Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Of victims and victimization -2

(To continue with my random rambling and incoherent thoughts....)

Another thought that struck me that if we remove all the layers of discrimination and bigotry, at the very bottom you would still find sexism. In the US, African American women are the most marginalized. In India, lower class women are the poorest. Women are killed more often than men in the name of "family honour" when they marry outside their caste or religion. Its insidious, its all pervasive and worst of all, its overlooked, neglected and brushed aside. America may have proven that it can elect an African American president, but it still couldn't elect a woman president. They have merely proved that they are less racist than sexist. The sexism in fact went mostly unacknowledged.

There a lot of theories to explain why misogyny has lasted so long and why we are still struggling to even recognize it, leave alone eliminate it. The one that made the most sense to me was something another blogger wrote. To borrow from her, only in the case of sexism, as opposed to say racism, is there an inevitable relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. The oppression is so intertwined with the natural relationship that its difficult for most people to untangle the web of prejudices. Even I struggle with it everyday. To be in a state of constant awareness and to question everything that happens to figure out what is sexist and what is not, is not an easy thing to do!

The other reason that this blogger writes about is also an interesting observation. Women are present all over the world. They have different experiences, are a part of different cultures, experience so many other kinds of discrimination apart from sexism, that to unite together to fight misogyny is complicated and difficult. Even the kind of misogyny faced by each woman is so different in different cultures. For example, in India, the question of banning abortion never arose since discrimination against women starts from the womb with sex selection. In the US, the discussion around abortion has become a fight to guard the bodily integrity of women. The continuum of sexism ranges from rape, denial of basic human rights and honor killings to objectification, street harassment and unrealistic standards of beauty. All women fall somewhere on this continuum and all of us don't experience it all. I have a seen a lot of dialogues between feminists from different backgrounds break down for this very reason.

But I still hope. With the kind of technology we have at our disposal right now, connecting with people has become as easy the click of a button. Perhaps, we have a better chance of overcoming these hurdles now more than ever!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Of victims and victimization

This is just a random blog post about my random thoughts. It may not be very coherent, but I wanted to "pen" it down anyway!

I've been thinking a lot about the social struggles that happen around the world, sexism, racism, casteism, religious fundamentalism, regionalism to name a few. The more I think about it, the more I see a common thread among these insidious institutions. Firstly, each one is an attempt to prove one group's superiority over another group of people. Secondly, the superiority is assumed by mere virtue of the circumstances of one's birth. One's gender, race, caste, religion, place of origin are all used to claim that one is better than someone else.

That said, I am all for people trying to be better than someone else. In fact, I think everyone should in fact compete with others and strive to do better. It makes us all better people. But claiming to be superior without having proved oneself in any way whatsoever is ridiculous at best and dangerous at worst, especially when done in an institutionalized manner and in large numbers. But if one were to think about it, its in fact the easiest way to feel good about oneself, especially if one doesn't have anything else thats going good. Whenever I am outside and some man on the road harasses me or deliberately does something to make me uncomfortable, to me, it seems like its his way of making it known that irrespective of how he compares with me on our individual value and contribution to society, he is still superior to me just by virtue of being a man. The fact that he can make me uncomfortable or harass me without retribution ratifies his belief that he has power over me. Its a rather pitiful attempt, but I see that its quite widespread and not just with sexism.

Another interesting observation that someone made and I am borrowing is the idea that every victim is for some reason noble merely because of the victimization. For example, there is a school of thought that says women are better people than men and hence should not be discriminated against. I don't like this argument for two reasons. One, I don't believe in a gender dichotomy. I think that we will achieve a gender neutral society or as close to one as possible only when we stop identifying everyone with a gender and performing artificially construed gender roles. Secondly, the reason why women should not be discriminated against and treated badly is that they are human beings just like men and deserve the same quality of life that men enjoy. That is in fact the reason why any kind of discrimination should be opposed. Claiming that women are more moral creatures is a poor argument according to me. In fact, I don't think the claim is true at all. Victimized and marginalized groups have as many good people and bad people as the oppressors.