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.

Considering Amy Chua

If the name 'Amy Chua' doesn't resonate at all, then hopefully the words 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' will.

For anyone still scratching their head, Amy Chua is a Harvard law professor who has written a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It's caused a fair amount of controversy because, as this Guardian piece notes, it 'makes case [sic] for ultra-strict Chinese parenting':

The Tiger, Chua explains, is "the living symbol of strength and power", inspiring fear and respect. And as a "Tiger mother" herself, she assumed the absolute right to dictate her children's activities and demand rigorous academic standards of them at all times, ridiculing them if necessary to spur them on to greater efforts.

Except - as was quickly pointed out, but perhaps not quickly enough - the book is not actually a parenting guide, but a memoir. Even the article cited describes it as 'an autobiographical study of the failings of western parenting by Yale law professor Amy Chua'. Which is pretty objectionable since, as this interview with Chua and her family (three days after that article above) shows, the book could more accurately be described as being about the failure of Tiger parenting:

The book bares all about how the parenting model worked for her older daughter Sophia, now 17 and heading off to an Ivy League college, but backfired dramatically for her younger girl, Louisa, or Lulu, who is now 14.

Besides offering some important clarification, the interview also threw up some interesting points for consideration. Obviously, since the book hasn't even been published yet, I haven't read it - but on the basis of what I know so far, I'm-a get my lit-crit on. First off, QUOTES! We are told that:

At its heart, Battle Hymn is an account of the psychological warfare between a "Chinese" mother and her "western" daughter

Is it really that simple though? I'm going to follow the Golden Notebook method: mention a few other striking details, and then elaborate (super-striking bits in bold, of course):

"My husband kept warning me and my sisters kept warning me. But I guess it's part of my personality. A little bit rash. For me, so much of my book is making fun of myself through the words of my children. And some people get that. Other people read it straight. My older daughter said, 'Mummy, you put only the most extreme stories in. People don't realise how much fun we had'."

What Chua didn't put in the memoir, she says with a hint of regret, is all the good times. "All the way through, Jed was bringing balance to the family, insisting that we were going to go on family bike rides and to Yankees games and apple-picking and water slides and bowling and mini-golfing, so we socialised a lot actually …" ("My mum has a touch of the dramatic, and she's much nicer in real life," Sophia says to me later by email. "She lets me go to rap concerts with my friends and do archaeological digs in our backyard – not very 'Chinese' activities!")

Chua's description of her intentions certainly sounds more in keeping with the mode of writing a memoir - and acceptable - than what most people initially assumed. From the first article I linked to:

Chua argues that western parents. with their emphasis on nurturing their children's self-esteem and allowing free expression, have set their children up to accept mediocrity. "Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently," she says.

You might say 'On what basis do they assume strength? On the basis of projection?' This certainly seems supported by the claim that: 'The Tiger [...] is "the living symbol of strength and power", inspiring fear and respect. The 'Tiger mother' is strong, ergo their offspring must also be strong. All of which begs the question: why would a parent project? With due reference to the character of Erica Sayers - aka Natalie Portman's character's mum - in the just-released film Black Swan - parents often project because they see their child as an opportunity:

the heroine's mother (Barbara Hershey) is an ex-dancer who gave up a career to raise a daughter in whom all her hopes are invested.

Indeed, Chua describes childhood as "a training period, a time to build character and invest in the future." However, I couldn't help wondering if the culture clash with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is less to do with the cultural clash between Chua and her younger daughter, and more to do with the cultural clash within Chua herself. As Chua remarks in the interview: "When I show this book to immigrants and immigrants' kids, they were like, exactly, this is how it is. It's funny, they relate, it's not controversial for them." Indeed, I was alerted to the existence of a Tiger Mother meme generator via a Facebook link, which included comments from people on their 'Tiger' parenting experiences. I was also put in mind of how I related to my black and Asian secondary-school friends more than a white friend who complained about her parents setting a curfew for her to return from going out with her boyfriend - I wasn't allowed to date, let alone go out on my own after 8.30! There are groups on Facebook making fun of Punjabi, Nigerian and all number of strict (generally ethnic-minority) upbringings - but I would hesitate to describe such groups and their members as celebratory. Perhaps for some people there is a celebratory element, but I can't help thinking the key is in Chua's remark that 'it's funny, they relate'. We often need to relate, and to laugh about, certain experiences in order to create distance from them, and reassurance, for ourselves.

Indeed Chua talks of her own Chinese parenting:

"For my senior prom, my father finally said I could go – as long as I was home by 9pm! That was around the time that most people were heading out [...] When I was little I was so mad at them all the time. Why can't I do this? Why are there so many rules?"

It's worth noting also that Chua's husband, Jed Rubenfeld, is Jewish-American and that she 'grew up with her two sisters in the midwest, the daughter of first-generation immigrants from the Philippines.'

Now, only anyone who's from a diasporan background can really understand this - but first-generation immigrants (as I know all too well), classically, become stuck in the mindset of the country they left when they move. They will often see themselves as representative of that national community - e.g. 'We are Indian... This is how Indians behave' - when in actual fact they are simply representative of how that country was when they left it. The country itself will change - in the cases of India and China, that has been incredibly rapid, massive change - in their absence and if they are not aware of how time-specific their vision of it is, fail disastrously to live up to their expectations of it when/if they try to return. This 'dislocation' is a well-mined theme in literature (just consider Chanu in Brick Lane, who, once his ambitions fail to be realised, begins to retreat into and promulgate the superiority of Bengali culture to his family before actually 'going home' near the novel's end). How exactly diasporans come to be that way I can't say, but disappointment, disillusionment, racism, segregation and isolation are pretty big factors. All too often, feeling themselves cut off, immigrants want to create a 'home away from home' and the weight of representation of a distant, land, people, language and tradition is inevitably offloaded onto their children's shoulders.

I wonder if this is the hidden story in BHotTM. The point I was trying to make earlier (rather clumsily) is that Chua's book reaches for what is essentially a stereotype - both in the 'Tiger mother' symbolism, a stereotype of 'Chineseness' which sounds like it comes straight out of the corniest martial-arts flick and the stereotypical figure of the Strict, Non-white Immigrant Parent that is familiar to so many. In her own words, the book is a parody of herself, but it also seems to be a parody - and an interrogation - of what it means to be second-generation Chinese-American. Pressure is often piled on diasporan ethnic-minority women to be 'mothers of the nation' (i.e. marry within our own communities) because whilst the patriarchal beliefs that reduce a woman to being worth less than a man are still present in the US etc., the social structures are not in place for controlling women's access to men who value them differently (not necessarily always higher, unfortunately). You can't use shame, guilt and fear in the same way to police people's behaviour. Indian society, in contrast, is still effectively self-segregating on a gender basis in many areas and generally a man and woman are only seen together in public if they are married or related. Maybe Amy Chua's parents were didn't-bat-an-eyelid-fine with her marrying a Jewish whiteboy, but I would be very shocked if they were. 'Marrying out' as the very term itself implies, suggests an attempt to escape, or reject, the culture/community/whatever of the parents - whether that's actually intended or not.

Besides this, there is the interesting fact that Chua's parents are Chinese - but they moved to the US from the Philippines. Given that Chinese =/= Filipino, this means that they had either moved to the Philippines before Chua was born, or were themselves the children of Chinese immigrants to the Philippines. This would potentially put Chua not one, but two, removes from her 'Chinese heritage'. Those of us who are second-gens know personally how bizarrely the relation to the 'motherland' can impact our lives, and as I've said earlier, it's been a frequent theme in literature. The question of 'what it means to be Chinese/Indian/African/whatever' often creates a great deal of expectation and fear since we are expected to simultaneously perform the identity and make sense of it. Goodness Gracious Me offers a sublime (and hilarious) example of what I mean. I wonder if Chua's monstrous, ridiculous 'Chineseness' is the product of a double displacement - the further you are from the 'motherland', the more you must 'represent' so as not to lose your sense of self, which is often traumatised by the act of submerging oneself within a new, frequently hostile space - 'Chineseness'-as-parody. I would speculate that because the self is more 'socially formed' in India and China (many tend to grow up without the kind of time or space for introspection, which is essential for self-awareness, due to tradition and poverty among other things), immigrating to Western Europe or America is that much more traumatic than it would be for, say, an Australian making the same move. The conditions under which the self develops are no longer there, and so for identity to be maintained, you have to work that much harder - and thus you can become a parody. Hence the phenomenon of children of immigrants who are more conservative/bigoted than their parents - something I have personally experienced and is also apparently a factor in the emergence of 'home-grown terrorists'... This also used to be observable on a class scale in the UK and arguably still is, to some extent, though much less so.

The final point, which is both separate and related, is to do with birth order. A recent study, splashed all over the papers, added to a growing body of research on the effect of birth order on personality in finding that second-born children are more rebellious and adventurous than their older siblings:

"These findings are consistent with the idea that firstborns conform more, while second-borns are more likely to rebel."

It was Chua's second daughter who broke her Tiger resolve. In the interview, it is her eldest daughter who defends her, and who makes this comment:

"When we were younger, I thought my mum favoured Lulu, but as I've got older, we've become so close. It's not really the focus of the book, but my mum and I are incredibly similar. She understands me and always knows what I'm thinking."

The patient, obedient first-born, unable to rebel against the authoritarian parent due to having been made an example for the younger sibling... harbouring her own resentment about her mother, but wanting overwhelmingly to have her conformance to the established order rewarded, before finally having her conformance approved and rewarded... Funnily enough, this sounds not unlike what Chua said about her childhood:

"When I was little I was so mad at them all the time. Why can't I do this? Why are there so many rules? But looking back now, my parents gave me the foundation to have so many choices in life. After I left home I had a choice of who I could be, a choice of careers, a choice of schools, so I deeply believe in the model."

Chua, too, was an older sibling - she mentions a younger sister with Down's syndrome. She would therefore have been under the pressure to 'represent' that is unique for first-born children and her belief in the 'Tiger' parenting method (she is rather aptly described as having a 'missionary zeal' for it) comes quite naturally, as a result of her having accordingly been 'rewarded' as a dutiful oldest child with more intimacy and attention from her parents. I don't know if her younger sister is married, but assuming she's not - it's worth wondering what kind of pressure that might have created on Chua as a potential 'mother of the nation.' It seems as though the 'Tiger parenting' offered her a ready access of Chineseness - it must be mentioned also that in many Asian cultures (and I'm sure this is to some extent true for the Chinese) - motherhood is the only real source of power a woman has - which is why this kind of parenting may take on a certain glamour. It becomes a perversely macho act, because it enables a woman to stray from the path of pleasing femininity and be angry, vicious, violent and resentful - i.e. have the freedom to be a real, fallible person like a man - but directs all that energy towards a socially-sanctioned purpose and cages her in a domestic setting. There is also an oddly macho note to those who talk about 'surviving' upbringings like Chua's and the frequent one-upmanship as people compare stories.

Chua got to experience both the macho pleasure of enduring such a childhood - and the macho pleasure of being the matriarch - and what's truly significant is not her belief in the Tiger method, but the fact that it failed. I can't help being put in mind somewhat of the trend among young, predominantly white middle-class women for 1950s-style retro domesticity - but of course, often when they are actually living it, they get real quick. As Chua herself acknowledged, she was only really able to do the 'Tiger mother' thing because her husband acted as a balance, and then it became exhausting and alienating and she gave it up. If you aren't from a massively poor background, and you're not in an unequal relationship, being raised within a society that is relatively open, free and accepting... in short, if you're not particularly frustrated or thwarted in any way, the usual drivers for the Tiger model aren't really there. So why else might it appeal to somebody? One reason would be paying homage to one's own parents, acknowledging their sacrifices and honouring your relationship with them - which I think is what Chua, in dutiful-firstborn mode - was trying to do. When you strip away the motivating factors I've mentioned, it makes it hard for Tiger parenting to work - but it also exposes what I feel is the key reason that it is felt to work, which is devoted, full-on love and attention. First-borns, and only children, generally get that love and attention full-on, and so it's no wonder that Chua would turn to the way of the Tiger - but equally, love and attention don't need to be, and generally aren't expressed, brutally. As Chua herself says: "I have many regrets … I have a head full of regrets. I worry that by losing my temper so much and being so harsh and yelling so much that, by example, I will have taught my daughters to be that way, and I'm now constantly telling them not to do that." The interview describes the book as her 'atonement' and breaking the rule of silence that's all too common in Asian families to atone publicly is pretty significant. She describes the writing of the book as being like 'family therapy', but I wonder if it doesn't also serve as a sort of cathartic therapy for herself, allowing her to both pay tribute to her parents and assert herself as separate from them at last?

So there you go - discipline, sustained love and attention, good; pseudo-spiritual authoritarianism and all that that entails, not so good. There is a real, ambivalent person at the heart of the Tiger Mother after all - and that's enough Amy Chua!

Locating Gandhi

There was an interesting thread on PP recently, entitled How Gandhian Are Obama’s Politics?

When I did, I rapidly began to feel that sinking feeling that comes when someone is WRONG WRONG WRONG, but trying to make some reasonable points. You want to shout 'No! Stop! Don't do this - you could quit here, and rewrite this! Produce a better piece!' I don't mean ideologically wrong, as some smartarses might infer. I mean plain old factually incorrect.

Frankly, even after engaging with Rita herself, that little cry inside me has become a scream careening through my head. I may be pro-woman, liberal/left-leaning, etc., but dedication to a cause should never come before the truth. Science may have been my weakness at A-level, but it continues to be my weakness in that I have a fervent respect for the people who practise it, seeking the truth not to serve any agenda, but out of pure curiosity. That scientific insistence on accuracy and honesty is something I have a lot of time for. TL, also, is Mr. History and he stands for historical accuracy with a passion equivalent to many scientists - very appealing and contagious.

So to business! What was so wrong with Rita's piece?

Where do I start?

First of all, it would seem to be a fairly obvious yet fundamental rule that when working with a major public/historical figure, caution is necessary. The bigger the figure, the greater the caution that must be used, since that person will be relevant not just to the local history of their nation, but globally. When the person is, furthermore, dead and unable to defend themselves or clarify meanings, you have to try even harder to watch your step. Dead people are often liable to have responsibilities and meanings projected onto them, which may be inaccurate and have no real basis in their professed beliefs. The researcher must weigh the icon alongside the wo/man in their own words, and locate a person in the midst of the pair.

This is the epic fail in Rita's approach to Gandhi. She has taken personal bugbears of hers - child sexual abuse, the dismal position of Indian women, the tendency towards mindless, cultish elevation of individuals in Indian society - and decided that these things are Gandhi's fault, because they should be.

It's a real shame, because Rita's aims are utterly noble, and some of the points made in the piece and in comments, were very astute. When her errors were called out, though, she refused to accept it and kept throwing around comments such as

As a writer and a researcher, I have enough accolades to my name—thank you—I don’t need your approval!

Which is fair enough, since she was the subject of persistent attacks by Jai in the comments. Jai and I have our differences; I can but agree with him on this occasion, although neither he nor Rita came out of the debate looking particularly good, and frankly I choose to side with neither.


Which is where I come in. Enough context, time for some proper debunking.

To sum up Gandhi’s ideologies, they included the rejection of all of the following: war and weaponry, capitalism, large-scale industries, and science and technology.

Well... the most fundamental core of Gandhi's philosophy is non-violence. While this characterisation isn't incorrect, it's not particularly accurate either, since it doesn't even mention the most important bit of his crackpot bundle of beliefs. Not unlike Rita herself in this article, Gandhi starts with a particular point (non-violence) and everything branches off of and returns to, that central point. He actually goes so far as to describe it as 'the religion of Ahinsa' in his seminal political work, Hind Swaraj (M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and other writings, ed. by Anthony J. Parel, Centenary edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 53), and in a short text which makes a point of addressing its many issues briefly, devotes two consecutive chapters to it: 'Brute force' and 'Passive resistance' (Hind Swaraj is available online, but I believe that any and all important philosophical texts should always be read and referred to in a proper critical edition, which still isn't really possible online).

Funds for Gandhi’s campaigns came from India’s largest and wealthiest businesses, like the Birlas. He vehemently opposed science and technology, as “evil” and said mass transportation, like the railways spread diseases and encouraged communal violence by bringing diverse communities in contact. Still, he regularly used the railways for getting around. He advised the illiterate masses to reject modern medicine. Who knows how many followed his suggested home-remedy of wrapping small-pox patients in wet blankets! But during Gandhi’s famous fasts there was always a medical doctor in attendance making announcements on his declining blood-pressure.

Yes - he never denied the element of contradiction, or hypocrisy if you prefer, between his preaching and practising. Yet he didn't actually pressure anyone, other than those who agreed to follow him (and his family), to act as he did. He understood to some extent that he was a zealous idealist and strove to be pragmatic in his organisation of political action so as to actually get shit done. The man was neither stupid, nor the kind of schemer that this section portrays him as. His vision of his movement was inclusive: ‘even a man weak in body is capable of offering this resistance. One man can offer it just as well as millions. Both men and women can indulge in it [...] Control over the mind is alone necessary’ (HS, p. 92). Part of the reason Gandhi has continued to fascinate historians and researchers so much is precisely because of his unique blend of canny pragmatism and zealous idealism. One could mostly summarise him by saying that while his beliefs were undoubtedly flawed, his implementation of them was near-flawless. Rita herself remarks at comment #30:

And more than his non-violence principle I think it was his “Boycott British goods” tactic that was actually more effective

without realising that the creativity behind such a tactic stems directly from his commitment to non-violence.

It's worth noting also that Rita's 'indictment' of Gandhi's contradictions in this paragraph (and her indictment of him in the whole piece) is not substantiated in any way - she plugs her book, but makes no reference to his own writings or any proper historical writings about Gandhi by the likes of Judith Brown, Bhikhu Parekh or Javed Majeed (to name just a few - all of these are highly recommended). Nor is any reference made to dates - this is important because as any fule kno, opinions change over time. Gandhi softened his stance on certain things, such as machinery, so simply writing him off as a hypocrite cuts no ice. It's true that he was still very crackpot on many things, and parts of HS made my blood boil with rage (the parts on doctors, lawyers, etc.) but he did not directly force those beliefs on people, apart from perhaps the people around him (I'm uncertain of this, although I do know that he forced his ideas about sexuality onto those who were close to him).

Historical context is crucial to comprehending what Gandhi was trying to do, and who informed his thinking on this matter. While his comments against doctors, lawyers etc. are incendiary and (I feel) deeply ignorant, they are also more than they seem. An element of crude socialism informs HS (and perhaps Gandhi's political thought overall) and the attack on lawyers, doctors etc. must be understood in this context as part of a wider criticism of the emergent Indian middle-class who Gandhi felt were exploiting and benefiting from the suffering of the masses. The importance of class is apparent in the way that HS is written - its style is deliberately simple and didactic, avoiding any elaborate political jargon, and the use of a dialogue form helps enable opposing viewpoints - pro-violence and anti-violence - to feel fully represented in the text. Much of the text criticises and highlights the un-representativeness (not a real word, I know) of Indian nationalism of the time, driven as it was by European ideologies (all of which espoused some form of violence) to which only the educated classes could have access. HS seeks to speak for those outside that elite, and 'open' nationalism to them, as the quote above and the following quote shows:

READER: You have said that passive resistance is a speciality of India. Have cannons never been used in India?
EDITOR: Evidently, in your opinion, India means its few princes. To me it means its teeming millions, on whom depends the existence of its princes and our own. (HS, p. 92)

Rita then goes on to effectively make a fact-claim about Gandhi's motivations:

My personal issue with this is that when I look at India’s political landscape from a historical perspective, I see Gandhi as the pre-cursor to the wily, opportunistic, politicians who infest Indian politics today. Their modus operandi is the same. They each have a public persona that is pious and professes to fight for the oppressed (whether it’s on basis of caste or religion or economics), which gets them a devoted voter-following that keeps them in power, no matter how corrupt they are.

This really stuck in my craw, and was a large factor in writing this post. I don't absolutely know what Gandhi's motivations were, but proper historians and researchers have generally agreed that the most likely theory is that he meant what he said, based on all the available evidence. No-one can know for certain that Gandhi was pure or whatever, but Rita claims here, quite unequivocally, that he is a forebear of today's career politicians and I think that frankly she should provide evidence for this. I believe she thought that citing the above examples of his contradictions was proof - it's not. Given that (if I remember correctly, and I may not have done) he rejected the opportunity to be the leader of Congress and to be a part of mainstream politics despite requests from Congress and the public to do so, I don't see how that fits with the characterisation of him here as a publicity-hungry schemer. More importantly, I am quite certain that the title 'Mahatma' (great soul) was conferred on him - not of his own creation or choosing - and that he preferred the term 'Bapu' (father), which is what he uses in his letters. I'm not in a position to obtain all the correct literature to fact-check this at the moment, but I have contacted Javed Majeed to see about verifying the claims I've made.

And yet, coming back to President Obama and his mentor, there is one respect in which he surpasses Gandhi! His approach to politics, as of yet, has been refreshingly direct, transparent and earnest. He hasn’t demonstrated another Gandhian trait – one that his predecessors (Clinton and Bush) certainly have – and that is outright denial and defensiveness when confronted on ambiguous issues, and a refusal to be accountable for their own judgements.

This section was downright bizarre, since as BenSix rather hilariously pointed out in the comments at #26:

With respect, Rita…

[Obama's] approach to politics, as of yet, has been refreshingly direct, transparent and earnest.

I think that’s untrue.

Like – really untrue.

The comments about Gandhi's apparent 'defensiveness' show serious historical ignorance, especially given the following correct observations of his obsession with sexuality. JM's Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity: Gandhi, Nehru and Iqbal (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and although it's hardly a 'serious' non-fiction text on the level of the others recommended, Jad Adams's book Gandhi: Naked Ambition, are particularly recommended as counters to Rita's remarks. I went to the launch of Gandhi: Naked Ambition and spoke with JA himself (his contact details, which he gave me, are here). He gave an informal lecture on Gandhi and sex, and mentioned that Gandhi's openness about his issues with sexuality - as epitomised by his practice of sleeping with young girls - was actually a source of great shame for his family. One of the girls who frequently slept alongside him, Manu, was spirited away after his assassination and encouraged to keep her letters and diaries secret - JA tried to track these down, and used some of the letters in his account, but much of the material was destroyed. He affirmed what most historians and researchers have already noted - that Gandhi was very open about his beliefs and practices (sexual and otherwise), refusing to portray himself as saintly in keeping with his strong belief in humility, honesty and social equality. It was rather his associates who hushed things up and sought to push the safe, non-threatening 'Mahatma' image. The tone of his whole autobiography is a testament to this, but I particularly recommend reading the chapter My Double Shame alongside JM's brilliant discussion of it in Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity for an understanding of how Gandhi uses frankness and openness to subvert the concept of shame.

I will return to this point, but on to the comments. Rita wrote:

Gandhi [...] persistently called the British “evil.” That was his language — “where they live the Gods don’t live” etc. It was the language that the — ritually religious mobs still speak.

It was this statement that made me realise what I was dealing with, and changed the 'might write a post' to a 'MUST.' Without further ado, I present to you, a vast selection of quotes from HS:

I can never subscribe to the, statement that all Englishmen are bad. Many Englishmen desire Home Rule for India. That the English people are somewhat more selfish than others is true, but that does not prove that every Englishman is bad. We who seek justice will have to do justice to others. Sir William [Wedderburn] does not wish ill to India, -that should be enough for us. As we proceed, you will see that, if we act justly India will be sooner free. You will see, too, that if we shun every Englishman as an enemy, Home Rule will be delayed. But if we are just to them, we shall receive their support in our progress towards the goal. (HS, p. 17)

If India copies England, it is my firm conviction that she will be ruined.
READER: To what do you ascribe this state of England?
EDITOR: It is not due to any peculiar fault of the English people, but the condition is due to modern civilization. It is a civilization only in name. Under it the nations of Europe are becoming degraded and ruined day by day. (HS, p. 32)

If you will sufficiently think over this, you will entertain the same opinion and cease to to blame the English. They rather deserve our sympathy. They are a shrewd nation and I therefore believe that they will cast off the evil. They are enterprising and industrious, and their mode of thought is not inherently immoral. Neither are they bad at heart. I therefore respect them. Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English are at present afflicted by it. (HS, p. 37).

It is my deliberate opinion that India is being ground down, not under the English heel, but under that of modern civilization. (HS, p. 41)

[...] it is not necessary for us to have as our goal the expulsion of the English. If the English become Indianised, we can accommodate them. If they wish to remain in India along with their civilization, there is no room for them. It lies with us to bring about such a state of things. (HS, p. 71).

We brought the English, and we keep them. Why, do you forget that our adoption of their civilization makes their presence in India at all possible? Your hatred against them ought to be transferred to their civilization. (HS, p. 72).

By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, and if I could secure it at the hands of the English, I should bow down my head to them. If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an Indian. (HS, p. 75).

You English, who have come to India are not good specimens of the English nation, nor can we, almost half-Anglicized Indians, be considered good specimens of the real Indian nation. If the English nation were to know all you have done, it would oppose many of your actions. (HS, p. 113).

I bear no enmity towards the English but I do towards their civilization. (HS, p. 117).*

Gee, somehow that doesn't sound like 'black/white, holier than thou, unexamined, non-intellectual — language', Rita. When I called out some of the errors in the piece, I was told:

What is this need in India to worship people? Why can’t we in India learn to examine people like people — like normal flesh and bones human beings??

Rita also bemoaned the treatment of Gandhi as a 'saint,' saying

I thought — how come these things are never discussed when we are given this pre-processed, recycled hash on Gandhi in our school text books.

Which is all fair enough, but as I said to her - Perhaps you ought to have enquired into why that is. I would be interested as to what exactly she's trying to combat here, as the piece gave me no idea. Who believes in this straw-Gandhi that she has created? For whose benefit is her piece? My family and most Sikh people I know absolutely hate the man, for reasons ironically similar to Rita's but with even less awareness of him than she, and most non-Indians are so ignorant of him that they barely register him as an influence on MLK and Mandela, let alone as an untouchable saintly figure. In fact, I've noticed non-Indian (usually American) people use their complete ignorance about him as a basis for making stupid and unfunny jokes, which is hardly worshipful. I hated the man before I read his writing, and now I respect him, but still recognise that he was massively problematic and yes, hypocritical. It's really worthwhile reading the entire section on Gandhi, gender and sexuality in Javed's book as it incorporates the most current feminist critique of Gandhi but doesn't stereotype the man. Ironically, Rita does what she is despairing of: propagating the image of Gandhi as a 'saint', because instead of bringing him back down to human reckoning by recognising his complexities, she simply takes the ignorant devotee's caricature and replaces 'good' with 'bad'.

The reason that Gandhi has been sanitised and repackaged - one which Rita seems to have completely missed, or ignored, in her quest to find a convenient scapegoat on which to hang persistent ills of Indian society - is precisely because he was an openly problematic individual: an idealist, a zealot, but one who was able to actually bring his vision to bear on people. Many Sikhs hate him partly because they feel like he didn't do enough for them (!) and have gone so far as to relate he and Nehru both to a figure in Sikh history who betrayed one of the Gurus. Hindu fundamentalists (and many Hindus) had a great problem with his insistence on Hindu-Muslim unity and his attempt to improve the position of the lower castes. Why exactly Hindu fundamentalist Nathuram Godse murdered him, I don't know, but there's no doubt that his frankness about sexuality and his desire to hold the elite to account in their ascendancy to power were pretty big reasons for Hindu fundies to hate him. As already mentioned, his family and associates were embarrassed by his frankness - thus in keeping with the general tendency to lionise public figures after their death (intensified by ignorance and hero-worship in India, but common everywhere), it was in everyone's interests to write the man off as a 'saint' after his death. Not, as Rita seems to think, so that he would be untouchable (oh the irony of that word!) but precisely so that he would be ignored - a myth to be invoked, rather than engaged with.

All of which might sound like a conspiracy theory, but it wasn't that organised - it was just a case of everyone doing what was tidiest and most convenient for them. Nehru has received the same treatment (though more thanks to Hindu fundamentalists and an ignorant, hero-worshipping populace than family embarrassment). Earlier this year, in the wake of Rumbold's PP piece, I was considering doing an essay on Hindu fundamentalism and knowing that it was a topic of interest to him, I asked JM about the expulsion of writer and MP Jaswant Singh from the Hindu-fundamentalist BJP party for having criticised Nehru over Partition. He explained to me that there was nothing surprising about the BJP attacking Nehru, since some of them (he cited Singh and L.K. Advani, I remember) had changed tactics and started to use Pakistan's Islamic origins as an implicit justification for making India a Hindu-only state. Nehru's secularism, of course, posing something of a large obstacle to the goal of constructing India as an ethno-religiously (is that the right term?) 'pure' state. Somewhat bearing out JM's remarks is the fact that Jaswant Singh sailed right back into the BJP not long afterwards. With Nehru and Gandhi tidied away, Communism a global and local embarrassment, the only remaining nationalist claim to power from all the groups that Gandhi sought to unite in HS is that of the Hindu fundamentalists'.

If anyone wants a reading list, please let me know and I'll give you recommendations besides those above - for excellent feminist history texts, or even just for Indian history in general (I really want to read Bayley as he is meant to be amazing). I will hopefully do a follow-up post to this in which I address specifically why Gandhi is not quite the right place to look if you're reflecting on the parlous state of women's rights in India today. Shamit posted an excellent quote from Gandhi's grandson, which I am going to quote, and which contains something of a valuable clue:

One of the best quotes I ever read about Gandhiji and women came from his great grandson Tushar Gandhi -

“I would say that Bapu was a champion of gender equality. But the moral strength that he imputes to women has an almost inborn, genetic complexion to it, which bears little or no relation to the exploitation, humiliation and hardship that has been women’s lot, historically speaking. Bapu remained fixed on the symbolism of the Mother. His was a passive picture of womanhood, of a person who undoubtedly possessed freedom but functioned within narrow parametres [sic] and defined boundaries.”

* All statements in bold, my emphasis.

Instantaneous reaction

Well, my hands are shaking. I feel incredibly sick. I have just cried four times in a row.

What in the hell is wrong with me?

Now that it's faded after a fifth quick spurt of crying, I feel almost embarrassed. I think my rational mind is reasserting itself. The desire for obliteration seems ludicrous, but not entirely. I think my brother might have heard me cry.

Here I am, in the house, surrounded by sleeping family and my life is worthless. Here is my face in the mirror - hideous. I look bewildered, stupid face.

Every time I think about how many tablets might be too much, my stupid fucking eyes cry. I make little creaking noises, and the blurring gives way to sniffing. Then snot and nausea. WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I EVEN CRY FREELY? Nausea hijacks my grief, truncating it every time. The soggy tissue is pathetic - not quite useless.

Whatever the hell it is strikes whenever my nearest and dearest are all asleep. They should fucking microchip me.

Guilt over TL stops me from really being able to make it happen. I tried to convince a friend not to kill himself via MSN - ultimately I succeeded somehow - but as I was bringing out all my usual quasi-jokey, quasi-desperate persuasion methods, he remarked that he couldn't hang around 'for other people's reasons.' He expressed self-loathing in between apologising to me - and I could see it was sincere - and mentioned that he was 'feeling selfish tonight.'

Ever since then, I've really found myself wondering whether it really is so worthwhile and humanitarian trying to persuade people of the value of life over death. It shook my certainty in a way I've never experienced before.

Sexism and self-education

As a feminist/womanist, you get used to endless questions. Most feminist and womanist bloggers write, read and interact with their minds and fingers ready and primed to filter and/or delete, because of these endless questions. Quite often, seemingly-naive questioners will reveal themselves to be toxic arseholes bit by bit, in a manner that somewhat recalls, now that I think about it, TV-drama serial-killers sending bits of paraphernalia to their victims/potential victims/the police/all of the above. All too often, the person who says 'What's wrong with thinking/believing/saying X?' does not mean ''What's wrong with thinking/believing/saying X?' What they mean is: 'Hey, I think X. What is your problem? Why aren't you treating my opinion with the respect it deserves?!' All too often, these nuances of meaning become gradually more apparent, as I was saying, until they are deleted and/or blocked. Occasionally, you get a person who DOES mean what they're saying, but still turns out to be a toxic arsehole anyway, and even more rarely, you get a person who means it AND genuinely engages with the other point of view.

The way the process typically goes is as follows:

- Commenter pops up on a feminist/womanist blog and asks a question to feminist/womanist blogger/commenter.

- Feminist/womanist blogger/commenter responds.

(Often, a Q may not be clearly addressed to anyone in particular, so several respondents may weigh in).

This usually repeats at least twice, possibly more, and depends on the patience level of respondents and the blog author.


- Once respondents' patience is wearing thin, they will urge the questioner to go educate themselves. This frequently results in a flurry of questions about how to do that. Respondents provide links, which are very often ignored, and questioner continues to ask questions, OR:

- Questioner will simply ignore links and keep on asking - I have seen this so often, I swear that it now raises my blood pressure in Pavlovian fashion upon glimpsing it again.

Once this show of disrespect has been sufficiently extended, the questioner will usually end up being deleted, blocked and/or ignored.


Now there may be some of you out there who, even after reading this description of how it happens all too frequently, are fool enough to ask: But what's so wrong with that? Isn't it flattering for feminists/womanists, to be treated like an expert on a subject?

To which I have to respond by figuratively looking you in the eye, and asking: Have you been in the world much? Watched the news? Do you read blogs, Private Eye, newspapers? Let's take this little thing that you might have heard of - now what was it called - 'climate change.' It's also known as 'global warming' and 'AGW'. If you exist in a state of about-average wakefulness (i.e., you're not given to chronic blackouts or narcolepsy), you'll be aware that a majority of scientists believe that it's happening, that it is down to humans and that we need to do something about it. Now, I don't give a shit what your personal stance on it is (unless you're a hardcore fruitcake of the still-disputing-that-most-scientists-believe-it's-happening variety...). You will have received this basic knowledge through the news. Now tell me, what was the response of most national governments to this knowledge? Did madness break out? Were presidents and prime ministers touring the country and writing to the press, crying that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE?

No. No, they were not. If, as I assume, you are a fairly average person, not massively political, you probably responded in similarly muted fashion. Cue some stuff about recycling and less car journeys and green products. Thus, despite a MASSIVE EXPERT CONSENSUS, the global reaction was mostly something along the lines of:

'What? You - What? Really? Melting? Flooding? Us? Omigod. Shit. Fuck... ahhhh, hell.'

Just goes to show what you think about experts. To use another example: hunger and poverty in Africa. You know it's happening, right? You know that it's still pretty bloody serious in parts of Africa. Does this send you, screaming and militant, to devote your life to building huts and raising money for water filtration and Fairtrade farming? As Michael Kyle says: 'Ah... Nah'. We will always ignore or filter out what someone's saying, even if they're an expert and at times, especially if they're an expert, if we've already made our own minds up.

I really urge you, even if you've blanked out by this point and have little or no will to continue reading, to read this brilliant post by a disabled feminist: 'Go educate yourself (please)'. Hopefully by now, you comprehend how massively disrespectful it is to keep harassing someone after they've told you to find out for yourself. Some feminists and womanists have had it happen so often that they now move to refusing the role of educator instantly. While I can accept that men may feel intimidated by feminism and think it's something they aren't allowed to be part of - surely no-one's actually going to stop you getting feminist texts from the library? Women aren't really going to leap from your screen and strangle you for attempting to read things online either, are they?

I've been tremendously lucky in that I've never really had to deal with this that much. On Pickled Politics, however, there is one commenter who's just pulled a questioner on me after having done it once before. He seems like an OK chap as far as I know, but he asked the question which prompted this post. The thread in question was in response to an article about Dr. Mitu Khurana, who is fighting to protect her five-year-old twin daughters from a murderous husband and in-laws - PLEASE read the article (if not the comments) and sign the petition. The commenter in question, Ravi Naik, wrote in response to me:

[...] in my mind, I am wondering what sort of grandparents want to harm their own flesh and blood? Is this an exception or the rule in Indian society?

To which I just thought... How the bloody hell should I know? Why should I know, given that I don't live in India?

Now if your response to my reaction was along the lines of 'Why don't you know?' and/or 'You should know,' then congratulations. You are a joke, and you have your very own square on the anti-feminist bingo board under "You should..." I would also turn the questions back onto you, and ask: do you know? If so, why not? Is the calculated murder of female children, whether in the womb or after birth, a subject of worth only to a select minority, mostly-female, here and in India? Why is it so? Why does the exercising of women's right to abortion in America draw vocal and violent protests from (usually) godbags, but this issue doesn't? Furthermore: what is it that I'm expected to know? Sex ratios in India? The individual psychology of mothers-in-law like Mitu Khurana's?

Ultimately, I do know to some extent - and how I found out is no secret (as the above link indicates), hell, I even link to an Indian feminist blog and one which campaigns against female foeticide up above ^

The matter of why I should know this is separate, however. There is such an easy answer: why should I know about this topic? Because I am interested in it. The minute you ask a question about something, you are expressing interest. If that wasn't your intention, then either think before you speak or type, or shut the hell up, listen/read, and learn. Even better, do both. It is not the asking of a question in itself which is troublesome. What is troublesome, is the assumption that you can - nay, SHOULD - keep asking, and get answers, because it is your RIGHT. Why, on the Internet of all places, where nothing is sacred and everyone is hidden, would you have more of an entitlement to an answer than in the 'real' world? Would you be more inclined to give your bank details to an e-mail scammer than your wallet to a mugger? No, because the fear of violence and the lack of possibilities for concealment keep you in check in the latter scenario. Interestingly enough, questioners may themselves resort to abuse and threats of violence after being deleted and/or ignored - which I think says a lot about the mentality and masculinity of questioners.

Note I didn't say 'maleness,' I said 'masculinity.' Questioners often reveal their masculinity very quickly through their assumptions of superiority over those they are asking for information - how paradoxical is that? They claim to be seeking help, yet they often ignore that help when it is given. This subsequently suggests that what they really want is attention and to provoke - it's no wonder that we must then be constantly alert for trolling. Scholars of masculinity and male feminist allies have pointed out how contradictory masculinity is, and the behaviour I'm describing is a perfect example of that. What it also brings to mind is the behaviour of a spoilt child, whether at home crying for Mummy until she's ready to tear her hair out, or in the classroom, driving the teacher insane. Which is when I stopped, and realised that I had to write this post.

Sure, there's the more apparent sexism (or racism, or homophobia, or transphobia, or ablism!) that is demonstrated through the assertion of the 'right' of white men (for it is usually they!) to be endlessly showered with attention and appreciation in spaces which are supposed to be kept safe for women, transwomen, non-white people, queers/homosexuals and the disabled, and in areas that have nothing to do with them. The very notion that it's 'OK' to ask a member of any or all of these groups to explain what they believe and what they experience for you without bothering to do even a little of your own research, and not only that, but expect them to do so in a way that doesn't offend you personally, is laden with privilege. If you really believe that that is your 'right' or 'entitlement,' then you are a massive, arrogant, dickwad and you can fuck right off. It's funny how even the most 'libertarian' of white males can develop a very bad reaction to being told that they ought to do some work of their own accord.

Yet for the men among you who have been reading this so far, and are feeling relatively confident that you don't behave in the manner, I've just described, consider this: the repeated posing of questions to feminists/womanists is sexist and disrespectful in itself, because it projects your expectations of femininity onto a bunch of women you don't know and ultimately becomes a subtle way of trying to put women 'back in their place'. If, as I'm assuming, you're relatively liberal/lefty-leaning socially and fairly politicised - how often do you go onto politics blogs and start asking the commenters there (for example) why the Labour party is historically considered 'left-wing' or not, or why the Conservatives are generally considered 'right-wing'? Have you gone out of your way to get people to explain to you in full (for example) why opposing wars is generally seen as a left-wing thing?

Unless you inform yourself on EVERY LITTLE POINT by bothering other commenters, then it is absolutely unacceptable to do that on feminist blogs. So feminism is large and diverse - so fucking what? The leftist movement's hardly homogeneous. The key difference in the two settings, which makes all the difference, is that politics blogs, whether left- or right-leaning, are seen as 'male' territory. Politics has always been overwhelmingly regarded as the domain of the male - which is why even I sound like I'm separating out feminist blogs and politics blogs. Despite being political, feminist blogs don't duplicate the style of most politics blogs and thus are not really regarded as such by the 'blokeosphere'. Hence the cynical gender-aware observer will be unsurprised to see feminist issues being mocked, ignored and trivialised even on supposedly 'liberal' sites. Politics blogs are an exercise in hyper-masculinity, with a frankly pathetic show of macho piss and pyrotechnics in the comments. Anyone who dares to show ignorance of the basic context of a particular situation will usually be ignored, and sometimes also mocked - and men have the nerve to claim that feminist/womanist bloggers treat them harshly! Men venturing onto feminist/womanist blogs, however, are well aware that most of the commenters are women. Women are feminine, they don't DO that hyper-macho rude thing! Women are mothers and nurses and carers and primary school teachers, don't you know?! They're there to pat you and tell you you're a big boy and make everything better. Answering your questions and doing your work for you - that's their JOB.

And so, with this embedded deep in their psyche through mere socialisation, men set out on feminist blogs to behave in a way they wouldn't dare demonstrate in front of other men. Even the most well-meaning of my male readers may have made this mistake already, because of socialisation. If you find yourself thinking or even hoping that feminists/womanists are going to be patient with you and entertain your dumb ass when you know that commenters on political blogs wouldn't - well, then, you deserve all the flaming, deleting and banning you get. So you cast women in supporting roles in your head because you're a heterosexual male - so what? Our spaces are for us, not you. That name on the screen is not your mother, your sister or primary school teacher. She wouldn't do it for you, and you shouldn't even be expecting her to. Take yourself over to here to get some feminism 101, and here for some womanism 101, use Google and libraries. As for asking questions, it's not verboten, but if you really want to be a feminist/womanist ally and demonstrate basic respect for women, you can't really go wrong with the following formula:

a) STFU, pay attention and read/listen. More than likely, you will get the answer to what you were wondering about if you just read what feminist and womanist bloggers are saying on a regular basis. Once you find a blogger whose style you like, check out their blogroll. Most have reading lists, or you could always ask them or their commenters for suggestions politely - that's perfectly fine. If you know somebody in your personal life who is a feminist or womanist and who wouldn't mind dealing with your Qs, you can approach them, but remember that ultimately, if you're interested, it's your job to find things out for yourself.
b) Stop and think. If you're thinking of asking a question, is it really necessary, or will a bit of patience and/or research or reflection do the job for you?
c) If you must ask a question, do so as politely and respectfully as possible. You may still get flamed, which you'll just have to live with. We feminists and womanists come under constant attack and have absolutely no obligation or relation to you. You have to earn our attention and trust.

Ultimately, if a man can't do that much - and it really isn't that much - then he is a sexist twat. THIS is what challenging privilege is all about - realising that the world does NOT revolve around you, confronting that fact head-on with people who have been harmed by the privilege that attaches to your body and accepting that their reality is equally valid with humility and respect. It's an ongoing process of course, but really, if you can't be bothered to make the effort to act like a full human, there's no reason why anyone should be bothered to treat you like one.