Tag Archives: gender

Why does the media still refer to “Bradley” Manning? The Curious Silence Around a Transgender Hero

Posted on by
21

One of the most persistent threads throughout the two years of imprisonment of accused Wikileaks leaker Private Bradley Manning has been the rumour that he is in fact, she–a transgender woman.  Manning faces thirty charges, one of which “aiding the enemy” potentially carries the death penalty (though life in prison is more likely) for leaking hundreds of thousands of documents via the website Wikileaks including the shocking “Collateral Murder” video.  Dismissed by many as a smear or simply irrelevant to the case, this transgender story has nevertheless refused to die.
Continue reading →

Why I Sing My Blues: Women and Hindi Soaps

Posted on by
Reply

Deciphering the universe of Hindi soaps demands an astute eye for the texture of relationships within joint families. A few clarifications, hence, for folk unfamiliar with the nuances of an Indian family. A home holds several generations of kin, sorted into couples and children, and authority is usually delegated by position rather than personality. A SAAS (chief villain) is a mother-in-law, a BAHU (doe-eyed acolyte) is the daughter-in-law.

This relationship is the primary conflict in most soaps, and the hierarchy is buttressed by assorted aunts, daughters, grandmothers, and sisters. Wise and virtuous husbands are objects of fawning exaltation; all husbands are the arbiters of this avid tussle between wife and mother to nurture them. Lower than a new bahu on the domestic totem pole are widows. A widowed saas, free of the baleful influence of needy men, will often hoard power and become a matriarch. Younger widows are bait.

Most despicable of all is the snide aunt who couldn’t snare a man (and a life) for herself. ‘Emancipated’ spinsters – careerists, hedonists, divorcees, the implacably indifferent – have no voice in soapdom, which likes its women fertile and undemanding. Across genre and trope and theme, girls are penalised for challenging chromosomes. Women are killed cos they’re pregnant, cos they’re not, cos they’re pregnant with the wrong sort of baby. There is even a soap imploring us to stay away from this cruel country.

Continue reading →

Are Women A Class? Wal-Mart’s Gender Discrimination Lawsuit

Posted on by
3

The gender discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart is over ten years old. It began in 2000, with a woman named Betty Dukes, who had then been employed as a greeter for nearly six years. She alleged that, despite excellent reviews, she had never been promoted by Wal-Mart; Wal-Mart, in turn, alleged that they had declined to promote her because she returned late from her lunch breaks. But Dukes did not back down, and her case spiraled out, both in terms of its plaintiffs and its potential consequences. It is now a class action lawsuit with over 1.6 million plaintiffs, all female. It has been called “historic,” both for its size and for the questions it raises. For truly, the decision facing the Supreme Court now is not simply whether the Wal-Mart case is too large to be prosecuted as a class-action lawsuit. It is whether women constitute a class.

When U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins gave the go-ahead for the case to proceed as a class action suit, in 2004, he did so on the basis of statistics. The plaintiffs in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, he found, presented “largely uncontested, descriptive statistics which show that women working in Wal-Mart stores are paid less than men in every region, that pay disparities exist in most job categories, that the salary gap widens over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time, that women take longer to enter into management positions, and that the higher one looks in the organization, the lower the percentage of women.”

Continue reading →

Vancouver Games & gender: Lindsay Vonn to Johnny Weir

Posted on by
4

Last week, writing about sports as labor, I noted that sports are a form of collective identification—of solidarity—a way to bring a community together around feats of strength and competition that have nothing to do with war or resources.

The Winter Olympics are going on, and they show off this identification principle in the extreme. People who think little of patriotism are encouraged to support their nation’s athletes who do this not for money, like pro teams (though many of these athletes are professionals) but for glory—for themselves and for their country. It’s international competition (and sometimes obnoxious jingoism), but with a nonviolent goal. Continue reading →

Both corruption AND the gender gap should be dealt with in Mexico

Posted on by
Reply

Transparency International’s annual ranking of corruption around the globe hit the news on November 17. It was not a happy occasion in Mexico. America’s southern neighbor landed at 89 out of a total 180 governments measured this year (17 spots lower than in 2008), tied with such nations as Malawi, Moldova, and Rwanda.

This places Mexico well below many of its peers; among Latin American nations, ten governments were ranked cleaner than Mexico’s (including Guatemala’s, where the president has been implicated in the murder of a political enemy and the United Nations recently warned of a possible state capture at the federal level by drug gangs). Among the BRIC nations, the group of emerging economic giants with whom Mexico perennially aspires to be included, only Russia wound up worse than 89th place. Continue reading →

Her Name Escapes Me

Posted on by
Reply

Popular culture in India depicts Punjabi girls as pretty and exuberant. Notwithstanding the perils of any generalization and the hyperbole of cinematic rendition, it is not far from the truth. Certainly not very far. Beauty is without doubt a relative concept. Having said that, a man with an ordinary heart, good vision and an eye for clear blue skies will more likely than not admire the quintessential Punjabi beauty. A stroll through the crowded and colorful streets in the small towns of the state or the coffee houses of the nation’s capital will, rest assured, put some interpretive differences to rest.

Staring into the cavernous depths of a well, one after another they leap off the edge. The couple of elderly Sikh men with flowing grey beards mumble prayers, the verses broken only by the protestations of little girls scared and huddled as they are asked to jump to their deaths. Their pig tails billowing in the air, the colorful glass bangles sparkle for one last moment in the sun and the final cries are drowned in constant drone of the dust laden summer winds. These were amongst the many female victims of the communal carnage that accompanied the independence of India. The untold suffering of the largest human migration ever did not distinguish between religion or caste but, as in any civil conflict, violence against females became the central motif of revenge.

Continue reading →

“Mad Men” and the horror of grey flannel masculinity

Posted on by
1

The popular show “Mad Men” concerns the advertising business in the early 1960’s. It centers on the highly problematic life of Don Draper. It is authentic in its presentation of the time period, which includes its portrayal of gender roles and race relations. Women on the show are largely in search of a man to marry. It is expected that they will give up their jobs to keep house and raise babies. People of color are only portrayed doing menial labour. In a recent scene, Roger Sterling, who is played by John Slattery, dons blackface to entertain a group of his friends. In this sense, “Mad Men” often reveals the ugliness behind the much beloved Camelot era in the United States.

Much has been written about the isolation of the 1960’s housewife. The white second-wave feminist movement launched much of their organizing behind the assertion that women had a right to be to work and be productive members of society. In the process, we have ignored the plight of the grey flannel suit that men of that period wore and its symbol as a form of yet another gender slavery. In Don Draper, we can see a man of great privilege who is nevertheless suffering from a highly conflicted identity.

Continue reading →

Eudy Simelane: corrective rape, corrective death

Posted on by
3

Eudy Simelane was an athlete and a lesbian. In a perfect world that validated love in all of its forms, her sexuality would be a non-issue. In South Africa, however, identifying as a lesbian (or being accused of lesbianism) all too often leads to a violent death, despite a constitution that protects the rights of its GLBT citizens. Simelane was known as a top striker and she became the captain of the nation’s soccer team. Her position would normally have placed her in high esteem.

Instead of being her country’s sports hero, however, Eudy Simelane now lays buried beneath the soil: she was brutally gang-raped and stabbed exactly twenty-five times before dying. For Eudy, the issue was not just that she was a lesbian but that her appearance and gender expression were commonly understood to be butch.

According to the Times Online, at least twenty South African women have been killed in what are known as “corrective rapes” in the last five years. Lesbianism is considered to be unnatural and therefore women are systemically raped to convince them that their “true” orientation is heterosexual. This phenomenon reflects multiple forms of oppression for lesbians, bisexuals and queers who are victimized through these “corrective rapes.”

Continue reading →

Yoni is the wrong damn word: marginalization and exoticism

Posted on by
23

Why, oh, why does it have to be Yoni Ki Baat? Why? I’m South Asian, right? I’m solid South Asian. So why does it make my blood boil that South Asians are doing an adaptation of the Vagina Monologues called Yoni Ki Baat?

Well, I don’t have a damn yoni, for one thing. The first time I read the word yoni, it was in a Nancy Friday book of sexual fantasies and some white chick was describing her power centre being plunged or whatever and calling it a yoni.

I do not call my c*** yoni. I’m Pakistani. We don’t do Sanskrit in Pakistan, not on purpose, anyway (I take no responsibility for accidental Sanskrit). Pakistani vernacular has many words for vagina and none of them is yoni. So running into a performance of Yoni Ki Baat by South Asians in Seattle really just fries my onions all wrong.

However, I can deal. I know that in the US South Asian communities are dominated by Indianness and this is simply a reflection of the sub-continental hegemonic power structures. I don’t like it, but I’m a lazy person and that’s not a fight I’m going to pick on a 6-month quickie in Seattle.

A little bit of investigation, however, brings me the news that, no, in fact, even in Indian contexts, using yoni for vagina is extremely problematic. It’s a Sanskrit word. Sanskrit is the base for north Indian languages, including, most prominently, Hindi. Using it successfully projects, once again, north India as true India and Dravidian south India as other. As incidental. As internal or private. As “ethnic.” As not-really-there.

Well done, feminism. Continue reading →

Yearning for answers: fundamentalism, polygamy, and the role of women

Posted on by
40

When I heard about the raid on a fundamentalist Texas compound called Yearning for Zion, I got to thinking about polygamy (well, my initial thought was more along the lines of “wow, I really want to hurl my coffee cup at the wall,” but that should probably go without saying).

Although the raid was part of an ongoing child abuse probe (hence my desire to destroy a perfectly innocent coffee cup), the issue of polygamy once again took center stage as Americans and everyone else who watched the news coming out of Texas began a new round of debating the subject.

Let me put this as succinctly as possible: If you advocate for the legalization of polygamy in the States, I will only take you seriously if you advocate polyandry as well. Now for the caveat: Continue reading →