Womanhood in India...

Yesterday, I read the newspaper in India after a while. I had been following the Indian newspapers from abroad, but I hadnt read the "supplements" that come with them-- "articles of note" that aren't exactly news. Yesterday's supplement contained two supposedly "progressive" articles about gender issues that made me squirm...

One was about a woman from small-town India who had been raped and abused by her boss in New Delhi and about how she had finally decided to seek counselling and taken legal action. So far, okay: I know that abuse of women is rampant in this city. But read closer: after a long silence, putting up with her abuse for years, she decided to so what the newspaper lauded as "courageous" and used to declare her a "strong woman": she asked the man to marry her. He did, and she claims she could live with pride once more, until she found out that he already had a wife and kids in the village. Only then did she seek counselling and legal aid.

The second article was about being gay in india. Written by an anonymous, purportedly gay fashion designer in India, it talks about his decision to marry... his best woman friend. The woman in question isn't lesbian-- she is agreeing to marry her gay best friend (and he claims she knows he is gay) simply to soothe his relatives' anxiety about his wedding. He writes several times about how he would never let his parents find out about his being gay because they worked so hard to provide for him in his childhood; how can he let them down now? Towards the end of his article, he writes that he hopes-- knows-- that he and his friend "will live happily ever after"; that although it isn't a perfect marriage, which marriage is?

Both these stories are, to me, upsetting in themselves. But the real reason I found myself squirming was in the way they were written about: these were the "progressive" stories coming out of the land I have re-chosen as my home. In the first case, the woman's agressor was not condemned for repeatedly beating and raping her but for having a wife at home... and her attempt to hush it up through marriage is lauded as the hallmark of strong womanhood (she didnt stay quiet about her abuse but challenged him to marry her). In the second case, the article is set up as open-minded and liberal... he is honest with his best friend about being gay, and she is marrying him nevertheless. If this is progressive and embracing of gender equality, where do I belong?

Oh, and just to top it off, the same supplement had a quiz on "are you too possessive?" In the response for "yes," it read "if you are a man, you are the provider of the family, and it is therefore understandable that you are possessive and want to know about your wife's private life. just don't take over your woman's life completely." OMG, that statement is messed up on so many levels-- unqualified assumption that he is the provider of the family, that he can therefore be possessive of her but no similar clarfiication for how she 'can' feel, and the "your" woman.

I am sure some of my indian friends reading this blog will not understadn why i am making such a big deal out of this... these are just random snippets from one day's newspaper supplement, and at least the last one was certainly not intended to be "taken seriously"-- it is jsut one of those silly quizzes. BUT that is precisely the point. In just one day's newspaper supplement, I found all of these outrageous assumptions about manhood and womanhood, stated so casually that you know the author believes them to be unarguable. That is what freaked me out.

Wow. I have grown up in this country, and after 5 years of globe-trotting am returning to call this place home. I left as a schoolgirl; I am returning as a young woman. I am not who I was when I left, and re-adapting might prove harder than I had realized. I do think I am up to the challenge, though. I better be.