Understanding society’s sexual politics
Patriarchy was created to safeguard the private property. It all started with this statement. A seven-day venture into the roots of society, the hows and whys of its beahviour. A reflection on the youth of our country, their rights and the knowledge of sexuality. In a nut shell, this is the crux of what I learned as part of ‘Yuva, Yaunikta and Adhikar’ course organised by Nirantar from October 8 and 14. In a room full of experienced people from “the field”, I was an amateur novice, trying to understand the linkage between various concepts and their application in everyday life.
The introduction session included some words about ourselves, the organisation we represent and a habit or thing from our adolescent age which we miss. People talked about their carefree-ness, freedom to wear anything, no time restriction etc. In all these responses which everyone could relate to, I was trying to find my particular lost habit. And as I reflected back, it struck me that I loved to express myself through letters. Be it for a loved one, friends or family—all my emotionally overwhelming moments were accompanied by a letter. And the irony is, in this fast world, working for an NGO dealing with technology, I had replaced my emotion filled letters with high speed Internet and expressing everything in a gist.
The vastness of this course hadn’t struck me until we were given a bag of books and reading materials. After daily sessions that began at 9:30 in the morning and went on till 6:30 in the evening, the participants were expected to reflect their learning in groups and make a presentation. This was followed by reading a stipulated portion from the books. It was a relief to see the diversity of activities that were planned to make it an interactive based learning. This included making chart-paper presentations, group discussions, writing letters to even performing shot skits. The experience of doing all this was extremely enriching.
What is a binary? Who made this binary? Do we fit into any one box? These were some of the pertinent questions that we began with emerging from familiarizing ourselves with the basic binary that society confronts us with—sex and gender. While the former is biological, the latter is a social category. And to ponder well upon this, we must look at ourselves and our surroundings. Do people feel comfortable in their own bodies? There are many who are beyond the rigid categories of men and women. This does not necessarily mean that they fall into the “Third Gender”: a very ambiguous term that not many comply to.
While our society gives certain privileges to those who fall into socially constructed boxes, there are some who don’t really “fit” and prefer to be identified as transgender, i.e., beyond any gender. Some men and women love their bodies and are more than happy to comply to the social requirements of being the perfect man or woman. They are called people with cis privileges. Cis is basically the opposite of Trans and, hence, the latter are the ones bereft of all social privileges. During the course of our training, we were also introduced to a person who sees himself trapped in a woman’s body and identifies himself as a gender queer, i.e., a person who do not wish to put themselves in any of the boxes that are constructed by society. It is then that we realized how social institutions and constructions marginalize the “deviants”.
In understanding feminism and its ideas, I had never really pondered upon the topic of masculinity. Nirantar organised a wonderful session on this that was conducted by Mr. Satish of MASVAW (Men’s Action to Stop Violence Against Women). It was an eye-opening session to understand how men are [also] socialized to behave in a certain way and how vulnerable their so-called masculinity is. They created a wonderful link between masculinity and pornography. People were very curious about knowing if violent porn has indeed given rise to an increased number of rape cases. But a deeper analysis revealed the vulnerability of men who were insecure of women’s success.
I particularly loved the session where we were asked to write a love letter to ourselves hat left so many of us thinking how we don’t know how to love ourselves. I also learned a beautiful term called “Skin Hunger”. We always talk about sexuality, but there are so many other ways to express love other than engaging in intercourse. Skin Hunger is one among them— the need for somebody to fondle your hair, hands, face, shoulders and other ‘non reproductive’ parts of the body. It is a beautiful feeling that we seldom acknowledge. More so, because self love is something that is usually forbidden to women; she is restricted to imagine and visualize her own fantasies. The wonderful course ended on a satisfying note—we were all given a certificate in acknowledgement of our participation. Expecting this to be a conventional workshop to gain experience, I, instead, got a lot more in terms of both knowledge and recognition.
- By Risha Samanta
Risha is a Trainee at FAT’s Tech Center
