Friday, December 12, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
The Invention of Heterosexuality
In the twentieth century, creatures called heterosexuals emerged from the dark shadows of the nineteenth-century medical world to become common types acknowledged in the bright light of the modern day.
Heterosexuality began this century defensively, as the publicly unsanctioned private practice of the respectable middle class, and as the publicly put-clown pleasure-affirming practice of urban working-class youths, southern blacks, and Greenwich Village bohemians. But by the end of the 1920s, heterosexuality had triumphed as dominant, sanctified culture.’ In the first quarter of the twentieth century the heterosexual came out, a public, self-affirming debut the homosexual would duplicate near the century’s end.
The discourse on heterosexuality had a protracted coming out, not completed in American popular culture until the 1920s. Only slowly was heterosexuality established as a stable sign of normal sex. The association of heterosexuality with perversion continued as well into the twentieth century. . . .
In the first years of the twentieth century heterosexual and homosexual were still obscure medical terms, not yet standard English. In the first 1901 edition of the “H” volume of the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, heterosexual and homosexual had not yet made it.
Neither had heterosexuality yet attained the status of normal. In 1901, Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, published in Philadelphia, continued to define “Heterosexuality” as “Abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.”" Dorland’s heterosexuality, a new “appetite,” was clearly identified with an “opposite sex” hunger. But that craving was still aberrant. Dorland’s calling heterosexuality “abnormal or perverted” is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary’s first Supplement (1933), a “misapplied” definition. But contrary to the OED, Dorland’s is a perfectly legitimate understanding of heterosexuality according to a procreative norm.
The twentieth century witnessed the decreasing legitimacy of that procreative imperative, and the increasing public acceptance of a new hetero pleasure principle. Gradually, heterosexuality came to refer to a normal other-sex sensuality free of any essential tie to procreation. But only in the mid- 1960s would heteroeroticism be distinguished completely from reproduction, and male-female pleasure sex justified for itself. …
Between 1877 and 1920 Americans were embarked on The Search for Order, documented in historian Robert H. Wiebe’s book of that title. Though Wiebe doesn’t mention it, this hunt for regularity gave rise in the arena of sex to the new standard model heterosexuality. This paralleled early-twentieth-century moves to standardize railroad track widths, time zones, business and manufacturing procedures (discussed by Wiebe), as well as to test and regularize intelligence and femininity and masculinity….
In 1923, “heterosexuality” made its debut in Merriam Webster’s authoritative New International Dictionary. “Homosexuality” had, surprisingly, made its debut fourteen years earlier, in 1909, defined as a medical term meaning “morbid sexual passion for one of the same sex.” The advertising of a diseased homosexuality preceded the publicizing of a sick heterosexuality. For in 1923 Webster’s defined “heterosexuality” as a “Med.” term meaning “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” Only in 1934 does “heterosexuality” first appear in Webster’s hefty Second Edition Unabridged defined in what is still the dominant modern mode. There, heterosexuality is finally a “manifestation of sexual passion for one of the opposite sex; normal sexuality.” Heterosexuality had finally attained the status of norm.
In the same 1934 Webster’s”homosexuality” had changed as well. It’s simply “eroticism for one of the same sex.” Both terms’ medical origins are no longer cited. Heterosexuality and homosexuality had settled into standard American.
In 1924, in The New York Times, heterosexuality first became a love that dared to speak its name. On September 7 of that year the word “hetero-sexual” made its first known appearance in The New York Times Book Review significantly, in a comment on Sigmund Freud. There, in a long, turgid review of Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego one Mary Keyt Isham spoke of “repressed hetero-sexuality” and “hetero-sexual love”. . . .
By December 1940, when the risque musical “Pal Joey” opened on Broadway, a tune titled “Zip” satirized the striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, by way of a character who, unzipping, sang of her dislike for a deep-voiced woman or high-pitched man and proclaimed her heterosexuality. That lyric registered the emergence in popular culture of a heterosexual identity.
By 1941, the glossary of a book about “sex variants” said that “straight” is being employed by homosexuals as meaning not homosexual. To go straight is to cease homosexual practices and to indulge–usually to reindulge–in heterosexuality.
The “not homosexual,” a new creature, defined by what he or she isn’t, had emerged among the cast of erotic characters on the twentieth-century stage. Here, “straight” is a condition toward which one may venture or not, depending on one’s “practices” (feeling is not the issue). Now, the sex variants are doing the defining–categorizing is a game that two preferences can play.
The “cult of domesticity” following World War II–the re-association of women with the home, motherhood, and child care, men with fatherhood and wage-work outside the home–was an era in which the predominance of the hetero norm went almost unchallenged. In the late 1940s and the 1950s, conservative mental-health professionals reasserted the old link between heterosexuality and procreation. In opposition, sex-liberals strove to expand the heterosexual ideal to include within the boundaries of the normal a wider-than-ever range of gender ideals and nonprocreative, premarital, and extramarital behavior. But that sex-liberal reform actually helped to secure the dominance of the heterosexual idea, as we shall see when we get to Kinsey. . . .
This sex scientist [Kinsey] popularized the idea of a “continuum” of activity and feeling between hetero and homo poles:
Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum.
His recasting of the hetero/homo polarity did suggest that there are degrees of heterosexual and homosexual behavior and emotion. But that famous continuum also emphatically reaffirmed the idea of a sexuality divided between the hetero and homo.
Kinsey’s “heterosexual-homosexual rating scale,” from zero to six, sounded precise, quantitative, and scientific, fixing the het/homo binary in the public mind with new certainty. His science-dressed, influential sex-liberalism thus upheld the hetero/homo division, giving it new life and legitimacy.
Kinsey also explicitly contested the idea of an absolute either/or antithesis between hetero and homo persons. Stressing the variations between exclusive heterosexual and exclusive homosexual behavior and feeling, he denied that human beings “represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual.” The world’s population, he ordered, “is not to be divided into sheep and goats.” (That revealing Biblical metaphor positions heterosexuals as sheep, coupled with conformity, and homosexuals as goats, linked with licentiousness).
The hetero/homo division of persons is not nature’s doing, Kinsey stresses, but society’s. As sex-liberal reformer, he challenged the social and historical division of people into heterosexuals and homosexuals because he saw this person-labeling used to denigrate homosexuals. Motivated by a reformist impulse, he rejected the social reality and profound subjective force of a historically constructed tradition which, since the early twentieth century in the U.S., had cut the sexual population in two–and helped to establish the social and personal reality of a heterosexual and homosexual identity. . . .
Between the 1890s and the 1960s the terms heterosexual and homosexual moved into American popular culture, constructing in time a sexual solid citizen and a perverted unstable alien, a sensual insider and a lascivious outlaw, a hetero center and a homo margin, a hetero majority and a homo minority. The new, strict boundaries made the new gendered, erotic world less polymorphous. The term heterosexual manufactured a new sex-differentiated ideal of the erotically correct, a norm that worked to affirm the superiority of men over women and heterosexuals over homosexuals. Feminists questioned those gender and pleasure hierarchies.
How the concept of Sexual Orientation came about I
Sex and the Gender Revolution, Volume One: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London, by Randolph Trumbach. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998. [xiv], 509 pp. $35US
This long-awaited work by Randolph Trumbach is a veritable tour-de-force of historical reconstruction and analysis . The final judgement on this massive project cannot be pronounced until Volume 2 has appeared, but the riches contained herein are plenty to be going on with, and indeed, require some time for adequate digestion.
Trumbach posits - and convincingly substantiates - significant changes in sexual mores during the eighteenth century. His focus is on London, the obvious location for new trends to manifest, for which copious archival resources survive enabling the reconstruction of sexual narratives for a range of social groups as well as both genders. He provides a dense account of the areas indicative of changing sexual mores: libertinism and prostitution; the vast increase in venereal diseases (a small quibble is Trumbach's use of the term 'cure': the most obvious symptoms of both syphilis and gonorrhoea disappear even without treatment); rising illegitimacy; the incidence of rape; adultery, violence and desertion within marriage.
Trumbach argues that changes in male sexual behaviour were due to the rise of a perceived 'sodomite identity' in urban locales during the early eighteenth century. Previously a degree of bisexuality, involving adult males having sexual relations with adolescent boys, had been conceptualized as the characteristic of the hypersexual libertine and conveyed no imputation against the manliness and full masculine identity of the male in question. For the younger partner, having engaged in such relations at a particular stage in the life-cycle was not carried over into a stigmatised adult identity. However, the early eighteenth century saw the rise of a distinctive 'molly' subculture of men who defined themselves by their sexual interaction with other adult males like themselves and were perceived as a third, transgressive, gender. The imputation of being a sodomite came to be regarded as a deleterious slur upon manly reputation, so that mere extortionary threats to make this accusation could be successful even without any apparent objective grounds for concern by the man accused.
As a result, Trumbach claims, the idea of exclusive sexual interest in women as the desideratum of normal masculinity, i.e., heterosexuality as a distinct identity, arose. From around 1730 accusations of heterosexual whoremongery were no longer considered defamatory, but 'the fear of being exposed as a sodomite left men paralyzed' (p. 55). He connects the increasing demand that men should find sexual pleasure only with the female and not the male body with the abrupt rise of Onania-mania in the early eighteenth century - even a man=s own body was not to form a source of pleasure to him. Trumbach claims that boys= ideas and first experiences of sexuality were constructed in a predominantly homosocial male world: only later did they interact with females, with fears, fantasies and received myths already in place, providing the basis for profound anxieties.
Female sexual reputation continued to be judged along the axis of chaste maid or wife versus whore (a term of opprobrium not confined to professional prostitutes) for a great deal longer. Women's sexual lives were still structured by family institutions and forms - varying considerably according to social class - in ways that men's were ceasing to be. Sexual relations between women were not prosecuted, and it was 'always much more possible to be unaware that sexual relations between women existed' (p. 8).
Much of the ambivalent response of law, legislature, public opinion and voluntary bodies to brothels, soaring venereal disease rates, rising illegitimacy, rape and sexual assaults on women, can, Trumbach alleges, be explained by the belief that it was socially essential to provide men with heterosexual outlets (these were Bad Things, but the alternative was worse). It is not entirely clear whether this was only for fear of their resorting to 'unnatural' expedients, or whether there were concurrent changing perceptions of the nature of sexual desire, at least in the male, with this being envisaged as an imperative, potentially dangerously uncontrollable force of nature.
Can the anxieties of eighteenth century masculinity be attributed to other factors? Could it be that the male peer group, as opposed to hierarchical and age-structured relationships within a familial context, was playing a more important role in the lives of men (we may note the contemporary rise of Freemasonry and other institutionalized forms of male bonding), and new ways of >proving manhood= were having to be evolved (though fears relating to sodomy would doubtless fit in here anyway)? While much of the relentless, even obsessive, pursuit of heterosexual gratification reckless of any consequences either to the women involved or the dangers to themselves of venereal disease, may have been driven by intrapsychic fears about sexual identity, the male peer group doubtless played a part in establishing norms, and perhaps also generating an atmosphere of competition and rivalry over conquests. The emphasis seems to have been on doing it, almost on 'counting coup', except - perhaps - in the more élite social circles in which an ideology of companionate marriage and emotional intimacy between husband and wife was emerging (though Trumbach reveals how much this was aspiration rather than actuality). Quantity rather than quality appears to have been the keynote. I was somewhat surprised to find no discussion of any trade in impotence remedies, given the counter-productive performance pressures involved in conceiving the proof of normal masculinity as getting it up and into a woman as often as possible. Trumbach suggests that at least for some men the prevalent violence of sexual relations - in honest courtship as well as rape and sexual harassment - was a (perhaps necessary) erotic stimulus.
Whether or not the reader concurs with Trumbach's theory of the motor driving the changes he describes, there is no doubt that the rich feast of empirical evidence based on extensive research in, and sensitive interpretation of, a wide range of archival materials which he sets before us will be of interest to historians in many fields. There is much here that is thought-provoking: tantalising glimpses of a world we have lost - for which it is hard to feel much nostalgia.
Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London Lesley A. Hall
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
An article giving 'intellectual' validation to mindless heterosexualisation
David S. Cohen
Drexel University College of Law
Indiana Law Journal, Forthcoming
Drexel College of Law Research Paper No. 2008-A-02
Abstract:
In late 2006, the Department of Education changed the Title IX regulations to broaden the permissibility of single-sex education in primary and secondary schools. The changes took place in the context of a growing concern over the performance and well-being of boys in American schools. This article describes, dissects, and critically analyzes the narrative about boys, masculinity, and single-sex education that surrounded these changes.
The public narrative about the need for single-sex education focused, in substantial part, on what I call the essentialist myth of masculinity. This article catalogs the important components of this myth: heteronormativity, aggression, activity, sports-obsession, competitiveness, stoicism, and not being girls. The article then shows, using education and gender theory, that this conception of masculinity is harmful to both girls and boys. Instead of pushing this form of masculinity, the law and schools should make room for multiple and varied masculinities for boys (and girls).
The article argues that the Title IX regulatory change that allows for the expansion of single-sex schooling can actually work to further empower and entrench the essentialist myth of masculinity, thus violating its own prohibition on sex stereotyping. By adopting strong interpretations of already-existing jurisprudence about gender stereotyping from both constitutional law and Title IX, the article shows how de-essentializing masculinity is possible and preferable in the law. The article concludes that schools that implement single-sex education must do so for reasons other than promoting an essentialized notion of masculinity and that the law must be vigilant in ensuring that schools' implementation not further reify dominant conceptions of what it means to be a boy.
Keywords: single-sex education, Title IX, masculinity, gender, essentialism, sex discrimination, Equal Protection
Accepted Paper Series
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Cheerleaders Controversy: 36-Twenty20-36
Barkha Dutt
May 02, 2008 Appeared in HT, New Delhi, 3rd May, 2008
In between lapping up the sixers and drooling over Shah rukh Khan stomping about in the stands, what do you feel when you see the bevy of barely clad, big-breasted blondes wiggling their bottoms at a billion people? As they swirl and twirl their little red skirts and flash their wide, gummy smiles — draping their white skin around some two-bit toy boy from Bombay — do they ‘cheer’ you up or make you mildly sick?One of these evenings, as our imported cheer-givers rose in a collective whoop of manufactured joy, my 85-year-old uncle — otherwise staunchly liberal — frowned in faint disapproval. “What are these cheerleaders,” he asked scornfully, “do they think we live in an Archie comic?”
I thought that was a pretty astute reading of why some of us (I, for one) may find the spectacle of choreographed sexuality crass and, frankly, trashy. Somehow it evokes images of fat men and giggly girls in the baseball fields of middle America. It makes you wonder: when you have already got the uniquely Indian mix of cinema and cricket, why on earth would you need to infuse this heady cocktail with some strange, foreign ingredient? Before you call me xenophobic, hang on a minute. This isn’t a moral plea for the so-called preservation of ‘Indian culture’. We all know how much hypocrisy underlines that awful and overused phrase. But yes, there is something about cricket’s new calendar girls that makes me wonder why a self-confident nation needs play to copycat to some air-headed ritual from the American heartland.
But even if I think that the cheerleaders are (there’s no polite way to say this) essentially white trash, I find the attempt by sundry politicians to ban them — or dress them up in clothes that cover their knees — farcical and indefensible.
Not for the first time, the furious debate over IPL’s cheerleaders is a conundrum for all liberal thinkers. We do not want to endorse the Indian politician’s propensity to ban anything that invokes public debate. In principle, we won’t allow the government to mediate our morality.
We know it’s ludicrous that ‘vulgarity’ was first debated in a city whose major industry is defined by young women who pout, strip, thrust and twist for hungry, lingering cameras, as their over-ambitious mothers befriend lecherous film producers. Bipasha Basu’s ‘Billo Rani’ is more aggressively sexual than the faceless bimbettes from America; Kareena Kapoor's sultry, swinging walk in the recent promos of Tashan has her wearing as short a skirt as the women with the wiggling bottoms; and ‘item number’ has now become an acceptable, even necessary, pass grade for any woman who wants to be measured on the oomph scale in Bollywood. Who we are to moan and groan about so-called vulgarity? Have we looked at ourselves recently?
So, other than the fact that the cheerleaders are to Indian item girls what Kentucky Fried Chicken may be to Haldirams (we like our own masala better than some American, fast-food chain), we can hardly protest the pom-pom girls on grounds of ‘obscenity’. If we find their boogie-woogies offensive, by definition, we have to be as appalled by our homespun sexual athletes and their strutting performances. We can’t be a country that holds up Rakhi Sawant as an icon of womanhood (she has endorsements of approval from no less than Shobhaa De and Karan Johar) for fearlessly parading her sexuality as a means of social mobility, and then whine about some inconsequential troupe of babes called the Washington Redskins. If steamy, sexy, sultry have become perfectly acceptable adjectives, even compliments in modern Indian syntax, how can we get so worked up over a bunch of girls in short red skirts?
Indian sexuality — in films, advertisements, magazines, public discourse — is today as unapologetically raunchy as anywhere else in the world. And maybe that’s what’s at the heart of the cheerleaders debate — and it’s a point that we have all entirely missed. Is manufactured sexuality really a mark of liberation for women? Or have we just internalised all the worst clichés of post- feminist clap-trap in the name of emancipation?
In our attempt to break Indian women free from the conventional orthodoxy of right-wing moralists, have we just replaced one kind of stereotype with another? and with one that is as oppressive and unforgiving?
While our sense of selves cannot be defined by a culture that seeks to imprison female sexuality, must our sense of modernity be borrowed from a country that still debates whether women should have the right to abortion?
In her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, American writer Ariel Levy first chronicled what she described as “women and the rise of raunch culture”. Here’s what her book describes as an average evening of American television. “I would turn on the television and find strippers in g-strings explaining how best to lap-dance a man to orgasm; I would flip the channel and see babes in tight tiny uniforms bouncing up and down on trampolines. Britney Spears was becoming increasingly popular and increasingly unclothed, and her undulating body became so familiar to me, I felt like we used to go out”.
Is Rakhi Sawant not India’s version of Britney Spears? Could this soon be how an evening of Indian television will look like? And will we then say: you’ve come a long way, baby.
Or will we just have turned full circle — to end up exactly where we started?
Saturday, September 09, 2006
People's comments on the Sabarimala Controversy
View Comments on SABARIMALA INCIDENT
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every one should be punished
Posted by:prabu, chennai
WHY SUCH A BIG HUE & CRY??
I do not understand why this is made into a big issue. She claims she has entered the shrine and touched the idol. So what? I dont think it is a big sin. After all it is the Lord she had touched. Is the Lord only for men? C'mon it's time we realize women are more pure than men . I am sure all this women should not enter is man made. The Lord is above all this and would never differentiate.
Posted by:sameer, chennai
SHE SHOULD BE PUNISHED
she was make temple as bad
Posted by:s.kadeswaran,
TRUTH
As far as i have known young ladies would not be allowed in sabari mala. Secondly i dont think any lay man can touch the god so easily at the main shrine. As you have to enter into the sanctum to do the same. Even if there was a large crowd i dont think it would be that easy. If at all she had breached then wat ever poojas to be performed for the sanctum purification had to be borne by her. We should make sure that certain things dont happen again. We as people should realize not to bring politics in gods place. People go there to temple to have some peace of mind. So we should not involve god in all sorts of politics. The crowd at sabarimala is huge during nov to jan. So the Devaswom board has to plan its activity so that all the devotees are able to have good darshan.
Posted by:Srikrishnan, Chennai
INSULTING GOD AND WOMANNHOOD
Ms Jayamala need not be punished for WORSHIPPING GOD. The accusers have ignored the basis of Hindu philosophy. Hinduism is the only religion that worships God in WOMAN form. Motherhood, womanhood are revered so much by Hinduism than any other religion. Such being the case, if they claim the idol would lose sanctity if a ’female’ touches, then it is an INSULT to God first and an INSULT to WOMOANHOOD next. God never discriminates mankind on sex, caste, creed, or power. But regards souls on purity, love and readiness to shun sins. Even if it is a sin Laws, Courts, Governments and Men have not authority to punish anybody for sins. Only God is the authority to punish for sins. If one says Ms Jayamala should not have entered as she is a sinner, then NOBODY would be eligible to go to any temple. It is absurd to say that she went inside without the knowledge and permission of the temple authorities.
Posted by:AXN Prabhu, Chennai
UNBELIAVBLE
According to my point of view,she is telling for this her popularity.no one believe it.iyyappa and sabarimala is different from other god and temples.bcoz we still see the heriditary of iyyappa family following their processions even today.no women can go inside and touch the idol.she will get an judgement from iyyappa
Posted by:Manikandan, Chennai
EVERYBODY IS EQUAL BEFORE GOD
There is nothing wrong in Jayamala visiting Sabarimala and worshiping Lord Ayyappa. Other controversies of whether she touched the idol or not is immaterial. The Devosom and the Priwst should wake up to the fast changing values and treat women equally.
Posted by:vc barathi, Chennai
AYPPAN
It is a silly and superstious matter.
Posted by:Natarajan, Chennai
ABSURD CLAIM
I wish to inform that the claim made by the actress is absurd as she could not have entered the shrine.
Posted by:V.Kannan, Chennai
COMMENTS
she should be sentenced for the unforgettable time in her whole life. first she knows very well ladies not allowd in the temple. then why travelled to sabarimala. for what. either she is lying so that she can be popular to contest election or.
Posted by:kkknum, naaa
UNWANTED ATTENTION
It is not possible for someone to get inside.Its is just an idea by the actress to be on the news headlines and create popularity for herself
Posted by:sandhya, Chennai
JAYAMALA SHOULD NOT BE PUNISHED
Let's keep our conscience straight and clean, to begin with! Jayamala's a lady and does that make her a sinner to believe that there's nothing wrong in wanting to visit the revered temple and worship the serene statue of the Lord? C'mon, give us a break and get a grip of the realities in life! The temple authorities must "wake up" and let the female worshippers visit the temple too.
Posted by:thamizh arasan,
SABARIMALA INCIDENT
The reality is no one can touch lord Ayyappan Statue in Sabarimala, except the priests. the actress just want to gain publicity by creating such an illusion. If at all she had touched, then she should be punished sevearly.
Posted by:iutqw, Not Given
Should women be barred from Sabarimala?
I am writing this not just to add fuel to the controversy now prevailing. Let wisdom overtake emotions among devotees at this time.
Sabarimala is the only temple in
It is most unfortunate that Kannada cinema actress Jayamala's reported revelation that she had touched the idol of Lord Ayyappa at the Sabarimala temple when she was 27, has sparked a controversy all over
This Sabarimala temple is situated atop a hill in Kerala and houses a bachelor God called Ayyappa. It is purported that around January 14, every year, a celestial fire - a jyothi with healing powers - glows in the sky near the Sabarimala shrine. A controversy exists about this also.
What is the relationship between religion and women's rights? Should we care about the treatment of women by religions of the world? Should we be bothered when we see, even in the 21st century, a woman being prohibited from doing certain things, like becoming ordained or entering a temple, just because she is a woman?
But why does the temple board tell her so? It gives a smorgasbord of reasons: The 8 km trek to the temple along dense woods is arduous for women; Ayyappa is a bachelor God and his bachelorhood will be broken if he sees a woman; the 41-day penance for the pilgrimage, where one must live as abstemiously as a saint, cannot be undertaken by women - they are too weak for that; men cohorts will be enticed to think bad thoughts if women joined them in their trek; letting women into the temple will disrupt law and order; women's menstrual blood will attract animals in the wild and jeopardise fellow travellers; menstruation is a no-no for God.
And so the list of lame reasons grows. Don't think that no one has ever questioned the inanity of those reasons. Several Indian feminists have fought, and keep fighting, with the temple board in favour of the women devotees. But the temple board remains implacable. It is backed by enormous political clout, and poor Indian feminists, like feminists almost everywhere, must fend for themselves. It doesn't help that many Indian women are disinterested in any feminist struggle. They think that it is presumptuous for women to defy established customs. It is hard to rally them, especially when it involves flouting tradition or religion.
Nevertheless, many brave and, sometimes, distressed women, boldly try to go where no young woman has gone before.
Here is a report from a publication called 'Hinduism Today': "The ban was upheld by Kerala's High Court in 1990, but the issue is now being raised by a 42-year-old district collector, K B Valsala Kumari, who was ordered to coordinate pilgrim services at the shrine. A special court directive allowed her to perform her government duties at the shrine, but not to enter the sanctum sanctorum."
In December 2002, 'Khaleej Times' reported, "Women have made this year's Sabarimala pilgrim season controversial by entering the prohibited hill shrine...Kerala High Court has ordered an inquiry to find out how a large number of women had reached the shrine in violation of court orders." Strange, isn't it, for the court to scribe such discriminatory orders?
Fifty-four years ago, when the Constitution of India was framed, "Untouchables" - the lower-caste Indians who were believed to be "impure" and hence objectionable to God - won the right to equality and broke open the gates of temples that were closed to them thus far. Article 25(2b) was instituted specifically for them; to ensure that they could pursue their religion unhampered.
This article gives State the power to make laws for "the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus".
Sabarimala is a public temple: Article 290A of the Indian Constitution entails the state of Kerala to pay, yearly, Rs 4.65 million to Sabarimala's temple board. Nevertheless, it has so far remained shut to one section of Indians - the young Indian women. And the state, instead of opening it for them, works to ensure that it remains shut to them. Now it is the best time that all concerned should sit together and discuss whether permission can be given for women to enter Sabarimala.
It is ironic that this shrine, praised as "an unmatched instance of religious tolerance", a temple open to men of all castes and religions, doesn't tolerate most women. Society, that has grown, at least outwardly, to breach "God's decree" to keep lower caste men out of His vicinity, is still struggling to defy "His despise" for women, especially, menstruating women.
Is it so because women are still regarded impure and detestable, at least during certain times? Is it because none in power is disposed to champion women's causes? Is it because women themselves are disinclined to unite against their discrimination? Is it because caste discrimination is accepted to be viler than gender discrimination? Is it because society is averse to disturbing the male-dominated hierarchy in
What were the reasons and sentiments behind the human belief in the worship of God? Belief in the concept of God and worship of God are not one and the same.All those who worship God cannot be said to have belief in the concept of God. There are many people who think that there is no loss in worshipping God, even if such a God does not exist; but if there is one, it will bless them.
The basic reason for the belief in the concept of God is the fear of death. Inability of mankind can be attributed as the next reason. Man who set foot on the Moon and who was able to send a mission to Mars, could neither defeat the phenomenon of death, nor could stop natural disasters like earthquake, volcanic eruption, cyclone or floods.
Apart from all these, during the bad cycle of life, many people have to suffer from unexpected sorrows aroused from close family members, friends and colleagues. Then a majority of them will start believing that this is the curse of God. Comparatively, humanity’s sufferings, disasters and losses are more than the benefits it derived from the concept of God and religion. Great wars fought, people killed or harassed in the name of God are numerous. In this context it is better to highlight a verse from Bhagavad Gita:
Mind is very restless, forceful and strong, O Krishna, it is more difficult to control the mind than to control the wind ~ Arjuna to Sri Krishna.
M P Bhattathiry
(Retd chief technical examiner to the Govt of Kerala)
Radhanivas,
Thaliyal,
Karamana P O
Thiruvananthapuram - 695002
Women in Army
Lt. Gen (retd) Harwant Singh
Source : The Tribune
Intense competition amongst the press and TV channels makes them pick up the most innocuous incidents and stories and sensationalise these to no end. Headlines appear and chat shows and surveys are organised, opinions obtained and instant reactions demanded, leaving little scope for sober, deliberate and rational examination of issues. The vice chief of the army was quoted out of context and the defence minister took the exceptionable step of making him tender a public apology. Sushma Swaraj lost no time in leaping on to the bandwagon. Gauging the public mood the defence minister went overboard and talked of inducting women into the combat arms of the army in the hope of drawing some political mileage out of the issue.
Speaking to a group of air force officers, Pranab Mukherjee forgot, or perhaps, did not know, the rank of the Chief of Air Staff or his name. Possibly, he does not know much about combat either; the extreme violence, brutality, privation, suffering; limbs being torn apart, scattering of pieces of flesh, burning alive and bayonets piercing bodies is all part of combat. It is into this hell that the Indian defence minister wants to push our women.
It was General Rodrigues who, as the Chief of Army Staff, opened the gate to women for entry into the officer cadre and to start with, only in certain wings of the army and in the WSES category. It was a wise decision and these women have done well and measured up to the expectations. In a recent order the government has done well in bringing their service conditions, pay and allowances at par with male short service commissioned officers.
There have been a few teething problems with lady officers, but nothing abnormal or alarming. One of them had preferred a false TA/DA claim and had to face the wrath of military law. The presiding officer of the General Court Marshal was a woman, of the rank of a brigadier. Yet the accused and the press tried to bring in extraneous issues, little realising that a false TA/DA claim in the defence services can send the accused to prison for a few years, while the lady in point was merely dismissed from service. There is no gender bias whatever. Quite the contrary, women are shown the highest respect and deference.
It is not to say that there have been no administrative problems in the management of lady doctors in the army. The DG Army Medical Corps once told me that he could not post lady doctors to remote areas where she would be the sole female or to units as medical officers. Thus the load of field postings and to remote areas was borne entirely by male doctors. Once married, they want to be posted along side their husbands, which, very often is not possible.
Women have done well in most fields and in some, even excelled men, such as in civil services, the corporate world and the police. However, the army is a different ball game altogether, more so the combat element of it. Then there are the stresses, strain and pressures peculiar to the defence services. In fact these start from the day one enters the academy. Some break down within days of joining.
Our company at the IMA was free of ragging of new entrants and the relations between seniors and juniors were friendly. So there was no pressure or stress, off parade hours. Yet some cadets could not take the pressure of the routine schedule of the initial few weeks and would throw up their hands and ask for release. As a senior, I tried to persuade one such cadet to hang on and to put up with the pressure for a few more days as the tempo by then would considerably ease, but his will-power had deserted him and he was totally finished. This run-away cadet from the IMA later became the defence secretary. The point is that military service is quite different from the civil services.
Not many are aware of the conditions under which those in the combat arms have to operate and live. During training and combat, physical stress apart, these women will have to share small tents, bivouacs or bunkers with the men. Sharing a blanket with a soldier may have to be accepted. Then there is the issue of isolation and loneliness for these women. Using common toilet facilities with no privacy what-so-ever is another feature during training and combat. Wounded are attended by companions and the unit medical officer. Wounds can be anywhere on the body. Remember women entrants into the IAF had refused to be subjected to medical tests by male doctors.
Then there is the other angle of working conditions, where constant body contact is unavoidable. The potential for allegation of sexual harassment is inbuilt into the situation. Take the case of a modern tank, particularly the type that the Indian army is equipped with. The space within the fighting compartment is extremely restricted. Thus in the ‘closed down’ mode, as it would be in combat and during training, the tank commander’s knees grip the arm pits of the gunner.
I do not know of a tank commander who can carry on with his onerous duties and the main job of locating the enemy and engaging him while there is a woman between his knees (as young officers these women will have to function as tank gunners too). Or a gunner who can shoot straight at the enemy tank while he sits straddled between the knees of his young lady tank commander. So this will not work, Mr Mukherjee. Combat apart, such working conditions alone make the entry of women in the armoured corps, one of the two combat arms of the army, inappropriate.
Admittedly there is a case for induction of women into the defence services in increased numbers. However, their entry into the combat arms, if at all, needs rational examination, attitudinal changes in Indian society and time.