A very recent example would be an Indian website called Savita Bhabhi where a middle aged Indian housewife is seduced by everyone from the door-to-door salesman to her young neighbours. This works at two levels — the attempt to control a woman’s body in order to subjugate her, thereby allowing the man to subjugate her. By “domesticating” her body, the man and woman are then falling into the established “norms” of society — a notion that the media helps preserve. The woman is yet again portrayed as subservient while the man exercises complete control.

Savita Bhabhi breaks certain norms – not because it’s cartoon porn, but because if you actually bother to read the stuff, the woman seems more likely to be the one who seduces, or controls the situation. It’s not a man sleeping with various women, after seducing them – but a woman who is otherwise hailed as the very epitome of virtue (however pointless and disgusting that is) who chooses to break barriers around her. Nor does she always use sex as currency – she willingly wants her adventures.

If you look at the traditional manner in which virtue-laden archetypes are portrayed, especially in the film industry – their sexual experiences with other men inevitably are about submitting to sexual aggression. But in Savita Bhabhi the idea of “honor” or “guilt” rarely enters the context. And that’s exactly what the whole moral outrage was about. Had the comic been about Savita without the context of “Bhabhi” – the outrage wouldn’t have been as livid. Had she worn a halter top with jeans, instead of a sari, it would have been far less of an issue.

Yes, if you must dissect the underlying gender trade-offs in Savita Bhabhi they could actually turn out to be far more sinister. The idea has its problems. But choosing to fit everything in one theory doesn’t work. At all.

If you must mention Savita Bhabhi, I think the reactions of the moral-brigade to the website and its contents are far more worthy of gender morality analysis than the website itself. And then to understand, in that context, where various streams of media chose to place themselves. It doesn’t help anyone’s cause to treat media as a monolith.

Girls who become part of a new family after marriage must assume their new surname and all the responsibilities that come with it….

That’s a message not just to my sisters, but to all girls who hang on to their parents’ surname. That’s become fashionable these days. But I strongly feel that doing so disrespects the person they have married.

And then this (via Ra)

He has to take the decision. I take permission from him even if I have to go for coffee or dinner with friends. My priority is my family. He will decide if it is right or not right for me.

Never mind how regressive this is. People are entitled to the lifestyle they choose. And if a control-freak type environment is what they like, good for them. But I can’t understand how this system works. Do you call your husband constantly and ask “Can I drink coffee with so-and-so?”. “Is it okay to share a plate of vada-pav with so-and-so”.

Most importantly, I wonder what happens when she has to go potty.

Which reminds me, does Obama ever make a bad speech?

On that note though, here’s my quota of wtf for the week. NY Times tells me that at some point in time Sarah Palin was involved with this.

When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the small town began billing sexual-assault victims for the cost of rape kits and forensic exams… Ms. Palin owes voters an explanation. What was the thinking behind cutting the measly few thousand dollars needed to cover the yearly cost of swabs, specimen containers and medical tests? Whose dumb idea was it to make assault victims and their insurance companies pay instead? Unfortunately, her campaign is shielding the candidate from the press, so Americans may still be waiting for answers on Election Day.

The rape-kit controversy is a troubling matter. The insult to rape victims is obvious. So is the sexism inherent in singling them out to foot the bill for investigating their own case. And the main result of billing rape victims is to protect their attackers by discouraging women from reporting sexual assaults.

One wonders though. If institutions were actually to offer insurance to cover expenses of being raped, the state might take the cause of preventing rape more seriously. Ugh. Double ugh. And a wtf.

In a bid to curb cases of women getting duped or harassed in marriages to NRIs, the government is considering a proposal to make it mandatory for the husband’s passport number to be stamped on the wife’s passport.

The proposal has been made by the ministry of women and child development in the wake of a rise in complaints about women getting abandoned, harassed or cheated by their NRI husbands.

I am puzzled about why we choose to only stamp the women’s passports. Why not have a little ritual in the Regional Passport Office where the man and women together stamp each other’s passports? If you really want to ensure that men are tied to their women – it’s their passports that really need to be stamped no? For equality’s sake – we’ll do the same to women.

Actually, I have a better suggestion. Why don’t we just make it mandatory for women to be tattooed with husband’s name, address, passport number as they leave the country? So much more permanent. In fact, tattoo it across their foreheads.

Wtf.

Women civil servants in India have expressed shock at new appraisal rules which require them to reveal details of their menstrual cycles. Under the new nationwide requirements, female officials also have to say when they last sought maternity leave….

Women officers must write down their “detailed menstrual history and history of LMP [last menstrual period] including date of last confinement [maternity leave],” the form says.

Wtf! What’s next? Similar questions at the immigration counter? I suddenly am divinely glad I didn’t follow all the suggestions for applying to the Indian Civil Service. You know what? Even Orwell couldn’t have come up with this!

I found only one part of three on YouTube, but here’s another snippet of the same documentary at Wholphin DVD. A group of young boys and men shoot verbal missiles. Some of their statements include –

“(if she were my sister) I’d shake her hard and hang her up there by an electric cord.”
” If you were my sister, I’d hang you by the feet with your head swinging in the air.”
” Before God and the Law, women are deficient in religion, deficient in inheritance and deficient in intelligence.”
” Women are a disgrace.”
” Women in general are flawed from start to finish.”
” She has to be accompanied by a man whenever she goes out.”

Interestingly, I just finished this wonderful book “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi. It maybe a memoir in books. But this interaction with books is an intensely personal journey. It makes them question everything – the wearing of veils, to the standards used to judge women and university politics. Set in that turbulent time in Iran during the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s, when the monarchy was overthrown and Iran became the Islamic Republic of Iran. The freedom that women had under the reign of the Shah of Iran was quickly snatched by the antics of Ayotollah Khomeini. Women, as always became the lambs of the revolution. While for many, the veil was a political symbol before the actual fall of the Shah, the government diktats that women MUST wear the veil took the choice out of their hands.

The other amazing read is Marjane Satrapi‘s autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis : The Story of a Childhood. Persepolis is a reflection on changing times through the eyes of a young girl. While it is autobiographical in nature, it is such an incredible insight into the minds of those whose childhoods were grabbed during those years. I just found eight pages of the cartoons online at the Iranian.com which has this curious tagline “Nothing is Sacred” – Pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

As Azar Nafisi in the course of the book Reading Lolita In Tehran mentions time and again – the adults who lived through the revolution could be nostalgic and remember better times. They knew what they had lost. But the children, those who grew up without the memory of the days of freedom, had no idea what they had lost to the revolution. They didn’t know freedom. They could only idealize it and think of it as a romantic figment of imagination. There’s such deep and dark sarcasm in Persepolis that it just yanks your gut out in the open. Sample this cartoon for instance. That keeping a few strands of hair would stand for defying an entire regime seems so out of place. But women’s bodies, when they begin to belong to “the other” instead of “the self”, the loudest statements appear to made in these seemingly quiet and trivial ways.

Perhaps the oldest civilizations in the world suffer from too much memory. So everything is neatly divided into piles of new and old. The newer ones, they are free to construct what they want. There is nothing to demolish.

The blurb says

This film is a journey through emerging India,” the fastest growing free market democracy in the world”. It celebrates the relentless spirit of the people of India, who through their karma give it a place amongst the leading economic nations of the world.
Conceived and produced by Bharatbala Productions (BBP) for India Band Equity Foundation (IBEF)

I think it’s rather interesting that the “pitch” productions have finally gone a bit beyond advertising culture and heritage (despite the overarching “Hindu” touch). This one focuses entirely on infrastructure development and industry. Though, I couldn’t help but remember our classes on semiotics, where this would have been ripped apart. I suppose it’s the representation of what’s actually true in India – not enough women in the organized sector, and the women that are – they are in the supposedly “softer” professions. Though I loved this one particular shot of women in hard hats next to (farm?) machinery.