Seeing like a Feminist
Author : Nivedita Menon
Publisher : Zubaan, Rs299
The book, by Nivedita Menon, serves more to raise questions than provide answers, writes Anuradha Dutt
This openly subversive book questions standardised assumptions about sexuality, gender and relationships, and the social edifice that rests on the premises of marriage and family. Writer Nivedita Menon is a feminist scholar and academic who, in Seeing like a Feminist, does a critical appraisal of conventions that govern male-female relationships, against the backdrop of patriarchy, and takes a sympathetic look at alternative bonding modules, especially those termed ‘queer’. This obviously is a specialised area of interest as most people lead lives, based on the established system of marriage, family, children and the accompanying social obligations.
Menon blames colonial interventions and north Indian upper caste pressure for standardising social arrangements throughout India, which otherwise displayed diversity. She stresses the foisting of the Western nuclear family and inheritance laws, patriliny and virilocally — wife having to move to husband’s house — replacing practices such as matriliny and inheritance passing from mother to daughter. These impositions have weakened the position of women by making them vulnerable to in-laws’ stratagems. Though valid, the observation is selective in that it excludes mention of existing patrilineal structures and virilocality in India, which are clearly brought out in the religious epics, Pauranic tales, poetic works and historical annals. Instead, she chooses to play up the precedent for same sex love and nurturing of homophobia.
Ethnic differences are certainly reflected in particular social modules. But the author embarks from the starting point of strict heterogeneity — implied to be a colonial-savarna imposition — to traverse an ambiguous area of gender variegations and possibilities, while dwelling on the need to upset the status quo. Alternate sexuality, emergence of the inter-sex, which is not quite the same as the third sex, that is, eunuchs or hermaphrodites, and other concepts that challenge entrenched norms serve as the new markers of discourses on feminism and gender complexities. Here, feminism is not just about broadening horizons beyond the doll’s house but embracing hitherto stigmatised, even un-thought of possibilities.
The introduction sums it up: “To see like a feminist is not to stabilise, it is to destabilise. The more we understand, the more our horizons shift”.
Early on during her exposition, Menon reflects on the androgynous persona, for want of a better term, in the context of mysticism, the being who defies conventional gender and sexual norms. This view ignores the essence of the mystical quest and experience, vesting in transcending the finite persona and sublimating sexuality. To seek to fit mysticism into the nouveau feminist/gender matrix hinges on subverting sacrosanct ideals as much as prevalent social mores. Such intellectual jugglery in the present instance does not work. lal Ded, Meera, Surdas and Kabir were preoccupied not with intersecting gender issues but with freedom from persona, whether male or female. It is futile to make mysticism analogous with gender and sexual ambivalence. These are completely disparate concerns.
The contemporary notion of political correctness entails castigating Section 377 of the IPC. And so does the author target the law that criminalises sexual activity “against the order of nature”, enacted under the British Raj. The Delhi High Court in July 2009 revoked its application to sex among consenting adults from the same gender. But it is highly unlikely that the ruling will radicalise Indian society or make it more liberal in its attitudes. A milieu governed by ‘capitalist’ exploitation of labour, arranged marriages and the drive for perpetuity via children, caste compulsions and conservative patriarchal norms is never going to be turned on its head by decriminalising of homosexuality, an occasional slut walk, besharmi morcha, or sustained lobbying to inculcate neo-liberal values.
Contradictions abound as the author opposes implementation of the Uniform Civil Code and defends people’s rights to personal laws. She argues in support of Muslim personal law while citing revocation of maintenance granted by the Supreme Court to Shah Bano by her erstwhile spouse, such payment being un-Islamic; and then she does a turnabout by inexplicably blaming patriarchy for forcing the veil upon women in Kashmir and Palestine, and promoting injustices. She attempts to demystify prostitution and bar-dancing, projecting these as acceptable livelihood options. This stance engenders confusion if feminism is viewed as assertion of self in terms of human dignity and freedom.
How does one reconcile commodification of the body and sexual ambivalence with self-empowermentIJ Menon attempts to do so from the new feminist perspective. This serves more to raise questions than provide answers.
