Sexism Archives - Page 3 of 3 - DU Beat - Delhi University's Independent Student Newspaper

Following the uproar that this recent video trending on social networking sites elicited, I will here cautiously explain how this combination of sexism, stereotyping and stupidity has always been ‘trending’, be it on the social media or in daily parlance. Coming from LSR, one is always aware of the label of feminism that one carries regardless of whether one is a feminist or not. But defending the college is not the only reason I want to decry ‘Why LSR girls should date NSIT guys’. I don’t know how many people took offence and how many people gloated over it, but being a woman, it was difficult to ignore this level of ignorance, and hence, this piece.

By casting the LSR girl (and not woman) in a highly sexist stereotypical mould, I don’t know what aim the makers of the video had sought to fulfill. Was it for some ‘macho’ NSIT publicity or was it about labeling the LSR student as ‘needy, yappy and materialistic’ as put by one viewer in a YouTube comment? If it was indeed filmed in poor taste, it was demeaning for women as a whole and we would collectively like to voice our opposition to it, but if it was just another video with but mere facts, you’re way behind the times. If you don’t care about being sexist, at least care about being stupid. No brownie points there.

If the video in question was meant to be a joke, then to all those who have requested us to take it in good humour, the video makes little to no sense, and isn’t funny at all. Let’s go over some gems this video has showered us with-

We listen to your crap: Are we doing an early 90s ‘rich girl-poor boy-I want you at any cost’ film? Not all women are verbose, and verbose is not always yappy. We hope you are mature enough to engage in meaningful conversation as well.
Carry your shopping bags: Machismo, misogyny, senselessness. Women shop, women are physically weak, a boyfriend is essentially a porter. If only that were ever a criterion. If you do want to chivalrous, try being sensible and sensitive, and not stereotypical.
Parents’ approval: Has anybody ever tried this? If this was a publicity stunt, we hope no parents’ were watching.
Why I won’t break up with you (the status symbol factor- “bhai LSR ki ladki dila de”): Speaks volumes about the NSITian in question. Your friends treat you well just because you have a girlfriend from LSR? I wonder who the joke is on!
I won’t cheat on you (because NSIT is largely populated by male students): Ever heard of homosexuality and bisexuality, or do I sound absurd? Is that all that makes you trustworthy? According to the video, we can trust you because you are a straight man in an almost all-boys class, implying that you would have cheated on your girlfriend, if you could have?
The best part-placements: Well, if a woman is materialistic, she can also be a self-financed materialistic woman. Many wonder if a woman would be involved with a man who earns less than her. Such are the stereotypes that we have created over the years; the man has to be taller, stronger, and sharper.
LSR teachings- being a lesbian is okay: Apparently, LSR women are either feminists or lesbians. Well, let me teach you this then; being gay is also ‘okay’, and you may cheat on us now.

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Hindu College

Conversations around burqua, secularism and virginity conducted by Hindu’s discussion forum

By Iresh Gupta March 27, 2014

Caucus, the group discussion forum at Hindu College organized Vaktavya – the 6th annual group discussion festival on 25-26th March. The festival was scheduled to have bilingual group discussions and baithaks.

“Banning the burqua: Can women’s rights trump religion”

For Day 1, “Banning the burqua: Can women’s rights trump religion” was the discussed topic for conventional group discussion (GD). Discussion was moderated by Caucus members. Arushi Walecha was the Chairperson for the discussion and Pratishtha Mahajan sat as the Rapporteur. Each participant during the discussion was allowed to present his or her views and each opinion was recorded with the moderators. Mohammed Ziyad Ansari, a participant in the course of discussion remarked, “Islamic religious books not only talk about hijab (burqua) for women but for men as well. The purpose of hijab is not only covering one’s self, but also to show respect, lower the case and guard modesty.”

After 60 minutes of bilingual discussion, moderation and recording of views, the group came out with a common solution which mentioned that whether burqua or not, depends on the individuals choice. Ziyad also added that, “It should be the woman who should choose. We should keep in mind that Quran doesn’t impose burqua on anyone, it presents a choice.” The group also felt that, in the west there are many predetermined notions about these women who wear burquas. So someone who hasn’t experienced it or someone who doesn’t have full knowledge of the same has no right to condemn this system. Raja was adjudged the winner for this round of discussion.

“Is secularism irrelevant in the current Indian political context?”

Baithak at Vaktavya conducted a discussed on, “Is secularism irrelevant in the current Indian political context?” Baithak is an open discussion where no one moderates the discussion. Instead, a peer evaluation system is followed where the whole group evaluates other speakers and a best speaker is declared. This was also a bilingual discussion on what secularism is defined and understood as. The group also discussed about whether secularism as an issue is relevant in political discourse.

Baithak that was conducted for over one hour came out with the conclusion that despite the current political emphasis on development and economics, secularism still remains an agenda. Sandeep Singh, a baithak participant mentions, “Secularism stands on a proposition that religion and government state should be separated. But this agenda of secularism influences our perception of the political parties and candidates participating in the elections.” Sandeep was also declared the winner of this baithak session by his co-participants.

“Should schools teach – virginity is not a virtue”

On the second day, baithak‘s discussion revolved around the topic – “Should schools teach – virginity is not a virtue.” After 70 minute exercise of presenting their views, the group unanimously decided that virginity should be based on individuals perception and not as a universal virtue. Aishwarya Puri, the winner of this baithak round mentions, “Virginity should not be taught in schools, because when virginity is associated with a term like virtue, it becomes subjective.” A few members of the group also presented their opinions on why this subject of virginity should be a part of school teachings.

“Realism v/s Escapism : Does cinema need a purpose”

The last discussion at the festival had Nimisha Kawatra and Nishtia Khattar moderating the discussion as Chairperson and Rapporteur respectively. The topic, “Realism v/s Escapism : Does cinema need a purpose” had mixed views coming in from the participants. According to the members of the group, cinema works both ways. On one hand, it is a chute to propel one into another world for two hours and on the other, it can ground someone more firmly into the reality and enable him or her to see past the illusions of the society. Sandeep, who also bagged the first prize at baithak of secularism, was declared the winner for this discussion as well.

Vaktavya came to an end with screening of a short film called The Naturalist by Connor Hurley for all the Caucus members.

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DUB Speak

The immorality of sexism – what should really be upsetting us about the Hard Kaur fiasco

By Bani Bains February 28, 2014

As a young girl living in an urban metropolitan, sexism couldn’t possibly be starker to me. I see it leeching on my body when I leave the house, I see it in the eyes of the men staring at me on a bus, I can feel it making me conscious of my body every day, every second. But something about the entire Hard Kaur fiasco during Kamala Nehru College’s ‘Ullas’ showed me how sexism is so internalized in our systems, our minds, our lives – in a manner that spotting it becomes hard, even in the midst of controversy, where each detail is made to glare right into our faces.

Hard Kaur was told to leave the stage because of the swear words she used and a few obscene gestures here and there – but nobody raised any objection to how she made it a point to objectify the male performers on stage by asking them to show their chiseled midriffs to the crowd; nobody said anything about her comment on women being ‘sexy’ and men being ‘dirty’; no newspaper reported it, no righteous person in the crowd spoke about it. It was almost as if nobody really minded it – like it’s okay to insult one gender to praise another, like we need to ‘get back’ at people of one gender and blame them for all our problems – as if they are not affected by patriarchy at all. It seemed like men being ‘dirty’ was the only way women could be ‘sexy’; much like how women being timid and weak is the only way men can be assertive and powerful.

The categories of masculine and feminine and the social connotations attached with them are becoming more complex by the day. We live in a world where a woman who knows her mind is ‘loose’, a man who likes clothes, make up and kids is a ‘sissy’, anyone not associating with the gender binary is nonexistent and the sexes are always at war.

What was in fact, so offensive about Kaur’s language? How was it so offensive that it engrossed us enough to overlook the obvious sexism her statements reflected? What should really be angering us? Taking pride in being one of the best universities in the country, and even the world, how did we let this go unnoticed?

We’ve got to change this. We’ve got to get offended at sexism – every form it takes has to anger us, regardless of the gender identity it is targeting. Only then can we conceptualize the equality we have all set out to achieve – an equality that first requires us to notice its absence.

Image credit: Abhinav Arora for DU Beat

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Sexism in Kapil Sharma’s Comedy Nights

By Siddhi Goel January 25, 2014

A few days ago I was watching the popular comedy serial “Comedy Nights with Kapil” while having dinner. Though I did not find the show particularly amusing, it did bring a smile on my face at some points.

However, what really came across to me while watching it was the sheer sexist approach that Kapil Sharma, and most comedians have in creating punch lines to make people laugh. Not to undermine the talent and hard work Sharma has put in reaching this level, but their struggle is not a justification to the kind of jokes they make. For example, in the particular episode that I was watching, Sharma was seen as making jokes on the appearance of his wife, that how even after repeated attempts in make up her face was still as ugly. Sharma then proceeded to talk about the hideous shape of her lips and her unruly smile. Although the Sharma’s impeccable timing and dialogue delivery makes us erupt into a kind laughter of pity, on a deeper introspection it is reflexive of many problematic deep seated notions.

The body of the female is always more attractive than the body of the man, because the gaze is always male. It is this gaze of man which makes women especially prone to falling prey to arbitrarily defined definitions of beauty. Conventionally, it is the men who have decided what constitutes a beautiful woman and put restraints on her movement, because the “honor” needs to be “guarded”. A beautiful woman is like a trophy that a man installs in his house and subsequently prides himself on possessing her in his social circle. Thus, the embarrassment of not having a woman beautiful enough is expressed through the nervous laughter in Sharma’s punch line. Because the first requirement of being a socially glorified woman is not work, is not intelligence, its beauty. Madhubala is referred to more as the “Marylyn Monroe” of Bollywood, than the exceptional actress in Mughal-E-Azam. Katrina Kaif might not be the best actress around, but she will continue to star across A-listers as the only thing media notices about her dresses and make up.

Sharma’s jokes on her wife’s appearance, though might appear casual at the overt level as each one of us indulges in soft humor revolving around each other’s appearances, but somewhere down inside all of us have fallen prey to capitalist construction of perfection and the need to ridicule those who don’t fall in that category.

Image Credit: www.en.wikipedia.org

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Of women, Wimbledon and sexist overtones

By Pallab Deb July 14, 2013

There is an ancient Wimbledonian saying, mostly untranslatable but it goes something like “If chance made you a woman and you want to be a champion of Wimbledon, you gotta have big boobs. And blond hair. And body of some Amazonian jungle goddess from a hormonal teenager’s fantasy. If you are a man, you just gotta play well.” As the time passed, this sacred law has been withheld by generations of long legged Sharapovas and Mladenovics who have marched on and have become famous for their “supermodel looks”, their winning one title after another notwithstanding. Yes, that’s why female tennis players were allowed to play professionally in the first place, to look like supermodels giddying around on the court. Why didn’t they just get Kate Moss to do all that?

In a world where feminism is a dirty word and where cracking sexist jokes are the in thing to do, sports were thought to be the great equalising force, a place where only talent and tenacity were the criterion to achieve greatness. Where not having the male member dangling between your legs was not supposed to be a handicap, a handicap which would underscore the rest of a woman’s life. But the silent sexism in sports all these years long, followed by the recent examples of not-so-silent sexism show how even in the supposed gender non-discriminating arena of athletics, the old ugly face of sexism persists.

The Bartoli vs. Lisicki women’s single match was one of the most famous this season and for all the wrong reasons. It would be expected that after winning the match, Bartoli would either be appreciated for her skills on the court or panned for the same. She was after all an athlete who had just won a major title. But the backlash that followed had nothing to do with the game but something so completely unrelated to the sport that it boggles the mind as to how people could connect the two. While single digit IQ levelled Twitter warriors had a field day branding her “undeserving” of the title because of her looking the way she does, the BBC commentator, John Iverdale jumped into a retelling of an imagined conversation between Bartoli and her father/coach, where the latter supposedly tells his daughter how she was “never going to be a looker” and because of which she had to be extra “gritty” in her game.

Another incident following Andy Murray winning the men’s single reflects on the retaining power of the audience of matters related to women in sports. After the win against Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, the British media went on to celebrate Murray as the redeemer of the British nation. Headlines like “A win after 77 years” crowded the newsstands. What went unnoticed until later was that in between Murray’s win and Fred Perry’s 77 years ago, three Britishers had already won singles titles in the tournament. The fact that those three were female gave the media the right to go into memento mode and forget about the past winners since Perry. Of the three, Virginia Wade was the most celebrated after her win 36 years ago. The other two were Annabel Croft and Laura Robson, who won the Girls’ singles in 1984 and 2008 respectively. The fact that people could just forget such achievements seem especially cruel after knowing what Wade said in an interview after her historic win, “You never forget how it feels to win Wimbledon.”

The incident involving Bartoli drags to the limelight the sexist practices that tournaments like Wimbledon are still preserving. While the male player is supposed to spend his time and resources on bettering his game, any digression being scrutinised and criticised by the media and the commentators alike, the female player is expected to only keep up the Disney Princess appearance.Such trivialization gains from the patronising attitude towards sportswomen in general, which leads to further breeding of such sexist understanding in the succeeding generations. This completes the circle where however much may the sportswoman achieve, at the end of the day her worth is decided by men on how pleasing she is to their eyes.

The Tumblr post by Public Shaming cataloguing the insensitive outcry on Twitter over how Bartoli was undeserving of her title because of how she looked showed just how wide spread sexism is. People who would not usually watch Tennis matches, let alone interested in women’s sports, would air their opinions on just how much they were offended by her winning the match and how much they wanted Sabine Lisicki to win. What goes uncommented upon is how equally insulting this is for Lisicki too, whose right to win the title was appropriated because of her looks and not by the fact that she had reached the finals in the first place.

In the Indian context, Sania Mirza was made popular more for her appearance than her skills, which reflected in the national love and obsession with her remaining constant, irrespective of her form on-court, from the start of her career to her marriage to Shoaib Malik, when she suddenly “betrayed” the nation by marrying a Pakistani. In contrast, no one cares about how Mahesh Bhupathi or Leander Paeslook on or off court. Their game matters, in case of Mirza, only her looks.

While on the topic of Wimbledon, another sexist practise that goes uncommented upon is the way female players are referred to in the tournament. While the names of the male players are used to refer to them respectively, the married female players are referred to by the names of their husbands. You may be Plain Jane off the court, but when you are trying to win a game on the merit of your own skills, independent of the dis/name of your husband, you will still be known as Mrs. John Doe. The fact that as recent as 2010, a female player was referred to not by her own name but by her husband’s should be infuriating enough. Queen Victoria might have had her last breath more than a century ago but the crooked notion of gender politics of her times still continues to survive to this date.

The least we could do is acknowledging the fact that sexism does exist, even in sports, something a lot of people feel uncomfortable accepting.

And until then, we could only yearn for a time and place when people would judge a person’s worth by the thoughts that crowd their mind and the deeds that come to pass by their hands and not the clothes they happen to wear.

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