The insecurities of men

‘Here take some hand cream’ I said to a male friend who sat next to me working. His hands were chapped badly and they looked painful. He looked at me with great disdain and said ‘I can’t use that I am not a woman’. To be honest I did expect that reaction. A lot of heterosexual cisgender men have a deep fear of loosing their masculinity. This is expressed in pathology, anger, violence and policing. Anger and violence is directed towards people who don’t conform to their masculine ideals, women, LGBT people, disabled people and even other men. Sometimes this fear leads to pathology, take for example Dhat Syndrome a condition that is characterised by a male patient feeling physical symptoms due to loss of semen.

Masculinity is not an unchanging state it is time and culture bound. What constitutes masculinity has undergone significant shifts in my lifetime and will keep changing. It is not the traits that matter it, some of them are decided upon in an arbitrary manner sometimes they are carefully chosen. Take for example the wearing of lace is now taboo for men, look at paintings from three centuries ago men wore lace. Lace is neither male or female but we have come attribute its use on clothing as exclusively female. Men who give into feminine styles of dressing are taunted for their choices, thought of as gay or even worse becoming women. I was chatting to a transgender friend about this today of how men think putting on anything belonging to female will make them female. As someone who is in the process of transitioning she knows there is more to gender than putting on clothing. Julia Serano argues there is a deep psychic gender identity within us the outward transition only confirming what was known to an individual all along. When cisgender men react with disgust and fear of putting on female clothes and makeup they reduce a transgender persons identity to an issue of fashion. That disgust is also degrading to cisgender women who are taught they are not worthy of respect. To quote Madonna

Girls can wear jeans

And cut their hair short

Wear shirts and boots

'Cause it's OK to be a boy

But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading

‘Cause you think that being a girl is degrading’- What It Feels Like For A Girl

Male insecurity is a massive problem as it transcends into patriarchal hegemony. Gender and sexuality are constructed to pander around these insecurities. Patriarchal powers reside in each one of us irrespective of gender and sexuality. Patriarchy is enacted in how we react to gender transgressions, through conformity. A particular quote by Gloria Gloria E. Anzaldúa springs to mind. 

Culture forms out beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through the culture. Culture is made by those in power- man. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them. How many times have I heard mothers and mothers-in-law tell their sons to beat their wives for not obeying them, for being hocicomas (big mouths), for being callajeras (going to visit and gossip with neighbours, for expecting their husbands to help with the rearing of children and the housework, for wanting to be something other than housewives?   

Anzaldúa’s example is familiar to all, sums up how power and fear collude and feed off each other.  Notice how she explains how patriarchy operates through both men and women. It is easy to see power operating in an obvious example such as that however as Foucault would argue power is most dangerous when it is not operated by a single individual but by the errant subjects on themselves. Women who want to look thin for their men are part of that politic whereby the power is wielded by an invisible authority figure. So while patriarchy is not all men it is still powerful enough to police our behaviour. It is the little voice that tells us how to think and how to behave.

Think of all the times you have seen examples you have encountered of manliness chances are it is based on insecurity, a false bravado and nationalism. Look at its victims it they are women, LGBT people, disabled people and anyone else who does conform.  

The Polical Technology Free Speech has become.

I saw this tweet on my wall and it got me thinking about recent events and how free speech has indeed become a technology. It is LGBT history month and I have heard several talks on how we are now in a better place than we were. Invariably when someone complains they are told at least we are not the 3^rd world they still criminalise homosexuality there. I admit the 3^rd world isn’t perfect but neither is the first world. This comparison does have an element of truth in it however it is dismissive tactic. It is the same tactic parents use to get their children to eat ‘don’t you know there are children in Africa who have no food?’ The 3^rd world is used as the dumping ground of the world’s problems.

What comes out in a lot of talks about LGBT history in the UK is how race can be used to valourise ones achievements. Race and sexuality seem to be two identities that are used to drive home a message of superiority. In India I have heard about how superior we are as a heterosexual nation protecting ourselves from the western invention of homosexuality. In the west I have met white LGBT people who have insisted I am homophobic simply by existing in brown skin. I have heard lots of nasty arguments used by both groups to prove their superiority. I have witnessed divisions amongst the LGBT community which is engaged in the politics of respectability. This politic is a convenient way of seeking favour from a more powerful majority by discarding perceived embarrassments within the community. Being a persecuted minority does not exclude the possibility or being a persecutor of another community.

An example that struck me recently was the way race and sexuality collided in the film Pricilla Queen of the Desert. It is a small scene but a vital one. The film is wonderful in the way it portrays the dangers of being transgender in Australia yet when it comes to portraying race the film fails. A Filipino woman in the film is shown in a negative sexualised manner. While gaining audience sympathy for one group the film demonises another. Artistic licence allows one to make a film as one wants however it is interesting how that was the choice the writers made. LGBT rights have come to signify a benchmark of liberal progressive society, societies that do not agree with this are automatically labelled backward. Non-conformists in the LGBT community are labelled as troublemakers. Recently a white gay man was discussing the issue of sexuality with me and said ‘transgender people must have some disorder when you think about it’. While his words are deeply offensive think about his privilege he is white, male and gay he is the cream of LGBT society. It was amusing when I pointed out how only a few decades ago he would have been locked away and chemically castrated on those same grounds.

The freedom to call other people names from one position of marginalisation does not make it freedom at all. To call transgender people shouty troublemakers, or to use derogatory language around race is a means of controlling people. It is then only a political technology and not a transformative one. 

Lent is not a time for self-gratification

“We fast and mourn, not for the Cross or for Christ’s sufferings, but because of our own sins.”

St. John Chrysostom

Lent is  upon us, I will soon hear people talk about giving up chocolate for  forty days. I personally think this misses the point of the season. Lent has almost become synonymous with giving up confectionary as if were a time of correcting one’s diet. I remember reading once how Gerald Manley Hopkins a Jesuit priest gave up looking at the sky during Lent. His love for nature was so great that its loss must have hit him hard. He gave up poetry too which is what he is best known for. 

This may sound harsh but it is meant to be. Lent is a time of penance which is reflected in the spiritual as well as the physical, giving up something dear to us is meant to make us dwell on the temporal aspects of life and also remind us how easily our likes can become a distraction. There is a greater virtue in giving up something dear for Lent, in a world where a lot of us live a life of plenty denying oneself of luxuries opens our minds to the plight of those who live through deprivation on a daily basis. Chocolate is not a necessity it is a luxury which if denied does not cause any real sense of deprivation. A year ago a friend said to me I am fasting during Lent to help loose weight I put on during Christmas. I personally think she has lost the meaning of why we fast. Loosing weight while commendable is a self serving activity it does nothing beneficial for those around us. Fasting should make us aware of what hunger feels like and how money saved on food could be used for a good cause. A Jewish friend once gave me the best explanation for why fasting and especially during Lent was a blessing. He noted how as the days get longer our fasts are broken much later each day, building up to  a stricter regime and also how this suffering brought us closer to our fellow human beings. That our souls and bodies are connected is of deep significance. This connection is the driving force in religious practise and also within secular activism. 

He has a point deprivation of any kind makes us feel vulnerable, which if channelled properly can be utilised to understand the world around us. My mother insists on giving up meat for Lent she reasons it helps people think of how animals are brutally murdered for our food. I am a vegetarian now but 

Our sacrifice should help us think deeper about the world around us. Some of us live in a world of plenty, our basic needs have been met. Not only that we live without being truly deprived, this has made us oblivious to the daily struggles of the world. Food in some parts of the world is so freely available throughout the year and so affordable for some that we forget how it comes to our tables. Yet a large majority of this world lives in poverty, their basic needs not met. Fasting can give us an insight into what daily hunger feels like. Forty  days of penance will not change everything but a little good that is does should not be scoffed at. 

The politic of angry black women, mislabelling our response to racism

Why do you black women shout so much? I am asked frequently. Loud and sassy that is what what we are called. My voice is not heard when I am quiet when I raise my tone of voice I become a shouty black woman. I am very aware of the discrepancies with which my white counterparts are treated. If it was only my voice that was the problem, my identity is viewed with suspicion therefore what I say becomes   difficult. It seems I am prejudged. I ask all women of colour this have you noticed how you could say something that isn't related to race and yet that is what they hear all the time. Even after you have clarified what you have said was not what they heard. 

Case in point

White man- So is this the first time you have spoken the English language?

Me- No, it is one of my two mother tongues besides English is a commonly used language in India.

White man- ah I see for someone who has only started speaking this language in the last few months that you have been here you can speak it very well. 

Me- That is not what I said English is my mother tongue..........

It was pointless saying anything more I would have been called rude and aggressive if I had clarified my point. Audre Lorde speaks about this phenomena in her book Sister outsider. Black women’s femininity is measured by white women’s standards and when we fail that comparison we occupy the space of the marginalised feminine. Our voices and tone of voice makes us aggressive the content is simply dismissed. At best we embody a pathology and our femininity is used as a means of cautioning other women against our mannerisms.

A white woman asked me where I was going one afternoon so I mentioned I was attending a black feminist event. Her next question for me was what are you doing after your angry black feminist meeting? I asked her why she added anger to the term black feminist, to which she replied well you all are angry about racism all the time…….. perhaps because we keep encountering racists all the time. Perhaps our anger is a response to anger. Nobody asks the aggressor why they react with such malice why are white, heterosexual, cisgender able bodies men so angry and insecure? Why is my retaliation labelled as anger and not his? Occupying a dominant position has come to mean we pathologise the minority, of not being aware of ones own aggressions. 

If our mannerism is not calm and polite it is because the aggressions we face are not polite. Does saying something rude in a soft voice make it okay? White women are trapped in this position of occupying one space of privilege – whiteness their conformity to this position involves their internalisation of a stereotype. Being polite, gentle, soft-spoken gives them an entry into a white male environment. In order to maintain this power they must reject alternative forms of femininity. Black, queer, transgender, butch, disabled women come to occupy the space of the excluded other. These struggles within marginalised groups is not uncommon. To gain affirmation from the norm members of a group are often willing to collude with their oppressors to gain acceptance. It is understandable but it is not acceptable. 

Transgender women of colour and LGBT rights

Riots in Cromptons Cafe - how the west was won. 

It is LGBT history month and often the history presented to us fails to acknowledge the contributions of the less respectable members of the LGBT community - Transgender people. Coupled with racism the movement today is largely seen as a hallmark of white progressive, liberal society. People of colour are largely forgotten or labelled as homophobic. Easy essentialisms has meant some histories have been forgotten or deliberately ignored. This documentary is about the precursor to the Stonewall riots, started by transgender women of colour it presents an history that has been deliberately ignored. 

LGBT History Month

This is my little tribute to LGBT people this month

Coloured homosexuals have more knowledge of other cultures; have always been at the forefront (although sometimes in the closet) of all liberation struggles in this country.; have suffered more injustices and have survived them despite all odds. Page 107 Anzaldúa- Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Mushroom Biryani

I promised my flatmate I would give his Dutch pot used in several recipes credit. The pot was present from his grandmother who gave it to him when he started university, he graduates in a few months as a medical doctor I wish him all the best. This is a big thank you to his grandmother and him for the thoughtful gift and for the lovely meals it has cooked all these years.

This recipe is my token of gratitude to him

Ingredients

Mushrooms - I used button mushrooms.

Potato- sliced in a way you like

Onions- I love lots of onions in this dish so feel to add more if you like. 

Rice- Basmati rice would be the best rice for this recipe.

low fat yogurt 

Oil and 

Butter 

Spices- 

Salt 

Pepper 

Chili powder

Cumin powder

Cinnamon powder or stick

Nutmeg grated

Bay leaf powder or stick

Slice onions lengthways, follow the lines on the skin of the onion. Heat oil in a deep dish let it turn nice and hot throw in the onions and fry them till golden brown. Throw in the potatoes cook this for 2 minutes or so add water if they start sticking to the pan. 

Add sliced mushrooms throw in the spices add yogurt mix well. Let this simmer for 5 minutes add water only if you need it. 

Soak and wash the rice for 30 minutes drain and add to the dish pour in a little hot water. Don't mix the rice into the vegetables but let it sit on top add knobs of butter and cover the dish. I have used salted butter but if you have ghee (clarified butter) go ahead and use that. I have tired using a half butter half olive oil mix too and it has turned out nice. This rice needs some kind of fat to make it nice and fluffy.

Let this cook on the lowest setting for 15 minutes. Serve hot with yogurt and fried onions. 

This is what it looks like when cooked. The veggies settle at the bottom with the rice on top. bits of the rice mix with the stew some of it stays on top. 

PS: Add chopped mint to the yogurt dip for nicer accompaniment.