This is an indulging post, something I do from time to time. There is this interesting phenomenon that I have noticed ever since I registered on Facebook. For me, social networking sites are educative and interacting tools. Having been deprived of information, and current affairs for decades while living in a conflict zone and having been fed an agenda-driven media narrative, I was thrilled to discover, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Medium, Blogger, Google+ etc. For me, it meant finding validation in my secular, and liberal beliefs, something I had been clinging to in my silence of decades, despite the majority narrative that my ethnic group of Kashmiri Sunni Muslims (immediate and extended family, relatives, acquaintances, peers, batch mates, friends)has. I found similar minded people in not just my community but globally — a similar reflection of my thoughts, beliefs or non-beliefs, opinions, and a more accurate factual narrative than what had been filtered to us.
But an interesting thing happens when a woman (a minority within a minority within a minority- a Kashmiri Indian, Muslim, woman) starts stating her views. You get a regular mansplaining, either by mail, or inbox or on posts and threads. I am not counting the hate mail and threats here. I have mostly listened with respect and attention and explored the suggestions given but more often than not they would border on the condescending and patronizing behavior of telling a woman what and how to think. This is now normal for me and I just gently brush off such attitudes.
But the most important thing that I observed was and, that is the intention for this post, was that a woman who is seen as giving her frank opinion publicly, away from the herd mentality is somehow seen as ‘’easy’’, or ‘’loose’’. There have been a number of lecherous gestures and messages, or attempts to build an intellectual relationship, but the Platonic falseness gets demolished in a few days, weeks or months when the intentions of gaining access to my space are made clear. I am very outright in my awareness of cyber crime laws, hence the intentions are revealed hesitantly but they are always revealed in time nevertheless.
It makes an interesting observation for me as a life-long observer of society and culture, that a ‘’brainy’’ woman is seen as a conquest. It also goes into areas of ‘’Southern indigenous tribal’’, educated men seeing an intelligent woman with her own opinions from a ‘’Northern Aryan’’ region who should be won over, but at the same time always falling back on viewing her as a body and not a mind. I find it flattering but annoying too, since it just confirms what feminists all over the world have been fighting for and is clearly a lost cause, at least in the subcontinent.
The intellectual men are never going to take an independent-minded woman as an equal, the women around these men already consider them as ‘’competition’’ (I have no idea where they got the idea since I know for sure now, men tend to always, always fall for easy, dumb and unintelligent women who just flash their eyelashes and appear as damsels in distress in need of assistance and end up boosting their manhood). In fact, it can be very difficult to lead a life where you have the image of a fiercely independent, knowledgeable and aware woman. You have to face the internalized misogyny among educated, liberal and aware men all the time and to have the women at our backs, breathing down our necks, and countering our views just to impress the ‘’frat boys club’’ is a bit too much.
This idea of ‘’loose’’ or ‘’modern’’, that somehow defines if a woman is not towing the status quo and is a dissenter to populist politics or popular opinion, then she ought to be automatically smoking, drinking, uninhibited about other stuff is what I encountered early on. Many, many young adults and grown men often automatically respond to my not wearing the hijab with a prompt, ‘’So you smoke and drink too?’’ To see this in men, well in their 30s, 40s and 50s is disappointing because it exposes that feminism hasn’t made any inroads and how difficult and near impossible it will be to change the subcontinents’ attitude towards women as an equally important, contributing species.
I do not mind the irritating, lecherous, patronizing from otherwise very knowledgeable and delight-to-read men since all the above social networking sites have facilities in their apps to check the very zealous Sir Galahads. I am well over that feeling I used to get, like dirty water poured over me, when walking on the streets of Srinagar in the 90s, minding my own business, Kashmiri Muslim louts used to deliberately encroach on my space with their snide comments, pushing, and eve-teasing. I have realized the information technology is also a highway of sorts and one will meet all sorts of lecherous characters. Social networking apps provide them with the security of fake avatars to indulge in their fantasies, but only the aware, intelligent and bold woman will have the gumption to put them in their place, no matter how much they falsely praise them for their ‘’independent opinions’’.
In the end, we are just bodies to them, and they are looking for an opening or a relaxation of our natural guards and radars (something that Indian women develop since childhood due to rampant incest), to act out on those fantasies. So praise or criticism as I always say, should be like oil on water. Do your own thing, speak your mind and do not mind the creep!
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