India

Anon

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I’d like this start this by saying that I’m not a woman but sincerely admire what this project is doing. I’m the son of immigrant Indian parents living in Europe and I’d like to share my experience of observing sexism in my household. My family is a conservative, traditionalist Brahmin Hindu one. My parents had an arranged marriage organised by their parents, with their consent obviously. Now to my observations. For starters, my mom refers to my dad in the formal tense (similar to ‘vous’ in French, for those familiar) while my dad can refer to my mom in the casual tense. She is not allowed to call him by his first name as it’s considered disrespectful but he is allowed to call her first name whenever he likes. In fact, my dad’s side of the family changed the name she’s called at home as my paternal grandmother ‘didn’t like her birth name.’ She does not have the right to speak up for herself. When she does, my dad never recognises her feelings as valid and always frames her as stirring up drama in the family. He knows that I have the courage to speak up on behalf of my mother as their oldest and adult son. No level of rationality can seem to make my dad reconcile with his strong internalised misogyny. These days, when my mom starts showing her emotions in response to something that he’s said, he will tell her to bottle it up, especially when I’m home. All because it would make him look bad. When my mom does, as any human being, show her emotions by crying and saying toxic things about herself and I stand up in her defense, it’s my mom that’s blamed for ‘making it a big issue’. When she expresses her feelings and points something out to my dad in times of distress, he routinely asks her, “where do you get the confidence to speak to me like this.” I feel broken on behalf of my mom. She is a shell of herself when she’s around my dad. She has to put on a mask and act like a good wife to maintain harmony in the family, but I can tell deep down she is in deep distress. In traditionalist Hindu culture, it’s the woman that has to shut up and take all the shit. Failure to do so means she’ll be labelled as arrogant. I feel helpless as my every attempt to point out this sexism falls on deaf ears. Divorce isn’t even an option in the culture. I always feel horrible leaving home to go to university or work, or even when they go places together. Because the reality is that my word as a son in my twenties outweighs her words as a wife in her fourties. I feel helpless and defeated, not being able to do anything. I’ll never stop standing up for my mom. I’m guiding her on how to stand up for herself – something she was never taught in a society where women are strictly submissive. And regardless of whether my household situation changes, my generation of Indian Hindus will hopefully be the one to change this misogynistic societal structure. Thank you for listening.

Ankita

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I am from Haryana, India known for one off the lowest sex ratios inthe country. My aunt told me this story of why there is one woman called Santosh in almost every Haryanvi family especially in her generation. ‘Santosh’ means ‘contentment’. So people would name their daughters Santosh to let god know that they were content with the number of girls in the family and just wanted boys after that. Some people realised that was not a strong enough message because god might misunderstand that as them being happy about having a girl child. So people started naming their daughters Ram Bhateri which literally means ‘god, that’s enough!’

Kristina Baristein

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So I was at the Tulja Bhavani temple in Tuljapur (Maharashtra, India), we were done with our darshan and we exited the temple(at approximately 1pm IST). I stoped to wait for my dad to tell him about some Om(A mystic syllable, considered the most sacred mantra) earrings I had seen and coincidentally the stall I was beside was selling jewellery. The guy sitting there thought I was talking about buying his items and he kept looking at me. I nodded at him “no” trying to indicate that I wasn’t talking to him nor was I interested in what he was selling. My mom was still pretty far behind us so I kept turning behind to keep track of her. Everytime I turned back I noticed that the guy at the stall was smiling as if I had flirted with him. Like I can’t describe the way he was looking. He was smiling as if he had bagged a chick.

Anon

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“IMPORTANT From today onwards The wardens have strictly prohibited short clothes. So please wear clothes at least till right above your knees or longer than that! Please do not walk outside GB in short clothes. You won’t be allowed to walk outside the gate, and you won’t be allowed to walk in at night, with short clothes.” This was the message circulated to undergraduate women of NITK. No such warnings/messages were issued/circulated to the undergraduate men.

Hopeful Feminist

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My cousin who is two year older to me, felt my breasts during the summer vacations when we went to grand mas home. He kept doing that all through the 2 months I stayed there. I was just 12 and didn’t understand what was happening. Now I am in my mid-30s and regret not speaking about it.

Mrs

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One of the advantages of social media I think is that it brings transparency into our lives;it brings out to the fore how we interact with each other and sometimes it can make for unpleasant surprises. The person whom I am married to I have known him for 15 years. Whats App revealed a side of him which I have never known or even suspected. Last year when I saw a nude pic of a woman on his phone and saw him viewing it with a smile on his face it did baffle me. I remember checking with him immediately as to why he receives such messages on his phone and his reply was that someone whom he doesn’t know keeps forwarding such messages on the ‘jokes’ forum that he is on; remarking further that he doesn’t understand as to why they send such ‘stuff’. A year later when I saw him and his ‘core group of friends(as he considers them)’ – the Brave Boys Club – exchange messages on Whats App and commenting on it with emoticons of laughing etc. it really shocked me. These were messages which had a photograph of a woman’s breasts against wordings which said ” boobs are the key: if he’s sad show the boobs; if he’s upset show the boobs….”; another one which had a caricature of two women racing across the finishing line with a focus on their chests against the wordings of ” for success, every inch matters” which had comments of one saying it is a close finish and following it up with emoticons of laughing. These are men in their late 30’s, married and with children. When I confronted my husband about it, his reply is that it’s just ‘private men talk’ and that it means nothing. Digging into his emails( without his knowledge) further I came across various other similar messages – ‘a poem of a man’ with wordings such as “I pray for a deaf-mute gymnast nymphomaniac with big tits who owns a bar on a golf course….’ and various other ‘jokes’ with lewd images and carricatures of women. When I took it up and confronted him further and I tell him that I find it to be a crude, base and revolting manner of perceiving women and speaking of women – it is made out to be as me overreacting; after all, each of these men have a wife, a mother and some with daughters is what he says in reply. ‘It means nothing, it’s got nothing to do with me, it’s just men-talk and that he has no desire of being the pope around’ – is what I hear him repeatedly saying when I keep raising this matter with him. For me the fact that he says it means nothing and his whole indifference to it is much more disturbing and alarming. Disgusted, distressed and shocked it ended up with me going into a tailspin trying to make sense of things. It ended up with me reading Sigmund Freud – The Joke and its Relation To The Unconscious( which addressed areas such as ‘tendentious jokes’ and nature of people who resort to such jokes) and Pope John Paul II’s Theology Of The Body. Also browsing the internet grappling with my new discoveries and confusions I came across the Everyday Sexism Project and some of the ‘phrasing of words’ on the webpage resonated with me: · so-used-to-it-you-almost-just-accept-it ……. · ………………….you’ve got used to thinking that it is ‘just the way things are’ · ……………..serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised …………….. It’s just that it was applicable to my husband himself and I realised that in my husband’s world such manner of talk has been just ‘normalised’ – the Brave Boys Club are his childhood friends and this has been their nature of talk for the last 25 years which he admitted to. We have a 6 year old son and I worry about the sort of influences and values he will pick up from his own home. My husband and I have had a couple of counselling sessions on this – and there has been some ‘partial’ agreement on what he will not do anymore and apart from the things that he will still continue with he will do nothing to stop such graphic messages from reaching his phone( though agreeing to delete it once it has been received). As far as I am concerned, as long as my husband continues receiving such messages on his phone at the rate it does now and apart from the chipping-away impact and the ‘normalising impact’ it has on the person involving and engaging in such talk, I still run the risk of my son glancing on some inappropriate images when he is fiddling and playing with the phones. What then are the impressions a six year old is picking up, seeing these images on his father’s own phone? I am determined that I will do whatever is in my capacity and ability that my son will grow up learning to look at and perceive, and speak of all women with respect and dignity and for that I know the efforts have to begin with me and tackling things under my own roof to start of with. On one thing my husband is right though and I agree with him wholeheartedly on that– that such ‘men talk’ has got nothing to do with me or other women. It has, I believe,got everything to do with one’s own nature and the collective nature of Brave Boys Club in this case. As long as such is the ‘private- men- talk’ I think they still abet and contribute to a culture and mind-set that objectifies women even though outwardly they project otherwise. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step – for me it seems like the journey of demanding that women be perceived and spoken of respectfully and with dignity begins with my one step right at home – my husband and his band of Brave Boys – come what may.

Mrs

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One of the advantages of social media I think is that it brings transparency into our lives;it brings out to the fore how we interact with each other and sometimes it can make for unpleasant surprises. The person whom I am married to I have known him for 15 years. Whats App revealed a side of him which I have never known or even suspected. Last year when I saw a nude pic of a woman on his phone and saw him viewing it with a smile on his face it did baffle me. I remember checking with him immediately as to why he receives such messages on his phone and his reply was that someone whom he doesn’t know keeps forwarding such messages on the ‘jokes’ forum that he is on; remarking further that he doesn’t understand as to why they send such ‘stuff’. A year later when I saw him and his ‘core group of friends(as he considers them)’ – the Brave Boys Club – exchange messages on Whats App and commenting on it with emoticons of laughing etc. it really shocked me. These were messages which had a photograph of a woman’s breasts against wordings which said ” boobs are the key: if he’s sad show the boobs; if he’s upset show the boobs….”; another one which had a caricature of two women racing across the finishing line with a focus on their chests against the wordings of ” for success, every inch matters” which had comments of one saying it is a close finish and following it up with emoticons of laughing. These are men in their late 30’s, married and with children. When I confronted my husband about it, his reply is that it’s just ‘private men talk’ and that it means nothing. Digging into his emails( without his knowledge) further I came across various other similar messages – ‘a poem of a man’ with wordings such as “I pray for a deaf-mute gymnast nymphomaniac with big tits who owns a bar on a golf course….’ and various other ‘jokes’ with lewd images and carricatures of women. When I took it up and confronted him further and I tell him that I find it to be a crude, base and revolting manner of perceiving women and speaking of women – it is made out to be as me overreacting; after all, each of these men have a wife, a mother and some with daughters is what he says in reply. “It means nothing, it’s got nothing to do with me, it’s just men -talk and that he has no desire of being the pope around ” – is what I hear him repeatedly saying when I keep raising this matter with him. For me the fact that he says it means nothing and his whole indifference to it is much more disturbing and alarming. Disgusted, distressed and shocked it ended up with me going into a tailspin trying to make sense of things. It ended up with me reading Sigmund Freud – The Joke and its Relation To The Unconscious( which addressed areas such as ‘tendentious jokes’ and nature of people who resort to such jokes) and Pope John Paul II’s Theology Of The Body. Also browsing the internet grappling with my new discoveries and confusions I came across the Everyday Sexism Project and some of the sentences on the webpage resonated with me: · so-used-to-it-you-almost-just-accept-it sexism · Even if you’ve got used to thinking that it is ‘just the way things are’ · They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you dont even feel able to protest. I realised that in my husband’s world such manner of talk has been just ‘normalised’ – the Brave Boys Club are his childhood friends and this has been their nature of talk for the last 25 years which he admitted to. We have a 6 year old son and I worry about the sort of influences and values he will pick up at his own home. My husband and I have had a couple of counselling sessions on this – and there has been some ‘partial’ agreement on what he will not do anymore and apart from the things that he will still continue with he will do nothing to stop such graphic messages from reaching his phone( though agreeing to delete it once it has been received). As far as I am concerned, as long as my husband continues receiving such messages on his phone as often as it does now and apart from the chipping-away impact and the ‘normalising impact’ it has on the person involving and engaging in such talk, I still run the risk of my son glancing on some inappropriate images when he is fiddling and playing with the phones. What then are the impressions a six year old is picking up, seeing these images on his father’s own phone? I am determined that I will do whatever is in my capacity and ability that my son will grow up learning to look at and perceive, and speak of all women with respect and dignity and for that I know the efforts have to begin with me and tackling things under my own roof to start of with. On one thing my husband is right though and I agree with him wholeheartedly on that– that such ‘men talk’ has got nothing to do with me or other women. It has, I believe,got everything to do with one’s own nature and the collective nature of Brave Boys Club in this case. As long as such is the ‘private- men- talk’ I think they still abet and contribute to a culture and mind-set that objectifies women even though outwardly they project otherwise. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step – for me it seems like the journey of demanding that women be perceived and spoken of respectfully and with dignity begins with my one step right at home – my husband and his band of Brave Boys – come what may.