An open letter

Dear Mum and Dad,

      I am writing this letter because I don’t feel like we can communicate in any other way. When I took Dad’s call, I was actually listening to what he said, and I was really trying to speak calmly and not get angry. However, it became quickly apparent that it was not about dialogue. Dad just wanted to vent feelings of anger towards me. He kept throwing the question at me: ‘We’re not that bad parents, are we?’ and ‘Tell me, is it cruel to be someone’s well-wisher? Is that a crime?’

     Now, looking at that written down, it’s obvious that those are rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions do not allow for an answer, because they assume one. It’s like when someone says ‘Who’s the daddy?’ Everyone knows that they’re supposed to say: ‘You are!’  Furthermore, these questions are coming heavily larded in guilt. Who is really going to be able to answer such things honestly? They are not about opening up communication, they are about creating a ‘good guy’ and a ‘bad guy.’ If I say ‘Yes, you are bad parents,’ I become the ‘bad guy.’ If I try to console you, then I am being forced into a rescuer role, treating you as a victim even when I have incredibly overwhelming grief and pain of my own. I try to avoid these questions altogether and ACTUALLY talk, but you don’t want to know. You keep repeating these things. Your need to control dominates everything. Maybe you want a simplistic dynamic that you understand. Maybe you need to assuage your feelings of guilt and bewilderment. Maybe you also genuinely feel so hurt by my behaviour that you are at your wits’ end.

     It is great for you that you can think purely in terms of the recent past and the present in terms of our relationship, but I am not able to forget or forgive all the things that have happened between me and this family. It has caused, and continues to cause me, a great deal of grief and pain. If you then see this as me thinking I’m ‘right’ or ‘better’ than you, then I really don’t want to continue, thanks very much. You do not have a right to make me cry and ruin my entire day just because you are my parents. You make a huge issue of how I have made you cry at certain times over the last 2 years – you have made me cry MY WHOLE LIFE. It doesn’t matter what your culture is that you were raised in, or whatever – that is an excuse. Every time you bring it up, it is a way of saying that you are not responsible for your own behaviour and furthermore, it is another tactic that allows you to veer from, or ignore, what I am actually saying. I would think that when someone has been brought to tears and is crying, you would at least show some compassion, stop talking. No, clearly that is not even enough. It feels like you want me to be completely humiliated and broken, so that I will beg for forgiveness and come crawling back.

     Even what you describe as ‘caring’ frightens me, constantly assuming that I’m not able to look after myself or run my own household properly. Despite my telling you constantly that I will ask if I need your help, and telling you that I am getting on fine, you seem to insist on seeing me as incompetent. Is it that you WANT me to be that way? Or are your lives so empty that you can only get by obsessing about possible imaginary problems in your children’s lives? It strikes a very sour note indeed that while I, living in a happy, supportive, loving relationship with independence and freedom are a cause for concern, you (and I’m looking at you, here, Mum!) were all too happy to sit back and let your other daughters suffer in toxic situations without victimising them this way. You didn’t constantly imply that they couldn’t cook for themselves properly, although you DID impute every failure in their relationships – including abuse – to food and cooking.

     Mum, I think that you are a resentful, fearful, narcissistic shadow of a person whose whole life depends on what other people think of you. If there is some substance within you, it’s very little. You are fundamentally an empty, judgemental, tactless person with no sense of empathy whatsoever and a striking inability to take responsibility for yourself. Your need to be in the right is so powerful that you will twist anything and everything I say to you, simply not listen, or if something does somehow get through to you, make yourself a victim and say that I was rude, disrespectful, etc. etc. and that I should have ‘explained it differently’ to you because you are ‘old’ or whatever enfeebling implication you want to use. I realised the other day that you would probably have left one or all of us girls to be killed by a partner if it wasn’t for my dad. I really wanted to think that I was just being vindictive, but no, the evidence in how you behaved with one of my sisters was plenty. Do you know how it feels to realise that about the person who is supposed to be closest to you in the world? Sometimes I wonder that I’m still alive and here given how much you have criticised me and put me down.

     Other people’s children were always better, even when it meant you contradicting your own sexist beliefs about gender and housework. I was bad because I was ‘lethargic’ and ‘slow’, and ‘slow people are stupid’ – you certainly made sure I never forgot that during my primary school years! Then there was the time you told me that I would grow up to be a serial killer, and the constant denigration of my favoured hobby of reading. Everything I liked was always stupid or inadequate in some way – you even laughed and told me that I would be ‘penniless’ when I said that I wanted to be an artist aged 5. You were also quick to blame me for things being broken or not working, even up to a year or two ago when you did it AUTOMATICALLY and didn’t register it or respond even when my other sister (who’s not exactly my biggest fan) laughed and said ‘It wasn’t her!’ There could NEVER be a reason for any of my feelings, oh no. You had the handy catch-all of ‘jealousy’ for a long time because, hey, why not smear and dismiss the child who’s pointing out reality when you want to fawn over your golden boy? You told me when I was 11 that other family members liked him more because ‘he accepts love’. That’s right – how could I think it was anything but my fault if people didn’t fawn over me the way they did over him?

     Let’s not forget the constant focus on my appearance – my ‘beak’ nose, being too fat for you, my breasts being the ‘wrong’ size and of course, whenever I dressed how I wanted to, it was apparently for your amusement so that you could call me a ‘parrot’, ‘fashion-obsessed,’ laugh at and criticise me with the backup of my sisters. I find it very hard to feel love or respect for you, even though I see that you are intelligent on some level, can be funny and even show human emotion very occasionally. So many times I wanted to hit you, but that would have made me the weaker person. You are not worth it – you would still be awful and pathetic even if I punched you, it would just give you more fuel for your victim pyre. Your whole life is about fear, and like a toxic disease, you instilled it into all of your daughters. I should thank you, in a way, because I have learnt a lot from you and a core aim of my life is not to become like you. Your behaviour is enabled and reflected by the dysfunction of other family members, and I need to be compassionate, self-aware and brave so that I can take responsibility for my own life.

     Dad, I am much more grief-stricken by the relationship breakdown with you than with my mum. This is not some empty idolisation of the ‘absent parent,’ even though you were more distant than absent. I respect you, in that you strive to be honest and speak your mind with people. I know from what you have told us that you have experienced racism because of your looks, and I have seen it happen recently. I am proud of how well-known you are, and I do respect your achievements. We merely have a difference of opinion. You seem to think that anything I do to assert my own identity is some kind of personal insult. If I challenge your bigotry and racism? INSULT! How dare I disrespect you, and apparently responding to what you say directly is ‘imitating’ you... more disrespect... I don’t understand why your ego is so weak that a teenage girl disagreeing you would make you lose it like you did (and still do).

     You always say, these days, that I should have come and spoken to you whenever I fight with my mum, yet when I try to point out that I have done this in the past and it went disastrously, you harrumph that that was ’10 years ago.’ Well, sorry, but based on the way you continue to talk to me, I don’t see how anything’s changed! When I tried to talk to you as a teenager about the fact that I felt you had abandoned me to my mother’s hatefulness, you made it all about you and claimed I had said that you 'didn’t love your children’... ! Then, just to really add that touch of showmanship, you asked my mum (who was looking on smirking) to go get a knife to cut your wrists! What a classy way to behave before your fragile, vulnerable youngest daughter when she was trying to broach a very difficult and painful topic with you honestly. Things like this really detracted from the respect I had for you. It is painfully ironic, you were so obsessed with the ‘respect’ (read: total unquestioning hero-worship) that I apparently owed you, that bit by bit, I began to trust you and admire you less. DESPITE you constantly playing verbal Whac-a-mole with me for having the temerity to think for myself, I still respected you more than my mum because you are at least direct and upfront about what you feel. Your life doesn’t revolve quite so much around the opinions of others – you have your own opinions on things. You’re surprisingly less sexist than my mum.

     However, you have been perfectly fine to let things be as they are. You’ve never stopped twice to think about how your own need to feed your ego might harm others – whether as a result of your absence doing ‘community work’ or your constant slagging off and cutting down of anyone who disagrees with you, even your best friend. Ironic isn’t it, that you would constantly call me (and my siblings) ungrateful and disrespectful and guilt-trip us, when your behaviour is the same towards your so-called friends and your family? Maybe we needed our father more involved in our lives growing up. Changing a nappy here and there doesn’t make you a hero. Likewise, though my relationship with Mum is toxic, she has had to sacrifice so much of her personality and dignity to keep you happy. Anyone would be bitter in such a position. You were always fine to stroll in and join in with a telling-off or slagging session without stopping to think twice about whether it was justified. I was surprised and impressed when you rescued my sister from abuse, but really, do you not ever wonder whether it could all have been avoided if you’d just been more involved sooner? Your favoured child in our family, for a long time, seems to have been the TV.

     J- – I hate you the least of the siblings and probably least overall. You actually apologised for some of your behaviour growing up. I think that you are a coward and need to face reality over whether you will be a mother or not, so that you can stop trying to be Mother Teresa all the time (or go into it fully – one or the other would be nice). Your inability to decide riles others, who snap at you, and you snap back, which created a lot of unwelcome conflict for me growing up. I got to be the target for your displaced anger a lot (as well as everyone else’s!) and while you seemed to see that sometimes back then, you still do it now. I am not going to be your bullying victim. I am also not interested in your zealotry. Somewhat like Dad, you can’t handle it at all if people challenge what you think or even dare to exist near you whilst failing to comply with your private ‘rules’. It’s pathetic and you can be a total bitch, like when you are policing my gender/race/culture, as if my body, clothes or life in general is anything to do with you. NEWSFLASH – it’s not. If you can’t be kind and respectful, then I’m going to push you out. It makes me sad, because I really do care about you, and I fought the tide of Mum’s victim-blaming so long to stop you going under when you were vulnerable. Yet you show, time and time again, that you are so desperately enslaved by your need for Mum and Dad’s approval that you cannot, or will not, challenge their prejudices even when they creak under the weight of their own logical inconsistencies.

     Perhaps you are their original scapegoat victim; I know that Mum’s obsession with our bodies has left you with lifetime hang-ups and low self-esteem. I know that they blamed you for your beauty attracting weirdoes and I know that they probably came down on you really hard as the eldest, and one of the children born when they were younger and had more energy to interfere. However, I don’t see why I should forgive you for being a bitch to me. I didn’t do anything to deserve it when you and N- would get together and make comments about my body. Also, you like to throw your weight about and be the boss, but you were happy to be screwed over by Mum and Dad’s sexism without offering me any support whenever I fought with my brother. MAYBE, if you had sat down with me and let me know that you at least knew where I was coming from in my rage, things might have been different. Still, what can I expect from you? You have so little self-awareness that you’ve buried your head in the sand over major life decisions for nearly a decade despite how well you come across to others. I feel sorry for you, but you have destroyed any warmth or trust I felt towards you by constantly closing ranks against me. Keep chasing Mum and Dad’s approval for the rest of your life like the good little police dog you are!

     N- – You said I had ‘this coldness’ because of how I’ve distanced myself from the family... Well, sorry, but when you sold out and gave up being the one in the family with guts, I had to step in! I respect that you seem to have your own mind more than anyone else, but you’re basically a younger version of Mum – a bitchy martyr, deferring to your man even though he clearly DOESN’T need an ego boost. Unlike Mum, you ACTUALLY think you know it all. Congratulations, I guess on your assimilation. You like to bitch about everything all the time (just like Mum!) but you’ve adapted to your in-laws to the point that you expect us to dress to impress them even as you criticise them! Yeah, that makes so much sense! You have beautiful little children, who I love very much, but I worry about the superiority complex that you and your smug-ass husband will most likely give them, and that makes it easier to step away. I don’t know, or care, what you think of me because you forfeited that right to be considered by constantly criticising me growing up and dumping on me when I worshipped you and thought you were so brave and different. Like hell! I’ll miss your little ones, but I’ve enjoyed barely interacting with you – it’s so freeing. Your bitch energy has lessened of late, thanks to your children, but you’d better find another outlet to distract you from your often-unfulfilling marriage because you can’t stay knocked up forever. That is, unless you have four kids and then go back to becoming Mum, mk. II... Maybe you will, but you know what? I don’t care, you made your choice and you know it, which is why you complain all the time!

     G- – I don’t really feel like we know each other in any real sense. We just sort of drift past each other like ships in the night. To some extent, I know I was a bitch to you and (not that it excuses it), I was simply modelling what I’d seen and what was being done to me. Maybe that was why you relished joining in family gang-ups on me so much? You liked to call me ‘fat’ and ‘stupid’ and cyberstalk me and report back to the parents. I really genuinely hated your guts for a long time, because you were the Golden Boy. When I was little, it was because I was jealous – which Mum and Dad left me in the garden for, until I started crying and saying ‘Nobody loves me, nobody loves me.’ Later, it was because you were a spoilt, selfish, shallow little brat with no respect for ANYONE. I found it impossible to swallow how rules that were apparently stone-clad for everyone else could be flouted with impunity by you, and NOBODY DID ANYTHING.

     I kind of owe you, because it really laid bare my parents’ hypocrisy in full, and the disingenuousness of their ongoing claims that they ‘treated their children equally.’ Yeah, no. We all knew that you were the child that Mum wanted, and that my parents were hoping I would be (as she once told me!). They came down hard on us and guilt-tripped us, but you had the Teflon coating of entitlement, being the all-important Boy that Indian culture worships. You were an investment and they seemed desperate to show how much they wanted to invest in you at every opportunity. I think what really stunned me was that you could challenge them and you would more or less get your way – it was almost like they couldn’t really be bothered to get angry at you. You could make them listen, and you didn’t obsess about guilt and keeping them happy, whereas we couldn’t and we did. You could make them happy just by EXISTING, which is more than I could do. Ultimately, it’s more their fault than yours that we have not much of a relationship now.

     This open letter to all of you has been very useful as a way of underlining the issues I have with you which have destroyed my relationships with each and every one of you. You all toe a narrow party line, then seem surprised that I don’t want to speak to any of you. Well, gee, why would I be interested in people who:

          a)      Lack self-awareness

          b)      Lack empathy

          c)       Run their lives largely or entirely in accordance with the opinions of others

          d)      Constantly judge and bitch about other people while being nice to their faces?

These imply certain attributes, chiefly cowardice, lack of imagination, dishonesty and deceitfulness. Given everything I’ve detailed, why should I let you all live in my head, rent-free, as the saying goes? Why should you take credit for adhering to a minimum standard, i.e. feeding and educating me? Last I checked, education was a legal requirement in the UK, and frankly, expressing regret for having been ‘too liberal’ or whatever, is pathetic. You were lazy, not liberal – I pushed against your boundaries and worked to make the few gains that I have made. Other people would be so proud of having a child like me, and the fact that others that I have talked to have agreed with and supported me is proof that a) I am NOT making it up, exaggerating or oversensitive and b) YOU are the ones with the problem. Shocking though it is, many people manage to do what you did and give their children love, respect and nurturing. Also, asking to be treated like a human being rather than your whipping girl DOES NOT mean that ‘I think I’m right’ or ‘I think I’m better than you.’ Don’t project your inferiority complexes onto me, just because I can live without obsessing over other people’s opinions of me!

You are the ones who need to grow up, get over yourselves and get real.

No love,

KJB

The Garden of Eden complex

I was chatting on Facebook with a friend about relationships (I've had yet another disastrous friendship situation emerge recently!) and this segued into talk of my relationship especially and the things that I try to do to maintain stability. My friend commented that something which I mentioned as important to me (fighting fair) is a rare thing to value. Hence further discussion unfurling, and me thinking up this post a propos de rien.

The impression that I've got, with a lot of relationships (heterosexual ones - it may be different for those who are in same-sex and/or polyamorous relationships), and which took a more definite form whilst conversing with this friend of mine, was that many people (perhaps women more so than men, it seems to me, but then perhaps those of you with the 'masculine perspective' can weigh in?) suffer from something which I have conceived of as the 'Garden of Eden complex.'

JUST IN CASE you are uncertain of the Garden of Eden - in the Bible, Adam is the first man created by God, who lives in the Garden of Eden (= Paradise, basically) and then Eve is created to keep him company, but that chick ate the apple from the tree of knowledge 'cos a snake said so, yo, and then Adam and Eve get embarrassed about their nekkidness and ARGUE and get cast out of the GoE (known as the Fall of Man, or just The Fall). This is where the notion of 'original sin' comes from in Christianity - basically all humans post Adam and Eve bear the stain of The Fall in their spiritual DNA or whatever, and so start off with a Godly debt to pay through the Christian way (which I can't comment on authoritatively, but like most religions involves 'good works', charity, praying etc.).

Now, how many of you reading know people who care a lot about how the fighting is done in their relationship, and to whom fights can be a useful and constructive experience? Maybe you just happen to be of the oh-so-enlightenedly modern and liberal Tumblr generation sort, all kinky and pan-sexual and Safe Sane Whatever. Or maybe, like me, this kind of thing has more of the air of the unicorn to you: you've heard tell of it, and maybe even seen a depiction, but is that shit for real? Hell yeah (it certainly is for me), but we already know how smug and self-satisfied I am, :-D so I'm going to explain my idea to you at long last.

My impression (this is of couples in the UK - I'm not really placed to comment much on overseas) is that passive-aggression is unbelievably common, and stereotypes would tell us that this is a favoured tactic of women. Everyone has at some point seen, heard or heard of a scenario where a woman who is obviously annoyed and/or upset replies: 'Fine. I'm FINE' in the most markedly un-fine manner upon being asked by her partner (often depicted as a clueless and/or insensitive male) and continues this with gritted teeth if he persists: 'I said I'm FINE - forget it.' However, my experience is that passive-aggression is pretty common to both genders - I've had it used against me by partners and I'm sure I've used it at times.

To delve back into the stereotypes box, we are constantly told that women are incredibly insecure about their relationships and/or male partners all the time, and constantly in need of reassurance, e.g.: 'Why/how could he do/say/not do/say that?' Stereotypes gain the kind of acceptance that they do because of the tiny little sliver of truth in them. As you smart cookies know already, in a difficult and often frightening world, we bolt on to the reassuring little nugget of truth like iron filings on a magnet and, being inclined to the easy way out, ignore the complexity around it. Yet those readers of mine who know me as a person will know that I'm always looking out for contradictions and things that just don't quite add up (Team Lester Freamon all the way! Wooo!).

You would think that if women, or people generally, were asking themselves questions, that they would  then be all the more critical and introspective on their relationships... but of course, it never works that way in practice. You have to ask the right questions, for one, and who is asking who is absolutely critical. These people are asking themselves; many of them are going to have all this in their head, but do you really think all, or even a respectable amount of it, will come out of their mouths? No, me neither. They are questioning themselves and while in some contexts (e.g. at the start of a relationship, or before the relationship comes to be viewed as such) this is fair enough; generally, all it is... is just you questioning yourself. Creating doubt. Obviously, if you're not with 'the right person' (I don't believe in The One, but I believe in a One) then this is not surprising at all. This little inner questioning voice is valuable; if you're not with 'the right person', it will most likely create doubt around them (and this will probably be verbalised at some point, even if inadvertently), but too few people realise that it is also means creating doubt around yourself. If the questions are coming thick and fast, all the time, regardless of what your partner says/does, then you need to think twice and challenge that voice. Think long and hard about why you are always asking yourself things, whether or not you mention these things to your partner, and if so how often, and how is it verbalised, etc.

The thing is that self-knowledge is painful. Just like ol' A&E up in the GoE becoming ashamed and evicted and so forth as a result of becoming aware, many people will not become self-aware without being made self-conscious first. Hence why people who are 'typically' good-looking and popular are not necessarily lovable or good company - they've never had to work to win others over, or had to think about the nature of social interaction in the way that those who are marginalised do. Many people treat relationships as a way to run from themselves, whether that's in the form of constantly surrounding themselves with other people so they don't have to be by themselves, or continually having the same kinds of relationships with the same kinds of outcomes, or always only choosing certain kinds of relationships... No doubt you may see some overlap between these, as do I.

Here's where we finally get to the meat. The Garden of Eden complex is something that I have noticed through conversations, literature, reading the Life & style section of The Guardian, etc. It was more noticeable to me through stuff where writers (largely women) bemoaned a reversion to 'traditional' gender roles in their relationships after marriage and/or childbirth but as I thought about it, I realised that it is sort of latent in the way that many people behave in relationships. I have to say as well that perhaps it's 'just' a English middle-class thing, but I definitely think that the culture that you're raised in (both in terms of in the country/area where you grew up, and in your family) plays a massive role, and I'm sure that the generation that one belongs to also factors in.

For me, the Garden of Eden complex results from several things, but firstly, an assumption (I think, largely unconscious, due to social conditioning) that the beginning of a relationship is the 'zenith' or Paradise, if you will, where everything is easy and exciting and wonderful. Reading and hearing about the way people talk about this, there is an almost unbearable sense of potential. Passionate sex, no fights, or if there ARE fights, they are immediately balanced with passionate make-up sex... dressing up, formalities, furtiveness, infatuation. Then, as things begin to develop, 'the Fall' occurs. Different people may feel that this happens at different times - some once infatuation fades, some after moving in together/engagement/marriage/childbirth, etc. The picture that many columnists and popular culture paint here is that in time, you will either become bored, dispirited and/or desperate enough to withstand a serious long-term relationship with each other and that with work, you can 'rediscover' each other, but that it is OBVIOUSLY never going to be 'like it was.' We all see the profiles of couples who've been married seemingly forever and who talk adoringly of how they love each other the same as when they first met and nod and say 'Awww', then brush over it with our cynicism and move on.

Now, you may cry: 'But - but - is that not how relationships function, and have done, for much of the world's population?' GENERALLY, yes. However, not all people necessarily experience the infatuation phase the same and not everyone prefers it to what comes afterwards. Hell, what comes afterwards isn't even going to be the same for many people! My problem (and here I can hear those of a polyamorous persuasion possibly gearing up to cheer on the next part of my sentence) is that this model of how a relationship works, when yoked together to gender stereotypes and our cultural influences, can create a terrible and fatalistic attitude in people. I know SO MANY women who have fallen prey to the following equation:

'women shouldn't rock the boat' + 'as a woman, my feelings are less important' + GoE complex = 'I won't tell him how I feel... I'm fine... forget it... it'll be fine' (because at the start of a relationship, it often DOES feel that way - you're both so hopped up on the good-time infatuation hormones). [INTERNAL]

RINSE AND REPEAT

'I won't tell him how I feel... I'm fine... Maybe I'm not fine, but it's HIS JOB to care and MAKE ME FINE.' [INTERNAL]

RINSE AND REPEAT

'YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT! YOU DON'T CARE! IT'S BECAUSE OF YOU THAT I FEEL LIKE THIS!' etc. [INTERNAL, but by this point, it's quite likely going to end up also becoming VERBAL at some point]

Alternatively:

'women shouldn't rock the boat' + 'directness is unladylike' + GoE complex = 'I won't tell him how I feel... I'm fine... forget it... it'll be fine'.

RINSE AND REPEAT

'I won't tell him how I feel... I'm fine... OK I'm not fine, but it's HIS FAULT! WHY DOES HE DO THINGS TO MAKE ME UPSET AND ANGRY!' [INTERNAL]

 RINSE AND REPEAT

'THIS IS YOUR FAULT! WHY ARE YOU SO _____________?! WHY CAN'T YOU BE _______?!' [almost certainly VERBAL - in my experience, hetero women who are hung up with appearing 'ladylike' etc. are often happy to use gender stereotyping to their advantage, and therefore place a great deal of responsibility on male partners as the 'providers', which also often means making them take the women's share of blame for problems in the relationship].

 Not to stereotype men, or suggest they are all the same, but quite often the male counterparts to these go as follows:

'men don't do/know how to do emotion' + 'I don't want to worry her' + GoE complex = 'I won't tell her how I feel. Forget it. It'll be fine' (again, not wanting to stereotype, but I think quite often with men, this is not as much of an issue early on as it is for women, unless they are 'relationship-minded' - many men are more relaxed about letting things play out, arguably since the biological clock/social marginalisation around aging and attractiveness factors are not the same). [INTERNAL]

RINSE AND REPEAT

'I don't know/dare tell her how I feel... I don't want to worry her. What is she thinking?' [INTERNAL]

RINSE AND REPEAT

'What happened? How come this is over? Where did it all go wrong?' [may be INTERNAL or VERBAL, but I would say, most likely INTERNAL - as in the classic case of the man who loves his wife, but works long hours and comes home to find she's cheated/left him].

Alternatively:

'men don't do/know how to do emotion' + 'I don't want to worry her' + GoE complex = 'I won't tell her how I feel. Forget it. It'll be fine'. [INTERNAL]

RINSE AND REPEAT

'I don't know/dare tell her how I feel... I don't want to worry her.' [INTERNAL]

RINSE AND REPEAT

'WHAT ABOUT ME?! WHY IS EVERYTHING ALWAYS MY FAULT? YOU DON'T KNOW OR CARE ABOUT WHERE I'M COMING FROM!!' [almost certainly VERBAL -the classic thing of snapping after being constantly pushed. I'm not trying to say that men self-censor for 'noble' reasons, whereas women do so out of lack of confidence, or adherence to stereotypes - I'm just illustrating some of the toxic ways in which social & cultural conditioning, hitched to gender stereotyping and the Garden of Eden complex, often creates mindsets in people so that they are effectively 'setting themselves up to fail' in relationships].

So, the Garden of Eden complex is pretty complex. Basically, it's what happens when a certain vision of relationships (which is extremely common) combines with several other factors (gender stereotyping, social & cultural conditioning, unsuitable partners) to create tendencies which are very common:

1) for people to not really think about their relationships beyond the 'Wahey, I pulled!' stage;
2) for people to overstate the importance of lust/the sexual element and the infatuation/dopamine-driven initial phases of a relationship;
3) for people to avoid being honest with themselves about the true state of their relationship and what they need to do next (because it's normal for things to go shitty, isn't it, that's what happens to everyone);
4) for people to become total hypocrites and dishonest whilst fighting, reverting to gender stereotyping themselves and others (see the last two paragraphs of this review of Rachel Cusk's new book, for example). I get the impression that 'confrontation bad' is apparently deeply ingrained in the English national psyche, judging by how frequently it is invoked as a national stereotype. Certainly, my libertarian and another whiteboy I knew have both seemed floored by me at times (being a British Asian Punjaban, I manage to contravene both the expectations around Asian women and English middle-class people. Win!) and so I can kind of understand why so many people completely fail to understand the point of having it out. Some will also have very negative associations around it, perhaps to do with early experiences of violence, or just be raised to think that it is undignified, scandalous, whatever. However, anyone who wants a relationship to work will welcome arguments as akin more to a town hall meeting, where you come along and take the floor to share your gripes with the listening audience. Fighting must not be about reinforcing anyone's sense of themselves as a wronged victim, or 'hot make-up sex' (that may be a side benefit, but it shouldn't be the point). 

IT MUST BE SAID, THOUGH, that again, your partner is a major factor in whether you can fight fair. When you feel absolutely sure somewhere inside that 'you' (=you & them) is something that you are striving for, an end goal that really matters, you can treat your personal irritations as a stepping-stone to hop across to your partner who is, hopefully, waiting to take your hand and walk off towards 'you'. If it's really not a good pairing, the facade of 'you' will splinter quickly into your individual selves and since there is no actual investment in 'you', but only in maintaining the status quo, you will both behave like children, hurl mud, generate a lot of noise and heat and waste lots of time. Any resolutions are incidental. The thing that has struck me about fighting in this way, when it has happened, is how false it felt. Once, I actually managed to stop myself before I got too far with it (I was on the brink of abandoning TL near a Tube station, not long after we'd disembarked there) and said to TL: 'We're going through the motions. Can't you see?' He was slightly bewildered, and that became our making-up - I explained what I meant, in doing so, gave myself time to calm down and we managed to reconcile pretty much completely. When we have this kind of argument (and it is oh SO easy to do, given that we all live in society), I stop and remember that this is someone else's script that has been beamed into my thoughts. I have become Judy and TL is Punch, and all that's missing is a Policeman to make it literally performed farce. It feels fake, it feels unwelcome and drags my attention and focus back to ME ME ME and the performance of a stereotypical orientalized Asian woman while TL becomes a sneering debate-club English toff type. The need to revert to a script kicks in because it's easier than being honest and more fun to be self-centred and self-righteous than have humility and selflessness in recognising that 'you' is important to you both and that you have both repeatedly shown commitment to it. Being a brat is familiar; being an adult, not so much.

To bring this very long post to a close - what do you think of the Garden of Eden complex or other things discussed? Let me know, in the comments etc.!

Articulacy and the lack thereof

A common compliment that I've had (probably the most common, I would say, although that's not saying much) is that I'm articulate.

I always wonder what exactly that means. On a surface level, I think I know. Asking Google brings up the following:

ar·tic·u·late/ärˈtikyəlit/

Adjective:	(of a person or a person's words) Having or showing the ability to speak fluently and coherently.
Verb:	Express (an idea or feeling) fluently and coherently: "they were unable to articulate their emotions".

So now I'm uncertain once more. I can talk, sure, but am I good at expressing how I feel? I don't think so. One thing that strikes me - with deep irony - is that whenever I am in a greatly emotional state or situation, my supposed 'articulateness' fades fast. I spoonerise, I miss out words or phrases, I say the opposite of what I meant, I struggle to complete a sentence... and when it's really intense, I simply revert to an animal state where I want to howl, weep and/or throw things.

Currently, I feel angry and hurt, but I couldn't tell you why. This raises further issues: am I inarticulate and unable to express these feelings because on some level, I know that they're fleeting, reactive and irrational? Or is it because they are precisely the opposite - unlike the usual generally-carefully-considered output, these come from somewhere deeper and more primal?

Nothing can ever be straightforward - even ' losing my voice' prompts a return to questions of identity and selfhood. Do I, with my ambiguous family background and current romantic situation (having a partner who many would think is the absolute bees' knees), have the 'right' to be angry? Am I just being petulant and bratty, hence a regression to childlike inarticulacy, or is there something more here, linked to how often I have had to self-censor, retreat and silence or be silenced in the past?

My eyes and head are throbbing. I wish I knew.

The mighty C―

Five days back, I wrote about friendships lost; entirely on an impulse, I've decided to honour a current friendship which I feel straddles the worlds of friendship that have been imagined both pre- and post-Internet. You know what I mean - the constant implication wherever you look, from articles in the Metro and 'real' newspapers, to The Social Network, that before social networks friendship was a simple, long-lasting, honest affair, whereas now it's artificial, entirely temporary and probably sex-driven. These are stories that play appealingly to our common knowledge (and laziness and cynicism) about Internet friendships. They can require more effort to maintain (often due to distance), and, ironically, can lack the immediacy of having a physical presence despite offering immediate access to others.

I have to say that my experience more or less mirrors what I've just described. Certainly, there's been no social network-initiated contact of mine that made it to friendship, and no friendship of mine that's flourished through only social network contact. There is, however, one crucial friendship in my life that sprang from (of all the things) MSN Messenger (as it used to be called) and has survived to this day. I speak of the mighty C―.

Ironically, given the centrality of music to our early contact and its heavy presence in C―'s life (he makes music and has a musician's (read: strong) opinion on music, especially pop), our friendship has developed much like my relationship with most music I love. I start off being repulsed yet intrigued, something hidden and immediate encourages me to persist. Stubbornly exposing myself to it again and again, patterns start to fall into place and suddenly, thrillingly, I get it. Once that bond is established, the album and I are forever. I can go and come back any time, knowing that it will be special. Occasionally, an album may fall from grace, but for the most part, we are forever.

I met C― through a friend who had somehow ended up messaging with him quite regularly. Their connection was arcane indeed, C― being a friend-of-a-friend she knew 'in real life'. I messaged with her a lot and I think she told me something about him being rather opinionated (words to that effect, probably less flattering). So, with perfect teenage logic, we or I decided that I would join in with their evening messaging sessions. That should serve as a reminder to me, next time that I claim I wasn't really a proper teenager, that I had the arrogance (even though it never seemed that way at the time...).

I don't really remember what exactly happened, but I DO remember that C― and I interacted like an outbreak of hellfire. He was arrogant, insecure and opinionated; I was arrogant, insecure and opinionated... on some level, I think I wanted to help him? That classic 'project' mentality is so characteristic of women and young women in particular, although of course I'm not even certain if I wanted to help him, or go all Jeremy Kyle on his ass like the self-righteous schoolie I was. We fought and argued a lot in a manner that I can only describe as nothing like you see in old Hollywood films, so don't get excited, and verging on bizarrely macho.

We fought a lot (I don't know if this was in conjunction with my getting together with my ex, so I can't really tell you just how bored I was at the time), until I gave up on him at some point. The friend who had introduced him had, I think, effectively passed him on to me and I don't think she resumed talking to him regularly after I stepped off. I fell out with her, effectively, after having it pointed out to me that she was getting on my nerves (she was) and being paint-strippingly honest with her. I've reread the emails and now I find it all hilarious and definitely cringe-worthy... but not for the usual reasons. I am actually astounded at how much self-possession and self-esteem I had, for a teenage girl. What I regret is how harshly blunt I was. A little diplomacy could definitely have leavened that exchange - although I was greatly influenced by a very forthright, religious friend at the time.

I forget how we got back in touch - it probably was through MSN Messenger yet again. I suspect he probably contacted me, just because it seems more plausible than me contacting him, given how wrapped up in my relationship I was and how low my parting opinion of him had been. Maybe I hit rock bottom and reached out to whoever was in the MSN ether? Or maybe it was all an accident? Who remembers? The fact is that contact was clearly re-established. C― had had something of an extended crash-and-burn episode. After being the Great White Hope of British philosophy (he is a genius, and rather let us know it as a teen), university overwhelmed him and he decided to leave, pulling out only a short time into his first year. I forget whether I heard this first- or second-hand. What I definitely know is that it was the making of him. Who knows how he would have ended up at university - I remember him telling me that Nottingham, where he was, was full of Oxbridge rejects. It sounded like he was very much out of his depth in a highly-pressured environment. Maybe he got a touch of big-fish-in-a-small-pond, much as I did at Master's...?

Anyway, when that crucial re-establishment of contact took place, I received one of the most remarkable surprises I've ever had. C― was infinitely less of an Angry Young Man caricature and much more of an actual person, as opposed to a personality, falling out with people left, right and centre over the Arctic Monkeys. I liked him and it seemed that whatever it was that had drawn me to him as a teen had been justified. He is manic-depressive - I think this may have been why I cut him slack when we were younger, much as I did for my ex despite his lengthy moods. From what I've divined since, I don't think his teens were the happiest time (are they for anyone?!) and I don't know how easy he was finding it to cope with depression at that time. Adult C― was the product of quite a rebirth. People usually go to university to become open-minded, meet people from other backgrounds, etc. - he did it the other way round. His moods could still be tempestuous at times, not helped by the fact that he fell into a relationship with someone who had emotional issues of her own. There may be people out there with depression or other such mental illnesses, who are happy with others who have the same or a similar condition. Good luck to them. My experience, and as it turned out, C―'s, was that it is disastrous. Far from being in a position to empathise with you, the other person has their own demons to face. My ex and I would be moody consecutively, hence never a dull moment! I think that without TL, I would have had to struggle a lot harder to believe in myself and bolster my self-esteem.

C―, however, went through his break-up with astounding resilience. It may not have seemed that way to him, but his ex was dating one of his good friends. Somehow, he avoided setting them on fire and/or getting himself on the addiction express to Hades. He is a creative, expressive, cultured individual who had not been able to adjust to university and didn't fit in where he lived either (as he complained to me many a time, citing 'chavs' and similar). Yet, against all odds, he matured like a fine wine or cheese. I'm not sure I've seen anyone develop emotional intelligence at warp speed before, but he really was doing a phoenix. We spoke on Skype, by text, by landline, probably by mobile too... maybe by email sometimes... there were times when he zoned right out in conversation, or when I didn't really have time to talk. There were many times where I harangued him over something or another, and there were times where I talked him down from the ledge, so to speak. Never could I have imagined doing such a thing for anyone, let alone 'an Internet friend.' This should give you some idea of what C― meant, and means, to me. 

Whenever I was being his Samaritan, I didn't want to patronise him. I knew, from my own moments in the dark, that platitudes never ring more hollow than when you are suicidal, your thoughts telescoping to monochrome starkness. I am an atheist, yet being in that position was one of the earliest sensations of something greater than myself at work. Suicidal people can appear selfish (as London Underground commuters will be quick to tell you!) and I fought fire with fire. I put to use the guilty shock of love that welled, whenever I thought I might really lose him. Something felt intrinsically right about it, and persisted in feeling good; I would not let him go without him knowing that I loved him. Somehow, it seems to have kept on working. I felt almost like an absent parent and sent him what the Americans call 'care packages' at times, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We even met up once; I remember I was terribly nervous, couldn't decide what to wear and hadn't slept too well. He was wearing a jacket with elbow patches and a woolly beanie-style hat. That's my C― - eccentric in the most unassuming, even awkward, manner. It was a very brief encounter - we had hot drinks and took a walk. The nice thing about it was that it neither forced our friendship forwards, nor unravelled it; it simply felt like a path forward that we could take up again if we so wished.

We still stay in touch via Facebook chat, and for the moment, his life is the most stable it's ever been. He's got a job and is in a band. We have enjoyable, intense, random discussions and make each other laugh about all kinds of things - but he will also announce abruptly that he needs to go, or I will resort to one-word responses for a while, at times. Sometimes one or the other of us slinks off quietly and sneakily. He's exactly a month younger than me and couldn't be from a more different background. It's not like other friendships I've had - but neither of us is particularly conventional in how we conduct our friendships. We've both isolated some, cast others aside and chased those who weren't worth our time. Much to my surprise, my interventions on the behalf of a continued existence seem to have worked more and more as time goes by. Will he leave me unexpectedly someday? I don't know. Is he always there when I want him? No. He pops up most unexpectedly, and peps me when I'm not even realising my need. He has a mix of steel, fragility and downright childish vigour that is familial. Paradoxically for someone whose hand I've stayed so many times, I don't think I've ever seen such a will to live and just being around that, though I can't really elaborate how invigorating and glorious it is, I hope on some level, you know or understand what I mean. It's a bit like that novel/film One Day that everyone's suddenly on about, albeit without the romance, Anne Hathaway, Yorkshire, a film career and the '90s figure significantly less...

Friendships: a eulogy

I have been away a while - partly due to being busy, lazy, busy/lazy and also because I got wind of the possibility that someone was effectively spying on me through my blog. Ironically, it was that same person's attempt to get in contact with me that led to me writing this post.

An initial text message left me saucer-eyed with shock, because, coincidentally enough, I had succumbed to a faint nostalgia that week, wishing that we could have been friends. Talk about being careful what you wish for! Ultimately, I was too smart to indulge that lazy impulse. However, it got me thinking about friendship, and why I make the choices I do. Why had the current people in my life 'made the cut', whilst others hadn't? Given my long-standing solitariness, what did I expect of those that I had actually deemed worthy of the title - what was a friend to me?

This was a question of particular interest, given that I lost two friends in quick succession earlier this year. We expend a great deal of space and time in popular culture and the media on speculation about relationships and romantic love, but nowhere near as much on friendships and platonic love. Sure, there are the odd bits of research here and there about how people with more friends live longer, etc., but friendship just doesn't exercise us like relationships do.

Now, I know it's blindingly obvious, but the whole unexpected-contact-attempt made me realise that friendship is supposed to be between equals. So often, though, it's not, and we don't even realise, because there is no guide to friendships the way there is for relationships. I think (or rather, my impression is) that we also devalue our friendships/underestimate their importance in our lives. When we get depictions of 'true friendship' in films and on TV, however, it is often as heartbreaking and beautiful, if not more so, than great romance. At the heart of that well-known show The Inbetweeners, for example, the friendship between the four main characters is the silent, crucial constant that sustains and counterbalances their frequently disastrous, devastatingly humiliating attempts to appear 'cool,' popular and confident with women. I was struck dumb by the perceptiveness of Laura Haddock (starring in the film version as Will's love interest Alison), who described it as effectively a teen male version of Sex and the City.

To return to my earlier point, though - I think that because we tend to frequently devalue our friendships and/or underestimate the effect that they can have on us, we don't accord friendship the consideration it deserves. The two friendships that I'd lost had imploded for apparently similar reasons. However, as I pondered more, it became clear that this really wasn't the case at all. Starting with the reaction I'd had in the aftermath of each loss - once the dust settled a little, they had effectively switched around. The first friend that I'd lost, I had known a relatively short while, whilst the second was one of my oldest and closest friends. Initially, it seemed that the old friend's loss hit me harder (as one would surely expect). I was extremely unsure about what to do and spent a lot of time consulting with other friends. We fell out completely via Facebook chat, and I emailed the exchange to my closest friends to get their feedback. Had I been too harsh on her? Was I justified in feeling the way I did? What should I do next? For the most part, they were in agreement with me and made various useful comments, such as: 'If you have to ask yourself whether you want to keep her as a friend - I'm not sure that you do.'
 
What strikes me now, looking back, is that what I mistook for grief at losing my friend of several years was actually an intense mix of bitterness and disappointment. She had started off as the kind of friend who, in her own words, would 'spoil other people for you' (if I recall correctly) and chasms had opened slowly but yawningly between us. Any mild grief I felt at losing her was easily outweighed by disappointment and the sense of shock and betrayal. The exchange had been akin to talking to a member of my family, with a level of self-absorption, denial and insensitivity that overcame me and felt like a back-handed slap from a supposedly 'close friend.' I realised that, much to my surprise, not only did I not miss her particularly, but that I had no real wish to be friends with her again. A vague desire for 'closure' of some kind (fuelled by her becoming a Facebook 'zombie' - a Friend who's on your list, but who's no longer (or never really was) a friend, who you are effectively skirting round all the time) led to me contacting her. The anticipation such occurrences creates was certainly notable, but I felt relieved that I had the answer now, whether she replied or not. She had nothing really left to earn back the title of 'friend,' and a whole lot of mistrust to dissipate. I feel sad that it ended as it did, but it felt good to know that I had pulled my weight and then some. It was her time to make good; I love myself too much to let her in again without serious work on her part.

In stark contrast to that, however, my feelings about the other friend. I will call him RV, because there's a lot more to say when it comes to him. His being a 'new' friend and our friendship being somewhat tempestuous, I convinced myself that he didn't really matter that much, and that I was 'over' him. This always felt rather hollow, however, and I could not understand why. This, coupled with the fact that one friend of mine always asks if anything has changed - i.e., if I've heard from him - when we speak, needled me. In the week after the other person tried to get back in touch with me, I dreamt about RV. He had been in the back of my mind and the dream seemed to crystallise my feelings in a new way. I awoke, and realised: 'I need to get RV's forgiveness.' The release of this truth to myself allowed long-overdue feelings of mourning to burgeon, now placed into emotional structure. I didn't want to mourn him. I missed him. Oh, the relief, to admit it! I missed him, and I loved him - terribly (I am shedding some much-needed tears as I write this). I had no idea how to get this across, however. Feeling full of myself, I had tried to 'make up' with him in a childish and arrogant manner on occasion, only to get shot down in flames. Which I absolutely deserved, although I didn't realise this at the time and compounded my errors by texting him abuse.

Periodically, I attempted to re-establish contact; a later, more adult and brief email was ignored as had been all other forms of contact up to that point. Thinking he must really hate me, I gave up and he stayed in a tiny alcove in the back of my head until recently (as you know from above...). Last night, reflecting on our history and some of the amazing things he had done as my friend (getting my dissertation ready for me to hand in, travelling across London into a rather awkward social situation for me), the full horror of my stupidity and self-absorption hit home. I was floored by grief, love and regret. Realising that this was going to be one of the most difficult emotional situations I would ever have to handle, I sought another very dear friend's advice. She was astoundingly insightful and made me realise that I had failed miserably in considering his viewpoint. I had gone charging in, assuming that he couldn't live without my friendship and expecting to be let off lightly. His refusal to do so simply marked him out as a target for insults, rather than making me appreciate just what was at stake and how much emotional heavy lifting I would have to do. Not only that, but I had projected onto him so much of what I had been seeking from my ex-boyfriend, that it was a wonder that he could get any of his real personality across to me through my blinders. True, our relationship had begun to get healthier, but I had fucked it up before it could really blossom. I had fucked it up.

The greatest irony was that I had come full circle from the outrage I felt at the person who had attempted to contact me, to realising that I had become that very person myself. All the attributes that had tipped me over the edge - insensitivity, self-absorption, arrogance - I was guilty of displaying towards my friend. I doubt he'll read this, but I realised that I desperately needed to hold myself accountable in a way that I could record and remember. I will be lucky if he forgives me, and I'm not betting on it; if he acknowledges any contact from me, that'll be a small miracle in itself. Behaviour that I would normally consider beyond the pale - texting someone constantly, grovelling, being rather emo - I have been engaging in. Yet it doesn't feel wrong, as it did with the other friend. It feels like the least I deserve, but I can hope for forgiveness.

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!