feminist sluts

What does Mathira do for feminism? 

She looks drugged.  She shrieks.  She has freak appeal.  She fascinates people;  she pouts; she gyrates; often she acts as if she were in a private sexy moment at a night club enjoying a dull buzz rather than under the scrutinizing eyes of thousands.  She has fans who adore her, people who hate her;  housewives who feel angry and resentful at her freely displaying leg, working women who perceive her as vulgar after a hard earned day, not insignificantly a large group of people who lust after her every antic, and perhaps most redeeming, young girls who say they want to be like her.  She woos them with her muahs-muahs and her kisses, loosens them up with her gujji gujjis, showers them with affectionate talk and somehow despite the multiple layers of distance she seems as if she were speaking to them alone.  Such is the power of her Oprah-esque  personality, and this remote intimacy is the basis of her mass appeal.  Then, callers emboldened by her accessibility cross the line over to offensive behavior.  One audaciously suggested she move her hair back so he could better view her left boob.  One said he wanted to fondle her.  The incidents are endless.

Could she be so trusting so as to not anticipate indecency from callers?  Perhaps she is not.  Regardless, she has the calmness of spirit and clarity of mind to promptly chastise them and dismiss them as "frustrated Pakistanis"-- not angrily, but firmly and sweetly.  Her detractors say if she is going to dress and act that way then she better be prepared for such comments.  From the ghost of feminism past, yet still applicable, this is a misogynist rape myth.  Sexy dress and actions do not (and should not) signify that a woman is asking  for it.  This is blaming the victim, the socially less powerful person for the violence they suffer, and absolving harassers and rapists of all responsibility.

This is analogous to the public humiliating by Maulana Mufti and a talk show host of Veena Malik for her candid moments with Ashmit Patel on the Indian reality Show, "Bigg Boss" - a virtual flogging of sorts for public consumption - which she brought upon herself, according to the rape myth, because she acted like a slut.

Herein lies Mathira's case for feminism, (and for that matter, Veena's).  They are what third wave feminists would call "feminist sluts."  Their feminism is contradictory and ambiguous - yet it is a positive as contradictions allows us to grow, struggle, and acquire new methods of self determination.

Mathira does not oppose the Hudood laws; she does not speak against domestic violence; she does not discuss the plight of home based women workers or harassment at work; she is not raising women's issues in any systematic or conventional fashion.  She simply projects that she be allowed to be, and by extension all young women be allowed to be modern, free to dress, free to speak, free to move, free to assert their sexuality, free to be silly, slutty, doped out, free to reject social constraints, ignore unsaid impositions on self expression such as laughing in public, and talking loudly -- and not be judged -- not be fed rape myths or scolded.

But Mathira's feminist slutting becomes more contradictory and paradoxical when you view it within the larger context of a patriarchal, capitalist economy and its hyper consumerists mindset.  Women who want to be like them will want to consume make-up, plastic surgery, designer labels and hand bags.

Moreover, Mathira works in an industry where there are, probably, dozens of incidents of female sexual harassment; she works for a capitalist structure that cashes in on her sexual appeal and allows space for her personal enrichment, but where most women will remain working at the lowest wages, and doing double days.  So what is Mathira makes her way groggily to a celebrity after party?  Her sisters are still neck deep in poverty.

Her act is ultimately a commodity; reality shows, in particular, feed on the uncensored, personal moments of real women for ratings.  The quest for ratings in Mathira's case is, insidiously, that she is open and sexual in a society that is obsessed that women not be publicly demonstrative. Moreover, in those awkward moments of dealing with indecent callers, viewers are privy to that intensely naked moment of mutual (and multiple) realization that something very bad has been said - something that represents society's dilemma about sexuality and violence, and that she must now respond.  She can do so in three ways:  with shame affirming that she is vulnerable, with old fashioned feminist rage, or with a controlled sense of indignation and humor.  She (consciously?) chooses the third.   Thus the immense amount of guilty pleasure in watching her is liberating, masturbatory, and for some perplexing and infuriating.  Either ways - she riles up peoples' emotions and emotions make money.

So be the case with Veena: A Pakistani on a reality show in a country where Shiv Sena inspired thinking warns Hindu women of the rapist (colonizing) tendencies of Muslim men.  Her image is that of a happy go lucky, bubbly woman who cuddles up with a Hindu man (who appropriately appears non committal).  She thus vindicates Hindutva fears.  And on her return to Pakistan, in a political tussle for ownership of her body, a Pakistani maulana tells her she has brought shame to Muslims.

Veena gallantly shut up the maulvi and reduced him to whimpers.  This is Veena's feminism.  "Let me be.  Men should lower their gaze and focus on more pressing issues like maulvis who molest their students.  I maybe slutting, but I am (arguably) within the parameters of Hadith, and on moral high ground as the sole bread winner in a family of five."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Zd0KJsxVI&NR=1

But regardless, there is a ratings rat race - and her being Pakistani, Muslim, curiously vain, simple, manipulative, often crisp in her Urdu, naturally pretty, and in some scenes botoxed and puffy -- how much are profit focused channels marketing Veena for sinister reasons only their in-house psychologists understand?  And in turn, Pakistani viewers then drooling during her feisty exchange with the mufti (in the backdrop of blasphemy activism and murder by right wingers) - as Kamran Shahid the talk show host is permitted to (pornographically) gang up against her.

Yet no one will argue that, despite their sexualities being employed for profits in a generally exploitative system, Veena or Mathira are acting out of coercion, desperation, or oppression..  They are making conscious decisions and are negotiating their lives on their own terms.  Perhaps, Mathira does not need what Cafe Pyala paternalistically suggests -- a time lapse protection from lewd callers.  She knows her power lies in her making money for the channel, and these twisted exchanges are climactic, even if she is momentarily hassled by them.

http://cafepyala.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-time-delay-on-live-calls-is-good.html

Finally, this is my problem.

There are feminists who argue that pornography is not always oppressive, but maybe a mechanism for women to explore their sexuality   Yet that argument does not account for how the pornographic industry (and media in this example) is ultimately socially and economically exploitative for women.  Individual women may be making conscious and free decisions within the industry, and that's fine.  Kudos to them for making radical interventions.

But that does not alter oppressive systems - not with women's ownership of channels either.

Bottomline: If lipstick and slut talk liberates you, brilliant!  You've come a long way, baby.   But that does not eliminate the need to change economic systems from within and dismantle patriarchy.

Reading Coetzee in Galle

Its time to write a chatty, mixed up blog to usher in a new year.  We spent new year's in Colombo, watched fireworks from a hotel window, and then watched drunken 50 year old Sri Lankans at a beach party.

For reading, I had J.M. Coetzee's "Summertime."  I've raved about his book, "Disgrace," about apartheid and the general internalized guilt of white South Africans -- it was time I read another Coetzee.   This one is his memoir about a fictional writer, John Coetzee, who resembles the real one substantially and lives in South Africa with his aging father, a disbarred lawyer, and is himself a 30 something high school English teacher who was removed from America for something shameful.

At Galle, a city at the Southwestern tip of Sri Lanka, I put down the book in exasperation.  It was 4 a.m. in the morning. We'd spent the day in a train standing between carriages, packed between bodies.  Occasionally European hippies would get on, hassled by locals, whom they'd listen to keenly when they told stories of their village - but the moment they started asking for a "small amount of money," they turned their faces insipidly.  Hippie socially, economically so guarded.  Well, beads and braids don't hide those sophisticated cameras.  The train broke down near Bentota, a tourist city for whites.  A Muslim, Sinhalese man who spoke Urdu because of his labor in Dubai invited us to his village east of Galle in case things did not work out.  His sisters smiled at me throughout after he found me a seat - after we got us back on the train - after he decided he was going to take care of us.  You see we thought the engines had perished forever, and had gotten on the platform, three luggage pieces, two kids under five, and ready to walk to the nearest bus that would have us.

We reached Galle, a city of the Portuguese and Dutch, of colonial conquest.  It was dark.  We pretty much had to rely on the kindness of strangers to find us a hotel as the hotel we had booked was 40 km away.  We stayed in a tiny bread and breakfast in the fortress of Galle build by the Dutch in 1663 after they wrangled control of the city from the Portuguese.  I fought with people.  I said sorry to people.  I thought we were being led to our death.  A Sri Lankan child reminded us how we were, perhaps, the obnoxious tourists - just like the white ones.   She said, what a lovely bag!  It was M's Tinker Bell bag I got from K-Mart last year on a green card visit to New York  Still newish, lilac, and pretty.

The bed and breakfast belonged to a Sri Lankan man married to a German woman who came to the island as a backpacker in 1995;  now she was a bit overweight, and had curly brown hair.  But I could see how it happened back then over rum and smokes.  She pulled his cigarette out of his mouth; a sweet, gentle gesture.  He smiled.  He was painting a cabinet at the place.  They were all hungover.  They celebrated  his brother's 42nd birthday last night, and I watched them from the balcony and assured them the noise didn't bother me.  We could see the walls of the quaint, colonial fortress the next morning.  The world seemed friendly again in daylight.  They had a dog called Bonnie.

In my defense, the state curbed a rebellion of 30 years with criminal force, suppressed media, hounded opponents, killed leaders in cold blood after they had been captured, and in their eyes, they still suspect that danger is lurking around the corner.  And studiously now, they are 'progressing' and  opening their country up to the appealing cancer of tourism (See Walter Rodney), and even the rickshaw driver wants his cut.  S said, there is probably more going out than coming in.   More IMF loans than the t-shirts. tea, rubber, coconuts could pay for.  More checkpoints than Karachi.  Guards who looked like they would kill you if you said boo.

Coming back to "Summertime", the novel, written by JMC, an Afrikaner with Dutch roots himself:   The problem with fiction is that it all depends on when you read it, and what you are experiencing.  I remember feeling the same way reading, Marquez's "Love in the time of Cholera."  I read it in fever.  I read it in a room that we believed as children faced a graveyard.  I read it coming out of a relationship, although I did not know it then, and I did not know it for two years, that I was supposed to, and supposed to hate this book.  It eventually made me hate the idea of undying love, hate unrequited lovers who persist.  Why is this man droning on about infinite love for one woman when we all know that people move on.  Relationships are exciting at first, but you end up disliking your exes or seeing their autism, narcissism, hangups, their figures soft.  People stick together for other important reasons besides the the dicta of undying love.

J.M. Coetzee is definitely anti apartheid, then why did I feel the need for an antiseptic bath after reading him that night in Galle?   I picked him up in Kandy after another fiasco night.  My children by now were well behaved because again I felt, on the hills of Kandy, I was being led to my death.  I exercised patience.  My kids knew it in their veins; Mama's so cool she is definitely going insane.  She has died and gone to hell and been reincarnated.  We wandered on hills reminiscent of Nepal for three hours before we found our motel aptly named the "Shadow" resort.  And that too after I barged into a hotel called "Amaya - Palace in the Hills," and demanded a phone call.  I knew the driver (and the valleys)  murmuring "shadow, shadow" was not going to work.  There were native dancers in native costumes, drums, and rich, drunken Londoners sitting aside a three mile long swimming pool, all lit up, and they ready to consume culture, be it African or Ceylonese.  I thought I was in a colony; or at the very least in the film, "Madagascar" when the Bronx animals reach the exotic isle to find themselves between merry lemurs.  Kids watched the dancers, asked me if they were female, used a luxurious bathroom.  They were finally found, albeit for a few minutes before we were back on the road in search of the elusive hotel.



You see this man, JMC, has won the Booker and the Nobel; he has people showering him with accolades and praises; at some intrinsic level he feels the need to diminish his elevated sense of self, to ridicule and belittle himself, perhaps to show he is modest, smaller than life, perhaps to show that he is not the winner he is made out to be, but a misfit-- because really, the idea of a proud artist is a disturbing oxymoron.  The very notion of a writer who accepts awards smilingly that ordinary men have finally recognized his genius and bequeathed him, so be it, is embarrassing.  He possibly despises the idea of genius and awarding genius; questions its dubious meaning in a world where millions write and are not ever translated, thinks art is not measurable in medals.

In this fictional memoir people talk about him to another author who is writing his biography; two women in the five, one young housewife whom he slept with, and a Brazilian dancer he courted but did not sleep with, describe him somewhat less of a man, not a homosexual; but not someone women desire or marry.  Women desire in men normality, fidelity, protectiveness, regular hormones, regular ambition, hotness.  He lives with his aging father in a less than hygienic home, and is rebuilding a part of it himself to take the taboo out of manual labor.  He wants to have sex to Schubert's music because he can see the beauty of it;  the ordinary woman turns her back in cold disgust;  he takes the Brazilian and her daughters (one of whom is his student) for a picnic and the day ends up a wretched failure when it rains.  The women sit in the pick up while the two Coetzees stand under a tree for the cold rain to subside pretending they are not miserable.  He would rather have the Brazilian teen age daughter (who is infatuated with him as young girls often are with their teachers), but he is not that bold in real life.   He emasculates himself totally.  Women think he does not love;  he loves just the idea of a Woman.  Perhaps he would be better off masturbating.

Why tell the world women find you repulsive?  They touch you or refuse to; secretly they cringe and want a firmer man;  you are a tangent in their story, a footnote, a teacher who teaches because he wants the comfort of a regular paycheck, and that too in after school classes for immigrants.

As an Afrikaner, he and his friend realize that they are obligated to leave the country their ancestors built their lives in because the premise itself is faulty and illegal.  Noble sentiments.  Yet, yet.  Such a personalized and removed sense of responsibility, and the kind befitting a writer, an academic, or an artist.  What material difference does it make to the ordinary South African that you, a non farmer, exercise a moral decision to leave and settle in whiter lands?

Given the givens, JM Coetzee should cherish a reader's reaction..  He wrote  novel "Foe," which  is based on the Brazilian.  The protagonist seeks to find her lost daughter and is valiant.  But, the actual dancer did not even want to test the writer in bed.  She doubted that he was competent as an English teacher.  So vexed she was caring for her husband whose head was smashed in with an axe one night while he was working in a low paid job as a night watchman;  he then spent a year dying in a distant hospital as she raised two young daughters, one gorgeous, the other level headed.  Now that's real stuff, while JMC the irritable footnote. (Yet it is JMC who ends up memorializing her despite her invisibility as a struggling widow, a ballet teacher teaching Latin dance to make ends meet.)

In order to write about your "shames"  you have to be confident; you have to be a jerk of sorts;  you have to know only true weakness makes art, and that you must somehow showcase yours.  But then you can not choreograph weakness.  And deep down, we all know, something has to remain secret.  I admire Coetzee for sharing some of his shames.  But I also know that he has not shared all the secrets, and that was never on the table.  And he/they will not give away too much of themselves if it means losing all the valor.

In a review, I read that he was deported from America for participating in anti apartheid protests;  his father was disbarred for the similar reasons.  Its no secret, we all secretly want to be loved and even as we throw out stories of our disgrace, we do not truly want to be disgraced, but revered even for the disgraces.

The true undying love is perhaps the middle aged couple in Colombo, walking hand in hand, staring at liquor stores; true, non contrived weakness the man at the tannery sitting between piles of dead sheep skin peeling them for eights hours each day.  Unedited through shadowy layers of fictions.

For a later blog.