notes of a freethinker

The Quran, the Houri, and Homosexuality

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:14:00 +0000

In an internet debate over whether the Quran can be criticized for sexual objectification of women and it's condemnation of homosexuality [I talk about that in detail here], a commenter referred me to the wikipedia entry [click here] on the Quran's descriptions of the 'Houri' and the book “Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800″ by Khaled El-Rouayheb [click here for a review of the book].

Since all I have is the review of the book right now, I am basing my critique here on just the review. The book borrows from the Queer Theory of sexuality in implying that sexuality is fluid and contextual - the review says that the 'assumption that homosexuality is a timeless, self-evident fact’ is ‘anachronistic’. But how can we establish Quran’s compatibility with the ‘Queer Theory’ of sexuality, or demonstrate that Islamic epistemology can allow for the idea of changing ‘social constructs’ and a subjectively created reality? How can we when Quran talks about absolute self-evident objective truths?

And just how many Muslims are aware of abstruse theories of social constructivism? How can they escape the meaning of the verses that clearly condemn the male-to-male sexual act? It’s not just those verses… homosexuality goes against the entire Quranic ethic that stresses marriage and reproduction [both of which are tools of social control for women much more so than men], and places premium on ‘social order’, as opposed to ‘fitna’ which results from unregulated sexuality (‘transgressing’, lack of sexual modesty, lack of established paternity, etc.). So back to the question - how can Muslim homosexuals and their families escape all that baggage of meaning if they keep reading the Quran?

As for the wikipedia entry on the Houri, regarding Muhammad Asad’s and Luxenberg’s criticisms, I have only this to say: if the actual meanings ‘houri’ and ‘kawaaiba’ are not ‘fair maiden’ and ‘full-breasted’, why have Muslims always read these meanings into the words? Isn’t it possible that some people read these meanings into the text in Muhammad’s time too? Why isn’t there a record of Muhammad cautioning against it, or a Quranic verse that explained the ‘actual meaning’ and warned of linguistic ambiguities? On the other hand, the Quran claims to be clear and easy to understand, and showing us the eternal Truth.

Finally, if the meanings of Quran are irrelevant to the modern socially-constructed reality, and also shrouded in linguistic ambiguities, shouldn’t Muslims stop referring to the Quran for questions of morality, sexuality, etc.? Shouldn’t they make the effort to keep the dangerous meanings of the Holy Al-Kitab Al-Aqdas away from newer generations?

Gender Issues and the Left in Pakistan

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:52:00 +0000

In my post on how gender and sexuality issues get dismissed in serious political discussions in Pakistan, I left out this link that I wanted to share. There, it's the left that's failing us.

That's all.

Edited:
In this post, I made the assumption that the readers would know what problem I had with the article I posted the link to. Turned out I was wrong [ref. the comment section of this post]- well, here's the criticism:

But will gender not be a problem after the abolition of private property? I don't think so. The power imbalance might have started with 'the emergence of private property, the defeat of matriarchy and the onslaught of patriarchal rule and the corresponding rise of classes and the state' as the article said, but now the 'false consciousness' that makes women subhuman cannot be addressed simply with the property question. Women as a social group are oppressed and exploited through means other than just the organization of capital. Marx’s historical materialism focuses only on production, but any plausible solution to the problem of women’s subordination now would need to address issues of reproduction, sex and child-rearing.

The article I linked to is sarcastic about "Feminism" (putting quotes around it) and 'the imaginative feminists', and is dismissive of the feminist scholarship on the philosophy of sex and sexuality. Also, it keeps referring to 'the woman question', forgetting the feminism of John Stoltenberg and Michael Kimmel, which is about men and advocates gender deconstructionism. The article quotes Lenin as saying "I was told that questions of sex and marriage are the main subjects dealt with in the reading and discussion evenings of women comrades […] What a waste! […] That not only endangers clarity on that question itself, it muddles the thoughts, the class-consciousness of proletarian women generally." I have a problem with that because I hold that a ‘gender consciousness’ is also necessary - and perhaps that's exactly what Lenin is afraid will 'muddle the thoughts' of the 'woman comrades', as they realize that they cannot trust men with their issues.

And we see these failings even in Engels’ ‘The Origin of Family’, which the article mentions. In the book, there is no acknowledgment of sexual division of labor as inherently exploitative and oppressive. In the ‘primitive communism’ Engels talks about, women are already tied to domestic roles.

MacKinnon’s ‘Toward a Feminist Theory of the State’ provides a good critique of the shortcomings of the historical materialist analysis, but there is something even MacKinnon leaves out: the oppression of those who do not identify with the gender binary. That is another concern of mine which I'm Marxism fails to address.

Remembering A Tradionally Pariarchal Society

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:51:00 +0000

As I thought of images of Pakistani women for my last post, images which show them bending rules in the patriarchal culture, I was reminded of a quaint memory from childhood. Women from my village, when they gathered in the spaces they used for washing clothes, would sometimes, for the mere convenience of it, strip to bathe and wash their clothes. 'Respectables' obviously stayed away from these places - 'men of means' and their women who would wash at home or have others wash their clothes. But since there was no formal gender-based segregation in the village's public space - a space of communal living, equally accessible to everyone - men would sometimes come strolling by to these places, knowingly or unknowingly.

And when they saw a man approach, all that would happen was the woman yelling out a nonchalant 'paa'eeya ayedhar na takkeen' [brother, don't look here], knowing full well that the man might just stand at a distance and look if he wanted. But most men would deter, because if one were identified as an ogler he would become a social outcast. Obviously, it was because of the patriarchal culture that the woman considered her body to be a problem under the male gaze, but what appeals to me about this image is the comfort the woman felt in her nakedness, and the blame of transgression going to the man who ogled, and not the woman who chose to bare herself. This incident shows to me how some women have been able to exercise a level of agency in even traditional patriarchies, and that the monolithic portrayal of women as oppressed and helpless is mistaken.

Portrayals Of Women in Pakistani Media

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 02:06:00 +0000

(Another Jab at Pakistani 'Liberal' Thought)

Readers, I bring you this, in justification of my contempt for the English-speaking elites of Pakistan, those who bear the mantel of liberalism.

This is what it says in the 'About' page of the blog Pak Teahouse:
'Pak Tea House is a little corner in the blogosphere that will endeavour to revive the culture of debate, pluralism and tolerance. It has no pretensions nor illusions but the motivation of a few people who want to see Pakistan a better place - where ideas need to counter the forces of commercialism, adverse effects of globalisation and extremism. And, ideas must translate into action that leads us to an equitable, just and healthy society.'

Notice how the words 'commercialism' and 'globalization' are used while capitalism is not mentioned. But more importantly, notice the absence of the word 'sexism'. I've been wanting to do a post about it, ever since I talked in this post about how the religion question fails to be fully explored in the Pakistani intellectual circles because it's framed in the discussion of 'extremism' versus what religion 'really' should be, which merely sets up another hegemonic discourse. Gender issues and sexuality, likewise, are overlooked by self-proclaimed progressives and revolutionaries of Pakistan, and this post should serve to bring attention to why the gender and sex question cannot not be dismissed anymore.

The author of the linked post obviously has little understanding of the issues of objectification of women, as shown by his comment below, and mistakenly thinks that the pictures show a different side of the misogynistic society of Pakistan. But this post is not about the author's ignorance. It's about the general question of what images could be used to show a 'different' Pakistan, a question that needs to be resolved for the Pakistani media, concerned as they are with 'improving the image abroad'.

The first issue that needs addressing is the politicizing of woman's bodies. Why is it that the discourses of liberation focus so heavily on women and their bodies? Women's bodies are treated as battlefields to be won over by contesting ideologies which are masculinist in character. These discourses are informed by monolithic portrayals of women, which not only cast all women as victims, but as the the only victims of oppression. Obviously such portrayals are false: not only do they exclude other social minorities, they preclude the possibility of women's agency, and ignore the fact that women have always been able to manouver patriarchal structures to challenge the stakes against them[like in post-revolution Iran, but that's another post]. But the real problem with using women in ideological debates is that we run into the danger of building a discourse around 'protection' of women. This discourse was drawn upon by British colonizers in India and the US neo-conservatives to justify America's invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Another example of this 'politicization' is explored here, in Shehryaar's blog.

But if images of women are to be used for showing a different side of Pakistan, what sort could they be? I've already mentioned how images from the fashion industry are only another face of the patriarchy which has always objectified women. Dolled up women with heavy-embroidered clothes or bias-cut dresses, high heels, and glistening smooth and waxed skin are NOT liberated. The fashion industry does no such thing as 'empowering women' - it only builds a system of exploitation around women's insecurities about themselves in a man's world. Using these images is also futile, in terms of 'an improved image abroad', because the world is aware that Pakistan is just another globalized country of late modernity where a fashion industry would spring up to serve the commercial sector. There's also a grave consequence of this at home: in associating women's lib with forces of commercialism, we alienate the Pakistani masses from the cause of all feminist activism.

Although I hold that clothes have very little to do with liberation - a Turkish woman may use the head-scarf as a symbol of political activism - I suppose that if we were to show an image of contrast to the veiled Pakistani woman, we could go for an image of a college-going woman who is too busy to bother about any dress codes, religious or otherwise, and defies the patriarchy with any manner of clothes that she's comfortable in. Convenience is her 'fashion statement', and she doesn't do anything with her hair except to tie it up maybe or cut it really short, maybe wears glasses, doesn't care about body fat, and is not afraid to show her brown complexion.

Also, why stick to only people who became 'enlightened' through embracing modernity? We could show women dancing at shrines who are not afraid to display dishevelled hair and nakedness above their ankels if they're wearing dhhotis. Another image could be of a housewife at Lahore's 'lunda' bazaar [a place popular for secondhand clothes], with her dupatta pushed up to her neck and a little of her cleavage showing. Yet another could be of a teenage girl playing cricket or cycling in the streets of a lower middle-class neighbourhood.

Of course we should also take care not to get ahead of ourselves with this 'improving the image abroad'. The situation of women's rights in Pakistan remains abysmal, and we have every social injustice against women from honour killing and gang rapes and abductions to confinement within the home and sexual harrassment in work spaces. Instead of being used to redeem Pakistan from its record of women's oppression, these images should be used to 'improve the image abroad' of individual Pakistani women who defy patriarchy in their own ways, and to show that despite the hold of patriarchal traditions, there is room for women's agency and control.

This understanding, and the de-politicization of women's bodies would emerge when gender issues are no more secondary to the 'real problems' of ideologies and nation-state politics. 'Gender issues' and 'feminism' have to stop being 'womanly' concerns and taught in political science courses. They should be significant enough for general discussion forums like Pak Teahouse where, if you point out that it's unfair to use only a woman's first name while you address men with their full or last names, you are told that you're 'splitting hairs'. The 'woman question' has to stop being a matter of 'splitting hairs', because when it's subsumed under other discourses, those other discourses exploit it. This way, any change that happens retains the structures of patriarchal oppression, and it would not to do pretend that women have been liberated when misogyny, exploitation and oppression continue under the new names of 'fashion', 'cosmetic surgeries' and 'sexual freedom'.

Back, with thoughts on Kushner's Angels in America

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:40:00 +0000

One of the few good things that happened during this blogging sabbatical was reading a little of Emily Martin and Helene Cixous, and reading the play Angels in America. That means I was chock full of ideas to write about but didn’t get around to – which is a waste. Although I’m gonna start making up for it, starting with my thoughts on Angels.

A socially-conscious and politically charged drama, Tony Kushner's Angels in America is a play which was hailed as a turning-point in the history of American theater. Subtitled 'A Gay Fantasia on National Themes', the play has been mostly appropriated by gay rights activism in the US. Premiered on the night Bill Clinton was to be elected, the play came in the context of 'change' and 'hope' after the long silence over the 'gay' question during the Reagan/Bush years, and the frustration over the late response of the government to the havoc wreaked by the AIDS pandemic on America.

But the play, which attempts to 'humanize' the gay identity for Americans, by portraying it as quintessentially American, part of 'the great melting pot where nothing melted', is broader in its scope. The playwright is critical of "gays and lesbians in ACT UP who say ‘I hate straights’ " and "Jews who think that the only thing that matters is Israel and defence against anti-Semitism", holding that 'people who don’t recognise common cause are going to fail politically' [Tony Kushner in Conversation, Robert Vorlicky]. Subverting the discourse of identity politics that works on differentiation, the playwright is creating a politics of inclusion based on plurality and hybridization. This is the 'queer' spirit of the play, which seeks to dissolve boundaries, instead of just trangsressing them. The characters are not sharply defined 'radicals', but very mundane, undergoing transition, all in a 'web of interconnectedness' that highlights the commonality of the very human experience of exclusion and repression, and the 'painful process of change'.

'Interconnectedness' is achieved very well not only at the thematic level, but also in the characterization and the structure of the play. There are hermaphroditic Angels and gay Republicans, and the protagonist 'Prior' Walter is a Protestant who has a mystical experience at once Jewish, Mormon and Christian in character. The characters echo each other in common motifs of change and salvation, and are drawn together by the 'magic of the theatre' [as a character ironically remarks] in split-scenes and fantasy sequences. In this, we see the play's adherence to 'functionalism', which dismisses naturalist theatre as 'escapist'. Ironical self-reference, absurdism and the vaguely plausible fantastical scenarios it creates through dreams and hallucinations serve to underscore the play's aim of making the audience respond and rationalize.

What a character in the play refers to as "neo-Hegelian positivist sense of progress" is the dominant theme of Angels. In this, Angels is true to the themes of the icons of gay American culture 'Wizard of Oz' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire', works which are echoed in Angels. Thus Angels is ultimately reminiscent of the American pioneer ideals of discovery and individualism embodied in the heroines Oz and Desire, who venture into the unknown on journeys of self-discovery to find their place in the world. But because in the first scene it is asserted that 'there is no America - no such place exists', the quest for improvement is not just an enterprise of the past, or of the Americans. 'In you that journey exists', Kushner instructs in the first scene, waxing grandiloquent, providing a subtext to the rest of the play.

In all this we can see a cross between the German 'epic theater' and the Modern American Drama. Angels can be seen as a story about the ideals of the American family and 'the American dream' in an age of rapid change and wearing away of traditional institutions, and the ensuing identity crisis of the atomized individual of modernity. But far from just critiquing modernity, Kushner champions the Enlightenment ideal of progress, which is stated in the messages of 'Nothing is lost forever' and 'More life!' toward the end of Angels. Thus sentimentality, idealism, and grandiosity are all there, but only to create a powerful experience to engage the audience with the social critique the play is aiming at, and perhaps to inspire them to the progress it poignantly hopes for.

Kushner mocks the 'realism' of the neo-conservatives, summed up by Francis Fukuyama's words, "we cannot picture to ourselves a world that is essentially different from the present one, and at the same time better" in his 'The End of History'. A character, the fantastical 'World's Oldest Living Bolshevik', declares skeptically to post-Marxists of the 90s: "And what have you to offer now, children of this Theory [i.e.,Marxist-Leninism]? What have you to offer in its place? Market Incentives? American Cheeseburgers? Watered-down Bukharinite stopgap makeshift Capitalism!" But at the same time Angels in America cautions us against dogmatically holding on to ghosts from the past and codified totalizing theories. 'It's all too much to be encompassed by a single theory', Kushner admits through one of his characters, but adds emphatically, 'you can't live in the world without an idea of the world...you can't wait for a [single] theory, but you have to have a theory.'

In the afterword, Kushner writes more of how such theories could be arrived at:

"I have been blessed with remarkable friends, colleagues, comrades, collaborators: Together we organize the world for ourselves, or at least we organize our understanding of it; we reflect it, refract it, criticize it, grieve over its savagery; and we help each other to discern, amidst the gathering dark, paths of resistance, pockets of peace, and places from whence hope may be plausibly expected."

Kushner's idealism is thus a belief in a history driven forth by our ability to be critical and discerning of the 'savagery' of our times. He ends Angels with the declaration that 'you're all fabulous, each and every one of you', having shown through the entire work that a project of progress will only be guided by an inclusion of all subjectivities - a plurality of perspectives that will perhaps bring a new theory good enough for these times of confusion.

An 'Objective' Perspective - Michael S. Kimmel on Feminism

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:34:00 +0000

Here's Michael S. Kimmel, a sociologist at the New York University who pioneered the study of gender concerning 'Men' and 'Masculinities'. He sounds just like you would expect him to sound reading his 'The Gendered Society', a book written in a very chatty style that manages to deliver profound sociological insights without any abstruse jargon. His work is known for the commonsense terms he explains gender theory in, making it very accessible for those outside the academic circles. And you can see why that's so in the above video, in which he gives a down-to-earth introduction to the feminist critique of objectivity, and also makes a quip about the mind-body dualism of Western philosophy that feminist philosophers have a problem with.

Watch them all. They're fun as well as thought-provoking. Something about Michael Kimmel puts me in mind of Jerry Seinfeld...

The Shallow Pursuit of Certainties

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:20:00 +0000

I have problems with polemicists like Richard Dawkins, but I think he's on to something when he says that indoctrination of children into religion amounts to child abuse. Well, it was actually Nicholas Humphrey who first said it in a lecture given to Amnesty International, and Dawkins later devoted a chapter to it in his 'God Delusion' [Here's a link to the lecture]. I don't agree completely with what Humphrey and Dawkins say - but that's another post. Just one criticism right now: that it ignores the possibility of an indoctrinated worldview that's got the stamp of science on it but still contains prejudices.

And what about if you're not indoctrinated as a child into a worldview? What if you sought out the answers on your own, built a worldview around them, and then held on to it tenaciously because it has become a part of your self-identification? Isn't that just as worse? The inability to revisit your opinions, of having faith without doubt, has to be the real problem in any case. And that happens with scientists - scientists who are convinced of the biological basis for gender inequality, for example, or those who believe in medicalizing deviance. Think also of the scientific communism which led to the repressive Soviet regime, and social Darwinism which led to eugenics.

Gratification of curiosity should not be the only aim of our quest for knowledge. Because eagerness for answers stops us from examining our questions fully, and because understanding emerges over time, I suggest that we spend more time studying and contemplating, rather than lecturing and publishing, and debating. Now I am not talking about Cartesian contemplation, which presumes the sovereignty of the isolated mind [here's a critique on Descartes]. I'm suggesting that we don't solve our questions through solitary investigation bent on reaching conclusions. Rather, we live with our questions, and examine them, with the help of others, and with the inspiration that comes from everyday life. We think about the many associated questions, and the implications of any particular conclusion. Now this is not too novel - what happens in research institutes and UN fact-finding missions is the living refutation of the lone Cartesian contemplation. But it's not like that in the case of the many books that end up becoming bestsellers. And here, I am not just talking about the books of Pop Psychologists like John Gray. Even the more respectable works like 'The Selfish Gene' of Richard Dawkins seem to be in a hurry to make tall claims: "Female exploitation begins here", says Dawkins in his The Selfish Gene. The book has had a lot of backlash from sociological theorists and feminists, who point out the many unqualified assumptions in the work.

Scientists today are also given to pursuit of 'discoveries' without regard to their implications for human living. I have in mind the archaelogical discovery of the 'truth' of Babari Masjid, which led to riots, death and destruction.

A related problem is the dizzying amount of information that a layman has access to. We are too willing to take anything on face value that has the stamp of authority [religious or scientific]. We are easy prey to authority, because authority is seductive and promises quick gratification in the form of a righteous opinion. when we are so enamoured by authority that we fail to engage our questioning faculties, we also lose the ability to accomodate for conflicting information. Worse still, it can become a matter of self-identification, and then criticism is felt as an attack on the ego.

But if we live with our questions, pondering them and arriving at answers in the context of our lived experience, our opinions will reflect a certain amount of pragmatism. Pragmatism is the antidote to fundamentalism, as those who grow up in religious but loving families know. We will also be more humble about our opinions, because we would acknowledge their subjectivity. Such absence of rigid opinions doesn't necessarily mean that you're easily influenced by new opinions and so gullibe. No, it just means that we are not dogmatic about our beliefs. Social constructionists have shown how our ideas [and our identity], even if they don't change, we are always actively constructing them through reinforcement, through confirmation bias. We can admit that, and move beyond the false sense of security we have with dogma, both religious and scientific. We can stop thinking of ideas as possessions which need to be vehemently guarded, and be willing to discard them when they don't work for us anymore.

So while the conservatives lament the Internet age for the way we can now get our sexual impulses instantly gratified, the graver issue which they overlook is that of the instant gratification of the intellectual impulse. When the time that we live with ungratified impulses collapses, those impulses do not get nurtured. Sex does not become love without the lover's yearning, and knowledge does not become wisdom without living with our unanswered questions.

The Religion Question in Pakistani Mainstream

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:00:00 +0000

The not-so-well articulated point in this post was how Pakistani intellectuals have had a tendency to skirt the religion question in academic discourses. While that of course is less true now that our society faces a threat of Talibanization and our intellectuals are hard pressed to define their identities apart from that of the 'Islamic terrorist', reading the op-eds and editorials in our newspapers one still senses a reluctance to be very forthcoming when it comes to condemning suicide attacks, and examining the religious beliefs and the State policies that cause them.

Of course there are those - Muslim apologists and their sympathizers, like the British SWP - who point toward the unfairness of it all, of how the blame lies not with the Islamic terrorists but with the imperialist West. But then they mistake suicide bombs for noble sacrifices, and equate terror with freedom struggle. Granted that struggles for freedom are hardly ever peaceful, but the 'freedom-fighting' of Islamic fascist groups preys on people's insecurities - the desolation and anxiety of those recruited, and the fears of the masses. Can the Taliban be said to have cared for the Afghan people [everyone included - the men without beards, the Hazara, the women]? Can the same be said of Iran? Islamic fascist groups might be ideal for wrestling for power with capitalist Imperialism, as the British SWP seems to believe. But they aim for setting up their own oppressive structures in place of the ones already there - they are not about empowering people but rather 'the Ummah', which they narrowly define to be those in full agreement with their religious outlook and their politics.

They also say that we don't need to examine the religious beliefs because it's ridiculous to blame the peaceful religion of millions of docile mosque-goers. In agreement with them is also the Pakistani modern who isn't very religious himself but is seen cutting ribbons at opening ceremonies of religious facilities or else telling his science students about Allah's glory in the laws of nature, or worse, how the Prophet was privy to all the secrets science just unearthed. When pressed, they will concede to talking about religious beliefs, but only about how they, the terrorists, are in the wrong... it's their religion, their fanaticism, and their irrationality that has a problem.

Thus they fail to address the problems within the mainstream, State-sponsored religion that makes people so prone to fanaticism. It doesn't take a scholar to see what's wrong with it: the mostly literal reading of Quran, the importance laid on authorative scholarship [the Prophet told us that! - and besides the Devil questioned and look where that got him], and the absolute, unadulterated, natural Truth of Quran [the Holy Quran itself tells us that is so!] which they are convinced of. It all makes them grateful to be believing Muslims not doomed to hell like the polytheist Hindus [says that in the Quran too!], the chosen ones who must carry out Allah's bidding [...as you read in the Quran], and who Allah will take care of in the now and hereafter. People generally tend to see Allah as masculine, even though it can be argued that Allah is beyond gender, and that way Allah becomes a strict disciplinarian from who issues all authority, mediated to us through a system of heirarichy that we must unquestioningly submit to, and be willing to fight for.

And of course the problem is not just in the beliefs of the people, as polemecist atheists keep saying, but also in the structures that shape the society - the political and economic structures that not only make people feel helpless and insignificant, but also encourage authoritarianism. Why wouldn't people become the tools of fascist fundamentalisms? Religion has always been part of the Pakistani State ideology. Using the rhetoric of religion affords the State legitimacy and credibility. People's identities are threatened by globalization. Put that together with the perceived threat of military invasions to the abode of Islam [many here live in a mythological reality where Kufr threatens us with sword and gold, where India is the same as the Arab pagan tribes, and the West is the yahood-o-nasaara colluding with the pagans] and it makes sense how religion legitimizes the State. But the State exploits religion for its ends. To make its rule credible and those who oppose it untrustworthy and deserving of the wrath of State [like the wrath of Allah] the difference between treason and blasphemy is blurred to the State's advantage. All this is a simplification - there are many intermediating structures between the State and the people, and many parallel heirarichies. In the end, it becomes so much easier to yield to religion, because of the capitalist economy and the authoritarianism, than to think and question, and be rational.

And then there is the modern attitude, which relegates religion to the private sphere and keeps paying a lip service to it, while hoping that economic development will lead to a society free of irrationality. Our standards of civility keep us from being critical of not only the State ideology, but also religion itself - the religion of the Quran and the Sunnah and the 'authentic' exegeses of the classical scholars. Keeping their criticisms to the interpretations of the Quran, the moderns keep talking about how the 'real' Islam is nothing but a message of peace for the world, without ever bothering to examining the authoratative texts - in entirety and without the apologist brush-strokes of later writers. And all the while the common people continue to read the texts without interpreting them in the enlightened ways of the moderns. The State is complicit in this by its promotion of ties with the Wahabi Arabs and its encouragement of the move from ritual to textual religion, from the 'inauthentic' religion of the 'pir' [saint] and 'darbaar' [shrine] to the 'authentic religion' of the theologians. Because the 'inauthentic' religion means the State will have to contend with the power given to the 'pirs' by the people's mandate, because 'pirs' in the Indian Subcontinent have always led revolutions.

The point I was building up to was that the question of religious belief, along with an analysis of everything that makes it go from milder forms to fanatacism, should not be made secondary. While fundamentalism is discussed and condemned, there has been a polite dismissal of religion from serious decision-making and responsible analyzing. The moderns insist that religion is [or should be] of no political consequence, while at the same time engaging in its glorification by talking about the great humanistic values of Islam, and the exemplary 'leadership' of the Prophet. That is changing to some extent now, but we are still far from addressing the key issues, far from any proposals of radical change in the society and the way people feel about religion.

Letter to the Editor: US Youth Magazine

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 07:56:00 +0000

F., a long-time reader of the US Youth Magazine, pointed out this article on the US Youth Magazine of the paper The News. It can be reached here. F., who is from the rare species of sane Pakistani teenagers, was rightly offended by the writer's willingness to blame the underprivileged. It was also misogynist, which is something I have come to expect of everything written from a male perspective that doesn't understand all the ways women are denied choice in our society. When it says 'a large amount of burden on the shoulders of the son who himself has four kids already' he seems to be laboring under the illusion that hard-working men who have four kids already don't want to have more kids. The following is a letter to the editor, in which I refrained from charges of misogyny as they are often met with the criticism of 'you're taking it too seriously'. There WAS serious misogyny in the article, because apart from urging the reader to tell their maids/servants/gardeners to stop reproducing like cockroaches [yes, quite a shocker if you're not familiar with the upper middle class way of life in Pak], it also stresses the importance of stopping 'that distant aunt from having her 8th baby'. But apparently the editor missed it all, because the article was appreciated for how 'interesting and effective' it was on the main page.

Copy-pasting here my letter to the editor, if anyone's interested:

Dear Editor,

I know that this perhaps might be asking too much, seeing as your publication is written by and for teens, but I would rather your editorial policy be a little more rigorous, and not just measure the merits of an article by how 'interesting and effective' the write-up is.

I refer to none other than the article on environmental responsibility by Awais Imran, which you praised in the article. I know that it was written with a tone of jest, but I sensed from early on how this article was catering to the upper middle class perspective when it said that the 'father of all natural problems' was overpopulation. The problem is consumption and wastage, and while overpopulation does contribute to the two, the much greater part of the contribution comes from the consumerist lifestyle of the middle and upper middle class families with '2 or 3 children', who consume the much more environmentally taxing packaged goods that are also imported in a lot of cases.

And any doubts that I had about the author's disregard for the underprivileged were cleared when I read the following line:

"Encourage your servants, maids and gardeners to stop reproducing like cockroaches! Tell them the Family A/B example. Explain it to them."

Apart from the very offensive cockroach analogy, the A/B example that he mentions must be explained to them is highly condescending as it states a common-sense observation in a pseudo-scholarly tone.

I was appalled also at the little research that went into the article. Carbon dioxide is not the 'black smoke' he talks about, and, except for suffocation, it does not cause 'lung problems'. It's danger is its connection with global warming. Noise pollution is not about speaking loudly on the phone or car stereo volume cranked up to the full - it's about the noise from heavy-traffic roads, industries and aircraft that apart from hearing loss, causes nausea, headaches, high blood pressure, stress, anxiety, sleep loss. But perhaps the most injustice is done to the description water pollution: it is dangerous because our writer wants to continue eating fish. He clearly does not care about the lives of those who cannot afford fish and who face the risk of disease and development problems in children from polluted water supplies.

I hope critcism will be appreciated at the US Youth Magazine, and that our young writers, who should be lauded for the skill and competence they display in creative expression, can strive towards responsible writing in the future. No doubt Awais Imran is concerned for the environment and wants to make people care, but I don't think the best way to go about it is with a light and fun read that keeps addressing 'dudes' and comes off as offensive.

Regards,

An opening for a Queer Burlesque?

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:22:00 +0000

They call me flimsy and wishy-washy,
Just a frivolous, fickle
Flibbertigibbet.
'Fickle' and 'foppish',
'worrying and whining',
'fixated',
on 'mere' appearances:
(oh they can't stand such)
'frivolity' and 'flamboyance'!
Got no 'rugged resolve',
I'm forever 'faltering' and 'wavering'.
'Wily' and 'feisty',
when I fight;
'Whimsical' and 'wistful',
when my hopes are high.
Fuck you! OPEN YOUR
mildewed mind
for this 'Effeminate' and 'Womanish',
Faggot!
You betta love my 'swishy'
I'm fine, I'm wonderful,
'cause I can whip up a frenzy
and have wicked ol' fun!

Toward the end of this post, as I wrote " 'weak' and 'wishy-washy' ", a string of pejorative words all starting with 'w' came to my mind that can be used in faggot-baiting ...wuss, wimp, willy, weasel. My mind then went to the words 'winsome' and 'wily', and then to 'wistful' and 'whimsical', all of which have obvious associations with femininity. And that brought to my mind a whole list of 'f' words... frivolous, fiesty, flamboyant,fickle, etc. I don't know what Julia Kristeva would say about this discovery, or whether this is even a worthy discovery, but I saw the possibility for poetic effect it presented, and had fun with it. Wouldn't it be fun as a monologue, for a drag show, or perhaps queer burlesque?

A friend I sent it to responded with an impromptu poem of her own:

I am fat and forty
Blunt and boisterous
I bang the guitar and pretty much all else
And I speak loud.
I don't have curves or any shape
Let alone that of
an hourglass.
I jaunt, I slouch and I lean
Without a trace of softness
Or femininity
I am impatient, edgy
I am needy, craving stability
Craving softness
I am mannish
But not an asshole
I am a bloody dyke.

It's fun being queer.

Iran's Undesirables: Sex Reassigment in Iran

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:25:00 +0000

Iran, the country where human rights groups believe over 4000 homosexuals have been executed since '79, where President Ahmadinejad claims there are no homosexuals, is also one of the world's global leaders for Sex Change Operations. Second only to Thailand, Iran's high incidence of Sex Change Operations is the result of rigid institutions enforcing gender norms and the exploitation of the situation by medical science.

The award-winning documentary, 'Transsexuals in Iran' by Tanaz Eshaghian [watch in full below], shows how the Islamic Republic of Iran perceives gender deviant behaviour, from mannerisms to sexuality, as a grave threat to the social order, which is maintained through fear of the morality police, and the fear of being suspected of homosexuality, a sin punishable by death. Sex change operations here are encouraged by the clergy, and they have built a whole apologetics around it. Here's what 'a religious authority on law regarding sex change operations' says in a speech:

'Families repeatedly ask me, and those who wish for a sex change ask, is what we're doing in accordance with Islamic law? Imam Khomeini has addressed the issue of changing gender with complete confidence. He states: It is...(slowing down) NOT a sin. An action is allowed unless it states specifically in the Koran that an act is sin. The second point is that, if changing your gender was sin, because you are changing God's natural order, then all of our daily tasks would be sins! You take wheat and turn it into flour, and turn that into bread - that's a change too. There are thousands of things we do everyday that are changes in God's natural order. Why are they not considered sin?'

God's natural order accommodates for profitable enterprises, but doesn't accommodate the diversity of human behaviour.

In reply to a question on whether one can, before their reassignment, cross-dress, to be able to move more comfortably in the society and not be questioned by the morality police, the cleric says:

'There were people in the past who were passing themselves off as women, and there were women who tried to pass themselves off as men. It is clearly stated in our Islamic law that such behaviour is not allowed because it is against ethics and (disrupts) the social order.'

There is a lot of anguish that these 'trans' individuals go through, who consider themselves forced to opt for the sex change operation. But the gruelling torture of the sex change operation is not the end of their problems. In their new lives with their new names, they risk losing families, and becoming social outcasts. With no-one willing to hire them, they resort to sex work, or what's known in Iran as the Islamic 'temporary marriage', which can be made 'every hour or so'. The video above is of one such transsexual who went through sex reassignment and after losing family and friends started her 'business' of temporary marriages. She claims that her life has turned for the better because at least now she won't get arrested for gender deviance. But in a heart-breaking last scene, she breaks down and cries out of sheer anguish over her life.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Contested Masculinities: A Romance from Azerbaijan

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:29:00 +0000

A controversial new book in Azerbaijan, Artush and Zaur: A Legend of Love tells the story of same-sex love between an Armenian and an Azerbaijani against the backdrop of the emerging conflict over Nagorno Karabakh. From this blog entry on the book, we learn what the author says here about his book. The author, arguing that Azeris and Armenians share 'similar kitchen, music and mentality', says “Armenians are closer to us than, say, Georgians” due to the influence of the Persian culture. The novel 'exposes the absurdity of all wars in the South Caucasus a la Kusturica.' The author 'believes he has the full right to do so as he lost his older brother during the Karabakh war in 1994.'

War and gender go hand in hand, and this book, actually a lash-out against the many taboos regarding the war and both sides of the conflict, challenges the gendered nature of all conflicts by weaving the plot around the romance between the two male central characters. Just launched, the book has not actually received a wider readership, but it has caused a stir as nationalists on both sides fervently discuss “Who f**ked who?” this question worried them more than even the fact of the main characters being gay. They are ' kind of ready to ‘forgive’ and ‘forget’ the gay part of the story, as long as ‘their guy’ is ‘the man’ meaning he is ‘doing the enemy’ '. This controversy is perhaps the reason the author is being accused of 'treason and betrayal of national interests.'

Predictably, there have generally been 'plenty of hateful and homophobic comments' in forums and blogs. The publisher admits to having published his “most scandalous” novel in Baku, and comparisons are being drawn to Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk. The blog post tells us that the story is 'a sort of partial deconstruction of Ali and Nino (a heterosexual love story of Azeri Ali and Georgian Nino) having instead Azeri and Armenian male lovers against the backdrop of the emerging Karabakh conflict', and the story of Ali and Nino an important part of Azeri literary heritage, we can imagine the hue and cry. Apparently, there is only one book store in Baku which still has the book on its shelves, and protesters are suggesting 'buying all the copies of the book and burning it in front of the bookstore' and calling out for the application of the 'Shariat Law'.

This incident serves to show a side of homophobia that is often missed: penetration is seen as invasion and conquest, and male homosexuality, which is much more taboo, disturbs the society's gender constructs. It also casts light on how nationalism is mostly masculinity validation, and how power contests are in a sense clashes of masculinities.

A Thought On Valentine's Day

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:22:00 +0000

Two different responses to Valentine's Day from two different worlds. One a celebration of love, the other a celebration of subversion. One a condemnation of repressive societies, the other a condemnation of consumerism. Both are evocative reflections on the very different socio-cultural realities observed by their writers.

Vitriolage
from Awais Aftab's Blog

No Shiv Sena threatens me
Nor do Talibans bind my hands
Yet in the miasmatic world
In which i breathe
There is no Valentine's Day
For you, for me
It is but a fiction in magazines
And some songs on the radio
For love is a secret to be kept
To be rumoured and hushed
Its beauty to be burnt
Vitriolized by moralic acid
There is no Valentine's Day
For you, for me
Why do we even pretend it exists?
For despite hearts full of love
The day will be spent in silence
Weaving a lie
Which we ourselves
Don't believe anymore
There is no Valentine's Day
For you, for me

From Be My Anti-Valentine

Lack of Definitions and the Feminine Principle

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:15:00 +0000

The other day, as I clicked a comment past moderation on the post on 'Neurological Atypicality', I was aware that something like it had been previously said on another post. Here are the two comments:

Commenter CVD: "In general I think society is afraid of that which they don't understand, so it is easier to label and put someone in a box."

Commenter Awais: "And this is something the society fears... someone whom they can't define, who doesn't fit into their already defined paradigms... such a person scares them, confuses them, and this often becomes the source of anger and persecution. Society doesn't like people without labels."

Both posts were on deviance. Deviance represents to me a vantage point of studying the exclusionary construction of social space which is a feature of patriarchal societies. It's become almost a cliche now to say that feminism is against all oppression, but what I think is not stressed enough is that feminism is against all the exclusionary politics inherent in the way an androcentric society is organized. That organization is not only in the society but also in the way we think - in the way we process our perceptions of reality and form evaluations and make 'choices'. And feminism, if it's about bringing down the patriarchy, has to challenge all androcentricism.

When postmodern feminists talk about challenging androcentricism and the need for the feminine principle to prevail, they come under the attack of deconstructivists who accuse them of gender essentialism. But I think that there can be talk about gender if we treat masculinity and femininity as ideas rather than locating them in the human body, as the patriarchal tradition has done. Masculinity and femininity are not empty nominalisms, but archetypes that have a life of their own, that are in our collective unconscious and transform our reality and lived experience.

So coming to the point I wanted to make about the above two comments, I think it's just a way of thinking we've all gotten used to, a way of thinking known to academic feminists as 'phallocentric'. We like to possess truth, rather than contemplate it. We like to seek out knowledge, and 'penetrate' for Absolute Truths, rather than be receptive toward reality and take it in with all its ambiguities and uncertainties. We like neat concepts and sharp definitions, which might have helped us in our study of the physical but are unable to capture the complexities of the human experience.

And that's why we are so eager for binding ideas and identities into strict definitions. But they have always been challenged. Intellectual anarchists - from the medieval Sufis to the modern day Queer theorists - have always sought self-knowledge outside the bounds of such definitions. We live in a world where ideas and identities are about aggressive assertion, and that leads to power contests. [Ever read about 'the rooster factor '?]

The prevailing of the 'feminine principle', I think, means acceptance of ambiguities. 'Confusion' will no more be a dirty word, meant to insult those who do not subscribe to rigid ideologies, those who are 'weak' and 'wishy-washy'. Diversity and lack of definition will not a problem; there will be no fear of deviance and no need to 'fix' it.

Reflections on Popular Religion and Dr. Durre S. Ahmed

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:34:00 +0000

Last Friday, I caught part of an informal workshop in LUMS on Muslim popular religious practices and mysticism. The workshop talked about the privileging of religion-as-text over religion-as-lived-experience, and how Popular Religion in Punjab, though decried as weak-faithed syncretism by conservative religious scholarship, is a much more powerful experience of faith and very rooted in the historically unique religious consciousness of the Muslims of subcontinent. Sufi saints were discussed who, claimed by both Hindus and Muslims, give a lie to the Two-Nation Theory cracked up by elitist politicians for who religion was in the books and not in local traditions. Not only does Popular Practice of religion straddle the Hindu-Muslim divide, gender-role distinctions also break down in the Shrine culture where there is no sex segregation (such as in the shrine of Mian Mir, and numerous shrines in Sind) and the Hijra identity is celebrated (such as in the mystic order Suhrawardiyya-Suhagiyya). Overcoming divides this way is part of the overall tendency of popular religious practices to accommodate for liminal experiences and identities.

What interested me the most was the critique of the modern scholarship on religion by Dr. Durre S. Ahmed's, who gave the opening discussion, using references from her book 'Gendering the Spirit'. I had only heard of her 3 decades of tireless work at NCA (her profile on this page, scroll down) before, but after this workshop I have found out much about her that fascinates me. She is a practising psychotherapist working in a post-Jungian framework, and a key postmodern feminist academician in Pakistan who ran into trouble with 'rationalist' and 'liberal' academicians. In her discussion, she talked about the logocentric, phallocentric, Euro-centric and rationalistic biases Pakistani intellectuals inherited from a colonial past, due to which they are incapable of understanding religious experience. She also talked about how modernity has reduced religious figures to their biographies, which are a product of research that is not only discursive but also constructive. This is in contrast with the religious consciousness of people for who religion is rooted in mysterious complexities and ambiguities.

Moving on, she explained how these complexities and ambiguities inherent in religious traditions are getting lost due to the rise of the archetypal male heroic consciousness given to conquest and subjugation, rather than persuasion and accommodation. Textual, literal, absolutist, and neatly rational understandings of religion did away with the aesthetic, emotional, and mystical dimensions of religious experience that have always been more accessible. She illustrated this by the example of the Kashmiri mystic Lalla (known also as Lalita, Lali, Mai Lal, or Lal Ded) and her lasting impact on the Kashmiri Muslim consciousness. Despite the absence of a shrine cult associated with her, she is remembered through a corpus of poetry attributed to her and numerous sayings and proverbs. But most surprisingly, she is remembered as a woman who left her family and home to become a wandering, naked mystic performing miracles and guiding those were lost. In her defiance of human norms, there is the religious experience of transcendence, of shunning the world and getting closer to the divine. Durre S. Ahmed sees this as evidence that popular religion can be very different from the strict dogmas of organized religion based on the authority of texts and the scholars who interpret them.*

Fascinated by her views, I got hold of her book 'Masculinity, Rationality and Religion', which is basically a compilation of a paper she wrote in 1991, and later writings on it by her and others. This paper she presented in an interdisciplinary conference in Islamabad to much dramatic backlash. She points out that religious resurgence has taken the modern Pakistani intellectual by surprise, as he always dismissed religion as an irrational hangover from the past that will reduce in influence with development and modernization, relegating religion into the personal sphere and averse to examining religious beliefs openly. In his 'mindset of certainty' and 'blindness towards the shortcomings one's own preferred perspective', he is guilty of the same fundamentalism he accuses the 'mullah' of.

These points resonated with my experience as well. Religion is still a powerful reality in the lives of the common people, and modernity and 'rationality' has neither improved their lot nor provides the solace that traditional religion does. While moderns have mostly evaded any public discussion on religious matters [more true 2 decades ago], saying that it's something personal, the common people do not even get what the intellectuals mean when they talk of religion as a personal matter. Our entire social structure having a strong authoritarian basis, with people conditioned, sometimes with State patronage, to unquestioningly follow authority, I do not see how people are supposed to grow out of the 'irrationality' of religion. Religion itself has a lot of state patronage, and in this environment, people see secular intellectuals and social activists as arrogant, disloyal, Westernized rebels. So there needs to be a change in the overall social structure before can there be a change in the way people see religion.

Before signing out, I have to put in a word on Dr. Durre Ahmad's peculiar footwear: she challenges the banality of the norm of symmetry by donning a different shoe on each foot. One went with her shalwar, the other with her kameez, although that might be purely coincidental. Now that is the kind of people who would not bore me with their monologues!
___________________________________________________________
* I did not take a lot of notes, and this description reflects more my understanding of her talk

Radical Perspectives on Campus

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:39:00 +0000

I have been struggling these last few days. While I usually manage to keep up with life's chaos, never trying to micromanage things, and making only short-term plans, it gets a little difficult when you have an influenza with fever and coughs, have to take time out to watch over your laptop getting fixed in a repairs shop because you fear they'll switch the parts, are trying to avert a dramatic Pakistani family crisis, and have banal university assignments to trudge through.

But I am one of those annoying cheery people who look on the positive side, and so I am going to talk about the interesting things that happened in the meantime. I got to watch the new showtime series United States of Tara, attended an informal workshop on Popular Religious Practices in LUMS this Friday, and had some pretty radical conversations with two people in my university, on religion and communism. The conversations are what I've really been meaning to write about, because in a university where though students love discussing current affairs, tend to avoid saying anything counter to the mainstream ideological beliefs, and rarely anything on religion, these conversations were a definite break from the routine. Also, it's a state university that I go to, and that means pursuing a Professional Degree without the distractions of humanities, arts, and social sciences. Although... we do have government-approved propagandist courses on 'Pakistan Studies' and (Sunni with Wahabbi bent) Islam.

The conversation on religion was with a devoutly religious, bearded fellow, who I have hung around with for quite a while because he is a jovial, easygoing person and never expects me to accompany him to the mosque. For him, religion is about love, love of the Prophet and of Allah, and love of all humanity, and of all religions. He doesn't like preachers, who he says go outside to convert others, while sin happens right in their homes. I mentioned to him how if God, as said in the Surah Ikhlas of the Quran, does not 'beget', that is reproduce, should that mean God is beyond gender? He said, yes, God made gendered 'pairs' so that his creation could reproduce, and so gender is a human need. And while I was just wondering about the implications of 'gender as a human need', he went on and surprised me by saying, 'That's why the Hijras are the closest to God.' I didn't put the homosexuality question to him, because homosexuality-as-an-identity is kind of hard for people to grasp here.

The other conversation, on communism, was more of a debate that went on for a few days. The guy knew a fair deal about class consciousness and Marx, and seemed to remember quite a good bit of facts from the political history of Afghanistan, Iran and Russia. What I missed out in the beginning was that he admired Soviet communism, and saw it as very close in spirit to Islam. He blamed all social problems on capitalism, colonialism, and U.S imperialism, subscribing to a Golden-Age-esque view of Muslim history. He believes in a communist revolution, and yet talks about taking Iran as a model, where Islamic revolution crushed communism. Insisting that my views on the violence and oppression of the Soviet communism and Islamic Republic of Iran are ill-informed and affected by American propaganda, he told me that he would suggest some good books for me to read. Will be posting the list here as soon as I get it from him.

Tech Troubles - HTML Ate Up My Two Paragraphs

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:39:00 +0000

Laptop broke down and had to type out the post on an old computer which had I.E 6. Apparently my blog crashes IE 6 and blogger's html text-editor gets messed up as well. My last post's last two paragraphs apparently got lost in the html codes. Just put up the fixed post here.

Gonna go respond to the comments now.

Fixed Post:Evolutionary Psychology's Failings - Tale As Old As Time

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:51:00 +0000

Ah, those evolutionary psychologists... getting on feminists' nerves all the bloody time! Figleaf just put up an interesting post on that, but this is something I've been write about for a long time. Follow the links on Figleaf's post, and add to that all the evolutionary talk you hear about men's promiscuity and women's desire for stability.

The problem with evolutionary psychology was discussed way before it came into being: it's a field that divorces itself from historical and sociocultural analysis, and in so doing falls prey to the bias that arises simply from the things they take for granted. That criticism was first launched at economists in the Western capitalist system, and later also to psychologists who sought explain the scientific causes of deviance. These two trends were especially seen as part of the institutionalization of oppressive political and social arrangements, as they basically justified the existing dynamics of the society in terms of what they saw as 'scientific objectivity'.

The same, I think, applies to evolutionary psychology, which focuses on evolutionary variables at the cost of ignoring the social and historical variables which, insofar as they determine the organization of human relationships, affect behaviouiral tendencies. Take for example the story about women having orgams more easily when they are married to rich men. Apart from how these scientists jump to causations from mere correlations, as is discussed in the linked article, these studies also ignore what such a thing would mean for alternate social systems: societies in which social power is not heirarichalized and wealth belongs to the collective rather than the individual, or societies where women and not men determine a household's wealth.

Another problem is that these studies ignore how the social context shapes the supposedly biological sexual desires. The homosexual and the queer make little evolutionary sense, and this is just disregarded. In fact, all theories of biological determinism make an important mistake. Biological propensities for human behaviour are too vast, and it is through a system of values and norms that these propensities are filtered into actual behavioural tendencies. Culture attaches meaning to activities, and those meanings determine what we see as desirable or undesirable, functional or non-functoinal, meaningful or meaningless. Behaviour is thus pigeonholed by culture, and biological determinism fails to take that pigeonholing into account.

And this is a serious problem. Although having been subsequently discredited (here and here), the waist-to-hip ratio studies that talk about how the hour-glass ideal of feminine beauty is linked to fertility and female mate-value across all cultures continue to be cited. Daniel Goleman's bestselling book 'Social Intelligence' says matter-of-factly that biology makes women sex objects and men success objects. The men-as-success objects theory arose out of men's groups claiming men's victimhood, and there is now supposed to scientific evidence backing this up. The economic, the medical, and the evolutionary theories that seek to explain the immanent realities of the here and now in terms of absolute natural laws seem to me to be falling into the old trap of preferring the transcendent over the immanent. The plight of the oppressed is determined by the immutable natural order, and not the way human societies are organized. God might be dead in the secular West, but the reasons that made God so bad are still there.

The Hero Narrative: Two Recent Examples from Popular Culture

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:00:00 +0000

I talked in this post about how the culture defines the masculine hero. This definition is a concern of the hero narratives in the patriarchal culture, which define and redefine masculinity according to (changing) cultural ideals. This piece is an attempt to apply this perspective to two movies of 2008: 'Slumdog Millionaire' [Sd M] and 'Kung Fu Panda' [KFP].

It's important to identify the mythical structure in the plots of both the movies which serves to build the hero narrative. Once the hero and the struggle have been identified, both movies establish the hero as the winner through leaps of logic that are more characteristic of myth than fiction. While this might be apparent in KFP, where the Panda 'figures out' the magical 'Wushi finger' hold to beat the unbeatable Tiger, it might not be so in Sd M. But watching Sd M critically, asking how the protagonist has efficient reading skills without tutoring, or how all the questions asked on the game are linked to the most dramatic experiences of the protagonist's life, brings home the mythical structure that serves to complete the hero narrative.

The narratives are also concerned with the hero's masculinity. The happy endings themselves establish a definition of the masculine as the winner who 'takes it all'. This is why in Sd M, it is not enough that the protagonist just resolves the central conflict of the plot, that is, his separation from his beloved. In the end, through strokes of luck that sacrifice the story's plausibility, he not only has love but also wins fame and money.

The hero's masculinity is established in other ways as well. In KFP, the protagonist represents the 'cool guy' archetype. Contrasted with Tigress, Panda is carefree, jokes around, and gets a lot of laughs from those around. Here, you also see how Tigress serves to represent femininity in opposition to which Panda’s masculinity is constructed. Certainly not good with jokes, Tigress is a ‘good girl’, a diligent student devoted to earning Master Shi Fu’s approval. She is the opposite of ‘cool guy’, who wins without any diligent devotion. A different but more traditional approach to this same end is seen in Sl M, in which the hero of the narrative saves the archetypal ‘damsel in distress’. The hero here represents more the anguished warrior who, as he comes of age, gets to reclaim his manhood by getting back his childhood sweetheart and becoming the winner.

But both the movies are also concerned with constructing a newer, ‘softer’ form of masculinity. The hero of Sl D is a low-income ‘chai wala’, who does not mind being laughed at for his occupation, and is only playing the game so that his beloved can see him, and not interested in winning. He also avoids a direct confrontation with the captor of his beloved. Similarly in KFP, the hero does not mind showing and talking about his feelings, and struggles with self-esteem issues. This makes sense because of the changing cultural paradigms that are redefining masculinities. Is that because of feminism or the ‘emasculation of the collective’ in late capitalism? Whatever the reason though, feminism has still a long way to go because we are still obsessed with the archetype of the masculine hero.

Through the Neurologically Atypical Lens

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:20:00 +0000

Lindsay at Autist’s Corner has put up a couple of posts on a book called ‘Born on a Blue Day’ by Daniel Tammet. She has done a good job at using these posts to explore the ‘Neurologically Atypical’ way of life.

Daniel Tammet is an autist diagnosed with Synesthesia, Savantism and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. He has shown remarkable competence in mathematics, famously reciting pi to 22,514 decimal places in a time of 5 hours, 9 minutes a few years back, by working it out in his head. And this competence it seems, stems from his emotional responses to numbers and his unique way of processing them.

"it's much easier for me to visualize the answer using my synesthetic shapes than to try to follow the "carry the one" techniques taught in the textbooks we are given at school."

he describes nines as evoking particular feelings of awe and reverence for him --- they are dark blue, huge and at once beautiful and terrifying. Who says autistics can't experience complex emotions?

Those with neurological ‘disorders’ are generally thought to lack the human potential for feelings. Because we only get to observe their atypical behavioral responses, and because we mostly miss out on the NAs’ descriptions of the rich mental lives they lead, we doubt their capacity for emotions and empathy, and think that they do not experience love, ambition, motivation, stress, etc., in the same capacity as us. Books like ‘Born on a Blue Day’ show us how the human experience is richer than we can imagine, and that the richness of human experience is not exclusive to those who fit in.

The world, the social dimension of reality, is constructed around norms. Such a construction favors those who are closest to a social ideal, and those who are not have little to gain from this reality. They are the ‘ugly’, the ‘stupid’, the ‘losers’, the ‘weak’, and the ‘pitiful’. In the worst of cases, NAs are seen in such terms of social exclusion. But even when they are not, because of their difference, they have no function to serve in a society that runs on norms, and they become ‘disabled’. We say that they can't function properly, they need help, and they need to be cured... but the problem could be seen in another way: the society fails to find a function for them, the society needs help, and it needs to be cured.

The remark about the ‘carry the one techniques’ used to teach math also goes to show how the rule-based learning in schools is doomed to be unfair to those who might learn differently, and that does not just apply to those who qualify for a medical diagnosis of Neurologically Atypical. But Tammel's case is a good illustration of this: because of his savantism, Tammel is capable of competence in mathematics, but such competence will not necessarily suit a person to what's taught at school, where teaching methods are designed for norms and not individual capabilities.

Let me also examine the designation ‘Neurologically Atypical’. Such designations, to some extent, represent a needless medicalization of deviance. Although phenomena like seizures, because they are detrimental to the well-being of the NAs, are definitely problems medical science should concern itself with, medical science often becomes complicit in securing our prejudiced judgments of those it characterizes as ‘NA’. This happens when scientists see anything different as wrong, and try to cure it, not considering that it might just be ‘wrong’ because of the social set-up that denies opportunities to those who are different. A case in point is of homosexuality, which is still considered a disorder to be fixed by a lot of doctors in Pakistan.

Lindsay also talks about a Neurologically Atypical’s self-concept, and how in Tammet’s case, there is no dramatic self-discovery when he gets his diagnosis.

...because he wasn't diagnosed until later in life (at age 25 --- probably after he became famous for reciting pi), he grew into an understanding of himself and his peculiarities, rather than knowing from the start that he was different in certain internally-consistent ways, and represented a distinct type of person (as I have known for most of my life). His story does not have the sense you see in a lot of autobiographical writings by long-undiagnosed autistics of a mystery finally being solved when the diagnosis is gained --- indeed, he doesn't dramatize it at all.

I think that is because he already has a sense of identity before the diagnosis, and his diagnosis is meaningless to his self-concept. He knew from the beginning that his experiences set him apart, and he constructed his self out of those experiences, independent of the society. In a way that is the experience of any deviant. I can relate to that with my experience of an atypical sexuality, atypical because A. it was 'active'(whatever that means), as far back into my childhood as I remember, and B. because it was outside the gender norms. I haven’t met a formal diagnosis of this atypical sexuality, and I’m sure that I’ll be indifferent to it when it comes, just like Tammet, because I ‘get’ myself without that diagnosis.

Commitments

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:47:00 +0000

Commitments, to others, and to yourself, are all meaning-giving. Commitments – from writing a blog to maintaining relationships– all give us a sense of selfhood. The construction of self is through what we do, and what we perceive ourselves to be. So inasmuch as this construction derives from mutual feelings, shared visions and collective responsibility, commitments define who we are and how we live. Isn’t that why those who have less commitments more likely to commit suicide? (Durkheim described the reason as 'social integration', which I think amounts to the presence or absence of social commitments)

But it all goes wrong when commitments become duties that make us feel trapped. Commitments to fixed, non-contextual, impersonal meanings – in relationships, in our plans with the future, in morality – throw the self into conflict with a world that is unpredictable and actually meaningless… absurd, that is. The conflict shows when, for instance, someone says ‘life happens’ when their plans with life suffer. As if their plans exist in an imaginary world where ‘life’ doesn’t happen! But this is what most of us do. We tend to make commitments that exist in such an imaginary world of fixed meanings. We become outsiders in our own lives, living for meanings that are not personal and not in keeping with the absurdities of life.

Instead of giving life meaning then, commitments can hold an individual back from living in a way that is meaningful to her.

So perhaps we need to be reminded once in a while that we are not living for our commitments, for they are easily made and unmade. We are living for… life itself. Meanings emerge only through the self, and the self's interaction with the social and natural environment. Something outside of us, like religion, might seem to give life meaning, but we have to understand that such meaning only exists in relation to the self... religions do not exist in a vacuum apart from our humanity. So whatever meanings we commit ourselves to, have to come from within ourselves. Our commitments will hold true as long as they have a personal meaning. We live and love truly as long as there are no rules and obligations tying us up, but only personal meanings.

Are some commitments too serious to be dependent on such personal meanings? Maybe, but I think personal meanings are highly underrated.

Shit and Being

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:32:00 +0000

[From "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" By Milan Kundera]

When I was small and would leaf through the Old Testament […], I saw the Lord God standing on a cloud. He was an old man with eyes, nose, and a long beard, and I would say to myself that if He had a mouth, He had to eat. And if He ate, He had intestines. But that thought always gave me a fright, because even though I come from a family that was not particularly religious, I felt the idea of a divine intestine to be sacrilegious.

Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely, that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image—and God has intestines!—or God lacks intestines and man is not like Him.

The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus ate and drank, but did not defecate.

Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.

[…]
The dispute between those who believe that the world was created by God and those who think it came into being of its own accord deals with phenomena that go beyond our reason and experience. Much more real is the line separating those who doubt being as it is granted to man (no matter how or by whom) from those who accept it without reservation.

Behind all the European faiths, religious and political, we find the first chapter of Genesis, which tells us that the world was created properly, that human existence is good, and that we are therefore entitled to multiply. Let us call this basic faith a categorical agreement with being.

The fact that until recently the word shit appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can't claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner.

It follows, then, that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch.

Kitsch is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and from German it entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

On Femininity (and Masculinity)

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:04:00 +0000

I was criticized recently for the utter disregard with which I used the word 'feminine'.

I have complained before about the general ignorance of feminist cultural critique in Pakistan, and I am going to complain again. In my country, when you talk about 'feminization' by way of cultural critique, women accuse you of misogyny because they thought you said that things shouldn't become associated with the female.

They fail to see the misogyny in their concept of the female/male polarity.

So, let me spell this out. Femininity, along with masculinity, is a social construction, both of which, to the jaundiced eye of a feminist, cannot be justified by appealing to the essential natures of women and men, on account of there being no such magical essential natures. "One is not born", in the famous words of Simone de Beauvoir, "but rather becomes, a woman".

There is no magical female/male polarity, no magical in-born trait that makes you a woman or a man.

And what makes femininity particularly abhorrent to radical feminists, what 'to kill the myth of the "woman", including its most seductive aspects'* means for feminists, can be appreciated by thinking about how femininity is a socially constructed handicap for women in the patriarchal world. For women who do not get socialized into the demands of femininity, femininity feels like a form a mutilation that justifies their oppression: because they are weak, in the mind and in the body, they have to be provided for and taken care of, because they are physically attractive, their value is in their physical appearance.

See the following from a college Sociology text by Pearson Education, Inc:

Feminine Traits	Masculine Traits
Submissive	Dominant
Dependent	Independent
Unintelligent and Incapable	Intelligent and competent
Emotional	Rational
Receptive	Assertive
Intuitive	Analytical
Weak	Strong
Timid	Brave
Content	Ambitious
Passive	Active
Cooperative	Competitive
Sensitive	Insensitive
Sex object	Sexually aggressive
Attractive because of physical appearance	Attractive because of achievement

Why does the table list as feminine the traits of 'content', 'cooperative', 'sensitive', and 'intuitive', which both men and women would do well to have, and which are now even encouraged in men?
What you're missing is that these feminine traits are inferior vis-à-vis the corresponding masculine traits. Femininity and masculinity are defined relationally, and the origin of these definitions is in the cultural need to define a masculine hero: all that the culture sees as worthy of recognition and praise, that is, as heroic, is masculine. Because the masculine hero is important for the culture, his glory is to be validated by defining him in opposition to the feminine. Thus gender construction happens at two levels: defining all that is not worthy of a man as feminine, and validating that definition by associating the 'feminine' traits with women.

When cultural ideals change, the construction of the masculine hero has to change as well, and thus over time, the traits of 'content', 'cooperative' and 'intuitive' have come to be viewed positively rather than negatively. But before you join the ranks of those who champion 'the feminine principle' and defend the social discourse of femininity, remind yourself that you are not challenging the culturally defined meanings which make men the oppressors.

Femininity, I contend, only has a meaning in context of patriarchy, in which it serves to define masculinity, and justify the culture's oppression of women on grounds of their essential difference.

_________________________________________________________
*Christine Delphy quoted by Emmanuel Reynaud in his essay 'Holy Virility'

'Sex' and 'Honour' Crimes and Our Complicity

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:02:00 +0000

I live in a country where feminism is only about working for the right to education and careers, 'condemning' violence against women, and reforming the legal system. I live in a country where my novel notions of equality as absence of socially enacted difference in value-laden constructs of femininity and masculinity alienate everyone, especially the 'Muslim feminists'.

This is the story about the rape of a 21-year-old Pakistani, and the jirga decision to bury her, that I came upon today. It brings together two forms of cultural misogyny...rape and honor killing. Maybe it was because I was new to the Pak Spectator, but the following line came as a shock:

‘…and they both robbed her profusely…[invited friends to] wash their hands in the flowing Ganga.’

The expression 'wash hands in the flowing Ganga' is a rendition of an Urdu idiom that means taking advantage of a of a freely flowing bounty. Pretty much the norm in Urdu dailies, this sort of language convinces me of the hypocrisy of a society which condemns such acts of horror, and yet fails to see women as fully human as men.

For those who, their mental processes fettered into the patriarchal social discourse, do not fully comprehend the consequences of recognizing women as fully human, do not get why such language irks those of feminist sensibilities, let me spell it out. The language of patriarchy is rich with imagery of feminine beauty, and in a discourse of double meaning, it 'celebrates', 'esteems' and 'honors' women's bodies, as well as sees it as a liability that needs to be carefully negotiated with the world - either in make-up and high heels, or hidden under clothing. Thus women's bodies become objects that are either to be decorated and displayed, or concealed and protected, either to be 'liberated', or controlled. This is the social discourse that props up the culture of rape and honour killings. This culture has fictions of 'femininity', which make women into sexual objects to be lusted after and jealously guarded. So all those who still associate the value-laden femininity with women's bodies become complicit in this hypocritical society that supposedly condemns these 'inhumane' crimes. Because rape and honour killings happen in a culture where women are treated as assets to be won and jealously guarded.

A woman's body has to stop getting in the way of her self-assertion. When a woman builds her self-concept, a woman has to first negotiate her body image with the society. We have to stop making women the symbols of the inane fantasy of femininity. We all have to start seeing these crimes as part of the gendered 'human conditon', not just dismiss them as something 'inhumane', and start feeling complicit in every horror perpetrated against women. We need to stop seeing these crimes as 'sex' crimes and 'honour' crimes. Everything from 'sexual' harassment to gang rapes, from men protecting their girlfriends to honour killings, are instances of violence against women, endorsed by a culture of 'difference' which objectifies women and entitles men to dominance in both the public and the private spheres. These 'crimes' are just the enactment of the cultural gender divide by 'other means'. Only by working to eliminate the images of masculinity and femininity can we bring an end to what we so righteously condemn.

Busy Prepping and Shirking

freethinkingbeing@gmail.com (freethinker) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:18:00 +0000

I've been busy, busy with exam prep, and the shirking that goes along with it (which included spending time online... here, here [only the comments in those two] here, here and here)

I've had outraged readers posting comments here, some of who are complaining that they are not seeing their comments published. Before you whine about freedom of speech (which by the way DOES NOT apply to what I deem offensive with my wary feminist eye), you might want to use the CTRL-F5 (works for Firefox, and I think for I.E 7 and 8 too) to clear the cache and refresh the page and you'll see your righteous wisdom published here in all its finery (and it happened once, but please keep your speculations on my personal life as an immature 'college kid' to yourself in the future)

About the last link, do check out the rest of the blog as well. A blog called 'Real Adult Sex' could've easily been offensive, but it's not. But do cast your jaundiced eye on it and let me know what you think.