwhelming majority of the participants in this production were male, bearded, turbanned and for the most part, pretty old (late 30s onwards). There were women (or there was one I knew of definitely, anyway) in the English part of the paper, but the only columnist I could think of, Rupi Gohlar, was consigned unfussily to a slim, 6cm-wide column somewhere near the entertainment section, which, if I was not looking for it, I would have likely failed to notice (first couple of times, I did miss it).

(To any Private Eye Readers, I appeal to you to recall the E.J. Thribb column. Do you see it now, in your mind? Yes, that's very much what her column resembles, in its slender insignificance. I am struggling now to recall if there are actually any female stalwarts besides Rupi).

I continued to take in what was being read to me, almost laughing at the right moments, but inside I vibrated with epiphany spreading, like the opening of a curtain admits more sunshine. Had I not, upon viewing Channel Punjab, only ever viewed the blurry outlines of women stereotypically 'dancing in the fields' (or had I imagined that too?) and consigned to women-only programmes such as Trinjhan (as far as I know it, a women's talkshow where they had writers and so forth on)? Other than that, women abounded only in the horribly cheap Star-Plus knock-off soaps, where a stereotypical mother-in-law bitch-from-hell would try to undo her stereotypically butter-wouldn't-melt daughter-in-law. Things might be complicated by the arrival of, or transformation of the latter into, a stereotypically gold-digging Westernised 'un-woman'.

I cast about in desperation, but the awareness was glaring me in the face. This was simply not me! None of these were me, and a slow, snakelike rage bubbled luxuriously in my veins. To think that all my life I had been told - had it insisted upon to me - that this was the right and the true, the tradition in which I belonged! I had grown up thinking that Punjabi culture and Sikh culture were one and the same. As I delved into Sikh history, I became much more conscious of the guiding principles of that religion, and as I began to find out more about Punjabi culture - through talking to people other than my parents - cracks began to appear. I discovered that Punjabis had a reputation for being big drinkers and loving fried chicken (that'd explain our local high street then, I tell you...) and, above all else, I began to notice the almost obsessive and deranged sense of male privilege that underscored Punjabi society. I suspect this went something like this: Punjabi men, being among the tallest, strongest and fairest-skinned in India (remember how colour-conscious India is!) were not only superior to women as it is taken for granted that men always are in Indian culture, but also superior to other Indian men! Hence they had extra entitlement!

The fact that the Punjab abounded with rich landowners whose sense of self-worth was only further pumped by laying claim to the glories of Sikh military history won't have helped. And so it came to pass that I watched Long Da Lishkara (a cult Punjabi film made the year before I was born) with my family, I think around the age of 11 or 12. I had not understood the obsession, in some films, with showing women jumping into wells. My young brain established that this must be for them to kill themselves - but why were they killing themselves? The screen soon brought me the answer.

A turbanned, well-dressed man - a man with a neat beard and moustache, and a fair complexion, almost like my own father - was holding a tumbler of whisky. I knew not the name of it, but by the shape and design of the glass, and by the colour of the liquid it housed, could discern what it was. I was horrified. Here was, to all intents and purposes, a Sikh man taking alcohol. Did he not realise it was forbidden? I was to be more horrified still, however, as he advanced upon the servant tidying the room. He seemed delighted by her; she was terrified. He continued to advance on her, I think breaking the glass, if I remember correctly to further frighten her, with his wrath. He managed to trap her on the bed somehow, her horrified shrieks and pleas for mercy only irritating him. Though the next part was obviously absent and left unelaborated upon, my precocious mind made sense of it. He had raped her, and she killed herself for having borne an illegitimate daughter.

My brain struggled. So the stereotypes were true, then? Punjabis were capable not only of drink, but of roundly disregarding the respect for women and acknowledgement of their equal status that lay at the heart of Sikhi? My world was painfully jolted. A man attired, as I said, not unlike my father, had committed a grievous crime against a woman who was, both socially and physically (I was sensitive to the former fact too!) as his female servant (and an Indian woman, thus hardly practised in self-defence) at his, the rich male landowner's, mercy. He had refused her his mercy. He had used her, and then left her to dispose of the evidence of his crime by disposing of herself altogether. Meanwhile, his wife, who had found out about it, did not leave, or punish him. Nor did she adopt the poor little girl. If anything, she began to get angry and worried as, now adults, her son fell in love with she who was technically his half-sister (eww!).

As I looked at my mum reading to me, all this came back to me. My mind whirred with the cascading visions of tiny, rectangular 'mugshots' of old, bearded, turbanned, male faces. I looked upon the writer of this 'humorous' article. His fat, round face was just about visible in black-and-white. I wanted to spit on it. More than anything, the urge to slap my mother fizzed dangerously in my arms. 'What the hell do you think you're doing?' I wanted to cry. 'How dare you try and sacrifice me to these people who have never had a period, never worried about leaving their family, never feared their wedding night with awful dread? OF COURSE marriages are full of women now; we all know the awful suffering that many Indian marriages entail and women turn up in sympathy and commiseration! They too remember how it felt to pin your scant hopes to this one day of grandeur, wishing for its flashy charm to rub itself off on the union forever sealed afterwards!'

However, it wasn't really that strong - gone are the days when I came anywhere near doing that. This was the merest flicker, and it gave way, as always to sadness. My mother is a compromised woman, lost in the values of the time she grew up in. She still moves within the fug of '50s India, and all I can do is cast it off. It is not me, it is not my culture, and I feel elated that at last I can express myself with a concrete example. So you say that these white club-going 'goris' aren't me? Well, those old, sanctimonious bearded twats aren't either! Nor is that overweight, high-blood-pressure-suffering housewife, who dares not even suggest things to her husband any longer for fear of provoking dispute! I'm not the virtuous bahu! I'm not a gold-digger! I don't want my children, my sisters or any of my immediate female relatives to suffer, and that is why I keep trying to take them all under my wing! I may not know my American cousin too well yet, or the daughter of my mum's 'brother' (I think he's actually her cousin?!) whom everyone discusses in low, disapproving tones for having married an older, white man. I may be estranged from my eldest female cousin, Rani - but I'll fight for them, I'll fight for them all in any way I can, just like I did for my eldest sister pre-wedding, when her husband started shouting at her over her wanting speeches. I got in trouble, but I was proud - because that, that is who I am, and for a brief, shining minute, I was no longer leading a double life. That is who I am, my 'identity', my 'culture'; that is me.

Oh. My. God.

I'm sorry. This is just a quick blog post to express my sheer fucking amazement at my parents. I am currently trying to plan my Proust commentary, and my mum started talking to me about my cousin, who was/is apparently back home as well. I told her that I had rung her and received no reply. She asked whether she was/is (back home) or not. I replied that I didn't know because I had rung her and received no reply.

My mother then went on to say how my cousin's parents must be very worried about her and that they are 'overprotective' of her. 'How so?' I asked, sceptical, seeing as how I am actually in my cousin's confidence and have some real idea of her relationship with her parents. My mother went blithely on to say how her parents driving down to see her and give her food - like my parents do with my brother - was 'overprotectiveness.'

Nice to see that she's missed the irony there. What would you call what you do for my brother, then, Mater? And why is it 'overprotectiveness'? Might that be because she's a girl and 'can cook for herself' and she doesn't 'need' it like my brother does? Is it 'common sense' when my parents do it for my brother? Mater attempted to rope me in to her cooking up something for my brother yesterday, while my dad simultaneously seemed to be packing up the whole week's worth of shopping, toiletries and all, to drive to him. I asked why on earth she was making Vegemince for him (and getting into a flap) when, last time I asked, she said that the people my brother lives with were 'really nice. And they are all cooking together.'

'I thought they were cooking together?' I asked, bemused.
'No...,' in an increasingly panicked tone as she mediated the addition of the stock to the Vegemince mix, 'he heats up his pizza... and they have their pizza... They just have freezer food, waffles and things, you know how he is!'
My dad came in. 'I found the thing he was asking for... Got his Right Guard... and he needs the waffles he forgot last time.'

My mum asked me for mushrooms, and in a fit of confusion, I dived into the freezer which I had just got the Vegemince from. 'You seem to have a lot of pizza.'
'Yes... Some of it's for G------...'


Hmmm! To get back to the anecdote at hand, my mum, after hypocritically labelling my cousin's family's behaviour as 'overprotectiveness,' then went on to say that they were more like that since the death of my little cousin last year (of course...).
'Well, P----'s death has brought them closer together as a family,' I remarked, suspicious.

Then, Mater followed up her one-two combo with the 'lucky strike.' Note that this is what she said, put in a perhaps slightly shortened form, but the sense of it has been preserved firmly:
'It's no wonder that P------- never learned to cross the road properly then, is it? Because they were overprotective, she never learned to cross the road properly.'
'Mum - I'm sure she learned to cross the road properly,' I said - almost in reflex. Perhaps it was the sheer, farcical disbelief. I always seem to end up in this position where I'm 'testing' what she says, not quite able to believe my ears.
'She wasn't street-wise. She wasn't aware of when to cross the road. See, we scolded and checked you lot, and so you got a bit smarter than that.'

Oh. My. God. Oh. My. God.

I'm sorry, but when my bezzi said the other day that my mother is Satan, and 'I'm sorry, --, but you are the spawn of Satan!' I laughingly agreed with her. Now, I'm thinking agreement but without the laughing.

What kind of person manages, a year after somebody's death in a tragic accident, to blame them for it by saying they weren't 'streetwise' all while assigning secondary blame to their family for 'overprotectiveness'? Not to mention taking the whole sorry incident as a way of fucking GIVING YOURSELF UNDESERVED PARENTING KUDOS?

I don't know whether to cry or scream. On the plus side, I found my photo album from when I was a baby today, and it was a huge relief. It would have been too much for me if I had lost it. It would have felt as though besides being the 'disposable' one of the children, my past - a time when I was cute and carefree and everyone loved me because they had to - had ceased to exist altogether.

But no, I found it. I was so thankful. I hugged it to my chest and I ran into my room with it, lifting it to my lips. I flipped through rapidly, and came to a picture of me on the swing, my lower lip protruding, skirt of my little dress billowing. I was about maybe 1-3, and inches from crying. I kissed my picture-self (protected by the plastic covering) and said 'I love you, even if no-one else does.'

I was, in effect, making a promise to that angry, little curly-haired girl. I will be there for her if nobody else is. At times when I feel like I can't give myself the love and respect I deserve, I will have to reach out to others for help, but I'm in the equation now. I have entered the arena of the battle for my soul. My family will make me cry and doubt myself, and try to rein me in with their insidious game-playing and guilt-based headfucking. Yet I can see it now. I am standing in for myself. There will be no more proxies - it used to be my ex and my parents locked in battle for me. Passivity no more - my current guy is a wonderful person who will be there for me, and keep me centred, but I have me now.

And even if I'm alone in my family, at least I know there are two of my cousins in my extended family who understand. My best friend. A sort-of cousin who I've recently adopted. The whole network of 'less-close' friends, acquaintances etc., who will play their parts. Y'see, I took a lesson from the death of my cousin too. And it was this: People are stupid fucks who will turn even the defining events of human existence into a soapbox for their prejudices and posturing. Someone's always missing the point. (I will probably write more on my cousin's funeral at some point, provided it doesn't freak anyone out).

Life is short. I loved her. I should've spent more time with her. We should've cooked together. Now that she's gone, I have a renewed need to hold onto those that are 'still here.' It's not always easy to maintain regular contact with those you love, but so what? Good things always take some work. I love you, P----, I promise I will never use your death as a way to shore up my own fucking prejudices and I'll never forget you. Thank you for everything. I'm trying to let your sister know I love her all the time. And finally, fuck the haters!

A Treatise on Women's Mags; or Is This Feminist?

I'm going to make a proposition here that I think is not particularly daring... or necessarily all that political. I feel that it's just something that has to be said.

I've already ripped the shit out of marriage in a previous post. See, I really do get why people love marriage. It's because they love tradition and their dear little brains just look at the cover of the book and go 'My, but that looks wonderful.' Of course it looks wonderful! You can't predict the future now, can you? I'm not prone to believing any of us yuman beans can, in all honesty.

So WHY WOULD YOU TRY? Why would you slap a giant condition like a marriage-contract (for what else could you call it) onto something that's dying on its feet as a 'relationship' already? The idiom 'hammering the final nail into the coffin' seems very apt here.

Marriages when both people are really sure of what is involved - i.e. if they've lived together for a while, or if they occur later in life when people have had more life experience - are most certainly a wonderful event for those who attend them, and an inspiration (with a decidedly religious glow, ahem) to the rest of us.

Yet how common are those kinds of marriages, really? Especially within the British Asian community (and in India...) where both partners come to the table deeply hampered by inequality. As I have said before with various other things, this isn't just an Asian/Indian thing, it happens everywhere.

And this is what I want to move on to attacking today: the deeply traditional idea that you HAVE to be in a relationship to be happy and/or complete as a person. The reason I ask if I'm being feminist is because this is something women are fed CONSTANTLY. I was discussing this with a friend and we agreed that on the whole, it seems that men are encouraged to seek sexual experience while women are encouraged to form relationships. Anybody else see the potential problems in that?

I'm not asserting that as an absolute truth by any means, but if you want some form of evidence: look at the male homosexual community and the way just about everyone (including some of them themselves) equate 'their culture' with hedonism, kinky sex, partner-swapping etc. I would dare to say here that we don't really know enough about lesbians to venture any sort of stereotype that isn't immediately wrapped in masculine-tailored bollocks (i.e. 'all lesbians are man-hating dykes,' or 'all lesbians can be 'cured' with the arrival of the right guy,' or 'all lesbians are nymphomaniacs'... see what I mean?). Gay guy-mates of mine have commented that they actually do wish to settle down with somebody, but that that's not really something they can advertise in the sex-oriented gay dating scene.

The solution for this is NOT (I don't think), for women to just try and 'even the score' by becoming as sexually-oriented as men. By all means, ladies, go in search of the perfect orgasm if you wish. Just be aware that you're facing off against your biology, which wants to reduce you to the level of a childbearer and not much else, if you don't watch it.

That's why I really don't see the logic in 'friends-with-benefits' situations. Duh, could you ask for trouble any LOUDER? Could you take hold of the can-o'-worms and wrench the lid off any harder, please? The worms will hit YOU in the eye and then YOU'LL complain. Some people really are developed and mature enough to rise above their biological instinct and handle these situations as they need to (I'm thinking Tallulah Bankhead here).

Unfortunately, many of us don't see the obvious problem in entering into regular sessions of close physical contact with somebody we know and quite probably like and trust to a fair degree. Wait, read that back to me - NOW do you see the problem? What makes you think the other person being your 'friend' is going to make you 'safe' from attachments (if not simply MORE at risk of falling for them because you're not paying attention?) ? As my brother would say, NAAW MATE.

The problem is that we really don't do enough to support each other as ladies, now, do we? I'm looking at you here, women's magazines industries! Then again, what's to say that you are even really trying to 'connect' with women? You might have female editors an' all, but the owners are more than likely probably still men, and the shareholders are the people who really matter. Cynicism, here I come. The French singer Yelle had the right idea when she sang:

'C’est la faute des ma-
Des magazines
Les Maries, Les Frances
Les Marie-France
Les femmes pratiques qui en ont pas marre
Des cosmo vogues et tout l'bazar'


Translation:
'It's the fault of some mags - some magazines / The Maries, the Frances / The Marie-Frances / The 'practical women' who haven't had enough of them / Of the Cosmos, Vogues and the whole bazaar.'


You women's mags, you give us a real half-assed picture of the situation. You tell us: great, go after your female orgasm. You encourage us to stay good and monogamous with your endless articles on 'how to spice up your sex life' while simultaneously and subtly trumpeting the values of casual sex with your reader confessions columns and the endless stuff on attaining the perfect climax (again), taking a lover etc. I have Cosmpolitan in mind particularly here.

Women's mags aren't 'all bad,' of course - I don't mean to imply that they are (Marie Claire, for one, has some very interesting and well-written articles, such as one about Real Dolls...). They're just selfish - as is everything out there at the end of the day. Women's magazines won't tell you what to do once you outgrow their 2D status-quo world. Look how shittily simplistic their solutions are: either carry on as you are, looking for a relationship all the time, or make sex the main factor.

There is of course a third way that they won't tell you because it's not in their interests to do so (they prescribe this in small doses, usually to women who have suffered a recent break-up or who have emotional/mental health issues of some kind). Get the cheesy disco music ready, people, because that is to 'Love Yourself.'

Actually, hell with that. We live in a post-psychoanalytical age, where we are trained to ascribe meaning to things (such as our personality quirks) that may not even need it really, and I just don't DO cheesy disco music anyway (give me some Justice or Donna Summer, fool!). So instead, pop on a song that makes you laugh and BE YOUR OWN FRIEND. To briefly invoke the oft-whipped carcass of marriage again for convenience's sake: if you can't spend eternity on your own, how the hell are you going to spend it with somebody else? And vice-versa. Take a leaf out of those magazines' book (thank you Ugly Betty for making that metaphor actually work!) and GIT SELF-CENTRED.

The way I see it is this: despite what your parents say, despite what society says - no matter who brought you into existence, or who sees you out of it - you are born alone (unless of course, you are a twin, or one of triplets etc. etc., but even then you won't all be leaving yer mum's tummy at once!). Does that not make loneness the most natural state in the world to inhabit? There is something glorious I find - dunno about y'all - in gracefully accepting that.

No-one says you have to be misanthropic (not all the time, anyway). No-one says you musn't value your friends or relatives, or your partner (or whatever the fuck you call them). It is rush-of-blood-to-head LIBERATING though, when you realise, that you shouldn't have to be defined and existent entirely in terms of others. I have come to value the bond of friendship - REAL friendship - as quite possibly the highest human connection there is. However, there's a lot to be said for enjoying one's OWN company from time to time. And if you're somebody whose mental tank always seems to be running overloaded-full (comme moi), then find a way to go and birth your thoughts into the world.

In his Essays, Francis Bacon essentially said that men could choose between children and creative endeavour, which was why the greatest artists had been childless men. A very wise and interesting observation, I think you'll agree, and then I hope you'll join me in saying '... but Bakey, now the wimminz can do that too. Relationships, marriage, and kids (in order of seriousness of impact upon one's life and future) are not the sole feckin' purpose of our existence.'

So fuck you, biology! Here's a chance for us all to be equal. And hey, if there's less stupid people falling into these binds, hopefully that means a smaller influx of idiots turning towards extremely conservative/religious/overall fundamentalist viewpoints - or falling victim to them.

Own yourselves. No-one wants to be another Bristol Palin, regardless of whatever their age is (just look at that poor girl's eyes in the picture... I can imagine how she will look once being a 'mommy' takes its toll on her). Own yourselves and RECLAIM YOURSELVES!

Marriage: I Ain't Sold

This post was inspired by Nesrine Malik, Desi Italiana and Sonia... thanks, guys.

Well. I must begin this post by congratulating myself on avoiding eating more than 1-an'-a-bit squares of utterly tasty Sainsbury's Belgian dark chocolate, especially after having eaten a sin-filled pack of Walkers' Max Paprika earlier. I am a feminist and ergo not crazy about looking overly-youthful and wisplike all the time (the former would really be cause for concern, as I am still quite young!), but if you do not have the metabolism of a greyhound and are likely to get grumpy after eating too much 'crap,' you have to watch it.

This post is intended to be about marriage, especially its place within Indian culture. I have learnt a fair bit about this recently, and I feel that it's time I wrested my blog from the caprices of creativity and pushed it back towards the polemic. Unfortunately, because tiredness and stress have somewhat 'worn the wick' recently, I may descend into what is essentially a series of no more than randomly-caught observations.

I used to think that I could escape the clutches of the Indian society that surrounded me by choosing who I got married to. There was a rather great irony in this, because I would say that feminism/egalitarianism is more important to me than keeping my parents happy and upholding a certain idea of Indian 'culture'. Ever since I was little, I have burned at the notion that females should be considered inferior to males in any way, especially in this country. Even the whole 'men are naturally stronger' argument never cut much ice with me. I mean, bitch please – are all men the same? No. Are all women the same? No. For example, a dedicated female javelin or discus thrower is probably going to be of greater strength than an Asian rudeboi of the same age, unless, like my brother currently is, he's so obsessed with getting 'hench' that he's significantly bulked-up.

Aaaaaanyway… I used to believe that one could have the best of both worlds. I could placate my parents in the merest sense by marrying someone brown and to all intents and purposes, Sikh. Even if he was secretly unsure (like me), or a naastik (atheist), it would be OK because, like a well-placed visual illusion, everybody would see what they wanted to see.

The problem with my little picture is that it was missing someone fundamentally important: me. I was thinking about entering into an arrangement that would be convenient for the other person and appease his family and mine. I have always taken pride in being the firebrand of the family, but I didn't see the obvious until it was pointed out to me repeatedly by a very dear friend: I'm not ready to get married and I never will be.

Now, I can understand the line of thought that goes 'oh, y'know – it'll just be a stupid wedding and then you have the rest of your life.' I can understand because that's what I thought up until a few weeks ago. What bullshit, yaar! Whether you're a girl or a boy, if you're Indian, shaadi (marriage) is the whole point of your life. All that differs is the point at which this is impressed, and then eventually, imposed upon you. If you're a girl, chances are you'll be conditioned from childhood (whether you realise/enjoy it or not) to be a wife and then eventually in some ways, a mother. Whereas with boys, it varies - many of them are left free to do as they like until a certain age when the kitchen sink and all is suddenly dropped on their head.

This must be said, because the current double standards that are deeply ingrained within Indian society (more so in some classes/groups than others) are bad for EVERYONE. Seeing and admitting this is a shot of common sense that is desperately needed. Parents like mine – who are actually almost liberal in some ways, how else would I have got the way I am?! – encourage and support their daughters in going to university, only to gently remind them that marriage is ultimately going to be more important. Even if this reminder does not come verbally, it comes in the fact that more of your life will be spent in gearing you towards marriage than will be spent in encouraging you to get a job you want to, or in pursuing a degree you want to do.

I find that even in education, marriage just won't leave people alone. Women who do 'male' degrees (medicine, law, dentistry, finance etc.) or watered-down 'male'/acceptably-feminine degrees (biomedical sciences, pharmacy, teaching…) are more worthwhile investments than those in the arts. The same applies for men, more or less. However, the reason I find this more appalling with regards to women is because it shows how little things have really changed. Now, people don't just want a well-indentured servant, they want one who can pay her way too. Funny how the huge emotional sacrifices made by the bride (leaving her family and having to externalise them while ingratiating herself with a set of near-strangers) doesn't apply much in this regard. I do appreciate that men who 'deviate' educationally also have it hard, but the overall level of suffering is still notably lower for them. (It often seems to me that if you're a guy who does 'deviate' and it doesn't work out for you, your senior male relatives will often rally round and bail you out somehow, while if you're a girl, your senior female relatives will tell you you're reaping what you've sown, but it could just be the cynicism getting the better of me...).

Encouraging the men-folk to do whatever before suddenly dropping the nuptial bomb is disastrous as well. Shrieking harridan mothers-in-law and scheming bahus (daughters-in-law) have come to stereotypically define the power-struggles in Indian marriages, because there are some things that people just don't want to say. Like, if you let your son marry a woman and then make her life hell because he has someone already (or because he swings the other way…), you are not 'saving face.' You are NOT good parents. It will reflect back on you when the aggrieved party either fights back or leaves, when your son gets together properly with the 'somebody else' or when something bad happens to the wife.

I know that tradition is hard to let go of for many Indians, especially my parents' generation (those who are in their fifties and sixties now), but puh-lease. If you've come to a foreign country, you have to accept the fact that your children have the right to choose to follow 'other' influences – and why wouldn't they? There is so much more freedom available to them in many ways. Some will eventually turn their back on that, but many don't want to. Your tricking them into losing the adult years of their lives in a tacit concession to your ideals – shaadi – only shows you up as a load of spoilt children.

That isn't to say that marriage always inevitably fails. I take a very dim view of it, because I have seen how often people struggle to balance the sacrifice, the delusion and the harsh, harsh reality. I simply think that it needs to be said that the failure of marriage is NOT down to Western influences, emotional immaturity or anything that easily scapegoatable. I think deep down, we know that it's really down to the arrangement of power in the Indian family structure (if you're old, you're wise. If you're young, shut up), and the deeply unequal and voracious nature of marriage. Stop idealising the parivaar (family) and the shaadi! Most of the time, in a move harking back to the Middle flippin' Ages, marriage is about the advancement of two families. The Indian ethos par excellence, distilled into the symbolic form of the married couple: communities before individuals. It often becomes almost a political contract, an act enacted for the purposes of what-bloody-else? NETWORKING. 'Look at the relatives I have acquired.I have moved up in the world!' Very bloody ironic for Sikhs, since Sikhi is meant to be without caste, whereas many Punjabis are obsessed with going up a class (why?! why does having x number of doctor/lawyer relatives make you more of a person?!).

To finish, my mother often castigated us for not trying hard enough/failing to learn how to make adequately round chappatis. She told us we needed to learn it for our own sake, because 'otherwise, what will people say? What would your suss (mother-in-law) say? People will say that I didn't teach your properly' (i.e. that she had failed in her duty as a mother).

Yeah, because telling your daughter that she should learn something to your standards to please some far-off woman – which at the end turns out to be you, surprise surprise! – isn't selfish in the least. As Private Eye would say: trebles all round!

Who's The Boss Now?

To steal a currently oft-used phrase, 'the silly season continues,' with the news that India has launched 'Bigg Boss', its very own version of Big Brother. I found this out purely by accident, being present in the room as my parents watched Star News. UPDATE: Apparently, according to Rumbold, this has been around for some time. Wow! I wonder what channel it was on?

It is one humorous-at-least instance more of Indian hypocrisy regarding all things morality. If you don't quite get what I mean, just think about how taboo women's bodies are and how misogynists try and use this to talk about how women are so respected and honoured in Indian culture (bullshit, yaar). For evidence of this, all you have to do is watch a clip of any Indian soap at a moment where a wife is being cheated on by her husband/ being given away for the first time, and you will hear this kind of BS in some shape or form (or just look here for a good overview of things). Then take a look at this. Very funny but also incredibly disturbing.

Back to the topic. I can imagine any number of Indians condemning 'Big Brother' for its voyeurism ('how besharam (shameless)'!), never mind the deliberate 'cherry-picking' of contestants to ensure conflict, which is typical of 'Western,' exploitative, immoral thinking.

Yet all of a sudden, they have their own Big Brother! In typical Indian plagiarisin' style, it's been renamed to 'Bigg Boss' thereby losing all its 1984-associated gravity, but ah well, I doubt that many there would know or care about Orwell's classic anyway. I must specify though, that it is not nicked from the UK producers - I didn't think it was, I was just taking the piss. Normally, I could care less - I mean, it's India. Can't imagine things really getting that racy, can you? However, what really got me goggling was the fact that Jade Goody has been flown in from the UK and apparently also PAID to be a contestant.

Let me just refresh your memories. This is Jade Goody, the woman who was burnt in effigy by protestors for her 'racist' treatment of Shilpa Shetty. Who has been HIRED (for a repeat performance of dumbassery, perhaps?) by the producers of Big Brother, er sorry, 'Bigg Boss.'

Really, UK execs and ex-reality TV stars in need of a career boost could learn a lot from this. SS too has decided to exploit her own apparent exploitation and appears as the occasionally-gyrating (in the advert anyway) host. Might I also add that she was wearing a ridiculously skimpy cropped waistcoat-with-shirt-collar thing too? What is the need, really?

I find it quite amusing when people moan about skimpily-dressed Bollywood actresses. 'Why is it bad?' I ask. 'Because...' and then you can see the cogs turn as they try and think of a way to sugarcoat before the inevitable 'it's not Indian.'

So the Western world has a monopoly on semi-nudity, does it? What about saris? What about belly-dancers? However, I wouldn't bother even debating with the kind of unthinking neds who say such things. In one fell swoop, they've already revealed their thoughtlessly-imbibed-from-my-elders conservatism to me without realising.

I just think it is bizarre that SS feels she has to advertise Bigg Boss by swaying her hips every now and again and by thrusting herself about here and there. You have nice abs, lady and an unenviable figure, but all you're doing is warning us that nothing's going to happen in the show! Nobody'll be allowed to get it on, so you have to up the sex quotient all on your own! I feel your pain. No, really. Abs like that are HARD WORK. :-D

Maybe they should've got Aamir Khan in to do the same. I'd watch that five times on repeat *slobbers*.


Unfortunately, I can't find the vid, so I can't link to it - sorry!

UPDATE: Apparently Jade Goody has now left due to having been diagnosed with cervical cancer! I hope this is not true - according to the news, it's a 'scare.' If it is, may she make a speedy recovery. Damn.

A True Pirate Daughter

My father had eye surgery on Wednesday (to remove a cataract) and has been wandering about looking distinctly more dishevelled than usual with a clear plastic disc taped to his eye. I like to imagine that I am the daughter of a pirate when I go out in my shorts and waistcoat, with a scarf tied round my head and now that particular little fantasy is one teeny step closer to coming true...!

Though that is not urbane, witty or particularly sophisticated, everyone needs a little stupid something to get them through times of stress. My eldest sister has come to stay with us for a few days, and although I have tried hard to ‘be good,’ it’s been bloody hard because she’s my eldest sister.

Allow me to explain (even though no-one reads this blog regularly other than myself!). There is a ten-year age gap between my sister and I and she regards me as ‘her’ baby, out of my brother and I, because I came before him. This means she can be REALLY patronising at times; she acts as a second mother. A mother who refuses to accept that I am (becoming) an adult. That would be bad enough as it is, but add in some fundamental personality differences and you’ve got the ideal combination for a passive-aggressive nightmare.

Yesterday, for example, we went food-shopping so we could make something ‘fun’ because it’s my brother’s birthday. Desperately short of ideas, I suggested Mexican. She murmured ‘I was thinking about making enchiladas... Enchiladas with Vegemince are quite nice, but you know, Dad doesn’t like it very much.’

AAARGH!!!! I wanted to let that out of my head through my mouth, with all the inherent blaring frustration. My dad, as an amritdhari Sikh, doesn’t eat anything even haunted by meat, fish or egg. As a Punjabi man, however, he is dead traditional and thus he doesn’t enthuse overtly about the meat substitutes that make our sparse vegetarian existence somewhat more bearable. And guess what, because we’re an Indian family, if he doesn’t like it, my sister’s not going to make it! I think that, as the oldest child, she suffers the need to try and please our (absolutely impossible) parents much more constantly and acutely than we do. So we lose out, all because Dad doesn’t sing hymns of praise to Vegemince. We ended up having ‘enchiladas’ which were not only protein-free (other than the vague sprinkling of cheese on top) but contained mangetout and baby corn within. MANGETOUT AND BABY CORN, I ask you.

See, if my mum had done something like that, I would’ve forgiven it because she grew up on Indian cuisine and nowt else... but my sister? My sister actually knows a bit about food, and that’s why I was so disgusted with her monumental cop-out. Most of all, it represents that attitude I hate so much: ‘I’ll conform to the needs of others so that they don’t need to conform to my needs.’

As an Indian girl, you get that bollocks rammed into your head all the way through your childhood and right up until marriage. Keep your nose clean! Keep your head down! Learn how to cook, and don’t expect help because Indian men aren’t going to give it to you! Eventually, you get to the level where you’re so hopped-up on fear and insecurity that you kowtow to the smallest of things, and by doing so, you allow other people to see that they can treat you a certain way.

As S--- said, when I tried hopelessly to communicate what all of this meant to me, it’s a question of degree. Just because you’re getting a bit of flak and rudeness from your husband now (as my sister has been for a long time) doesn’t mean that you’re safe! You shouldn’t hold that up against men who murder their wives and say ‘Well, it’s not that bad.’! What we have, in Indian society, is a scale of acceptability, and that in itself is absolutely fucking abhorrent. NONE of it is right. NONE of it is acceptable. Don’t have a scale, don’t have points on the scale which constitute ‘unacceptable behaviour.’ Do away with the whole thing and acknowledge that abuse of ANY KIND is INTOLERABLE. Today’s name-calling husband could be tomorrow’s murderer. By having the scale system, we are instantly implying that a wife could be to blame, somehow, for the way she is being treated – and even when parents or relatives have good intentions, this is hugely damaging to the victim.

Why do I feel so strongly about this? I really don’t know. Even before my sister’s marriage and my discovery of some of the skellingtons in our family’s closet, something about this really stung me. I am an egalitarian feminist – I want us all to be equal, but I acknowledge that right now, that involves improving the lot of women much more than it does improving the lot of men. Yesterday I read ‘Shame’ by Jasvinder Sanghera and it made me incredibly angry and sad. At first I felt annoyed with her for being so mopey about her family and for picking men who would treat her badly. Then I thought a bit more and got angry at the real culprit – the Indian family unit (though you could say it of the family in other cultures too) which often fosters a kind of unhealthy co-dependency between the child and the rest of the family that is regulated by fear, just as much as, if not more so, as by love. I think she mentioned both these things in the book, but I don’t think she tied them together as I just have.

Actually, I do know why I feel strongly about this. It’s because my family (both immediate and extended) are a lot more educated than some Indians, and I suppose I expected better of them than to go on mindlessly endorsing the traditions of a place where they don’t even live any more. The most annoying of my aunts has been through a lot of shit, I found out only last year: married into the family of a patriarch who brain-damaged his own daughter for whatever reason (!), impregnated by a husband who had someone else before and after the marriage and put on a train to London alone when six months pregnant, with very little English. When she gave birth to her daughter, the family then tried to disavow all responsibility and attacked my father when he attempted to make them face up to the consequences. There were the eye-opening marriages of my two sisters, in particular my eldest sister’s, where everyone’s tears were symptomatic of a heavy sense of regret and loss rather than joy at her marriage, and the fallout from their continual arguments. Last, but definitely not least, there was the murder/suicide of my cousin in India (who I only met twice in my life). Like so many others, she mysteriously caught fire and died from the burns without anyone being able to help at all. People may say the practice of Sati is dead, but on the evidence of that and several other similar deaths (such as that of Jasvinder Sanghera’s older sister Robina), I would beg to differ.

On a slightly lighter note, I appear to have strayed from the spec yet again! I PROMISE I will explain my politics/game thing and talk about trolls next time.