Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Aug 10, 2015 5:00:18 GMT 5.5
It is a paradox that you cannot justly treat equally two things you want treated equally until they are equal. The one to be lifted up needs some special concession allowed until the equality sought is achieved. The state policy of empowerment needs legislation for equality-enhancing practices along strategic material arrangements and people’s participation in the program in both domestic and social spaces. One way of public participation is encouraging women to come out and praising their activities that demonstrate at least some value conducive to the cause. Until equality is achieved, this paradox will necessarily remain, and this is not a moth in the thinking mind’s eyes.
However, there is something which, while not even unavoidable in itself like the inherent paradox above, have has treated either as inherent to the cause or as strangely characteristically prerogative only of women—nupigi thouna (women’s courage).
It is true that several many things men take for granted as nothing unusual and extraordinary to do take a woman at least some (if not a lot of) courage. However, that does not make whatever not bad a woman does commendable as a rare feat which could be achieved only through the application of an appreciable degree of courage, nupigi thouna. While women’s positive performance is accorded a larger-than-life status the world over, its phenomenal praise in Manipur as part of its non-unpatriarchal tradition to a romanticized extent feels like quite pathological to me.
Most Manipuri women seem elated by the nupigi thouna hype, and nupigi thouna has too often been (mis)employed in nearly all public protests in the state. But what is nupigi thouna anyway? Is the courage shown by a woman unlike the very human experience in a man caused by some chemical events in his body which is called courage? Why does the show of courage at the same level by a woman on the one hand and a man on the other elicit different degrees of reception or praise from the population? A little, usual and nothing extraordinary show of courage by a woman (as in the recent ILP protest in which a couple of girls took recourse to physical measures when confronting the police) sends a sensational wave across the population while a show of courage at the same or a little more degree by a man does not figure any more prominently than the other individually insignificant movements among thousands? What does this over-sympathizing with women’s activities mean in a patriarchal setting?
In a patriarchal setting like that of Manipur, men are expected, as an essential trait in masculine behavior, to condescend to women, and women (who nearly all in the state agree are week and need protection by men and any man who hits a woman is guilty of not condescending to the weak; i.e., of beating women, a patriarchist concocted social attitude perpetuating patriarchal causes) enjoy this comfort of protection entitled as a birth right to them. Manipuri women, thus, almost always feel secure in the civil social space in the knowledge that men will not deal with them physically on equal terms even when they (women) use full physical efforts. The police and other security forces don’t behave exceptionally even in desperate times.
Women, aware that they are secure (i.e., they would be treated exceptionally and would not be hit or manhandled in most cases including the worst of circumstances), walk freely into scenes of conflict between protesters and the state security forces who toes the patriarchal line of thinking of not hurting women (they call it honoring women). What is here for a woman to be considered courageous realistically, not romantically? Yes, it is unlikely that a timid person who trembles at the very sight of the security forces would jump to the front line and confront the armed men, no matter how secure she thinks she is. However, confronting the armed men largely innocuous to women folks does not necessarily make a woman courageous.
Nupigi thouna here has a rhetorical role to play, and the validity of this rhetorical role is predicated on a more deep-seated system of values central to the patriarchal regime—a sexists worldview. Women are considered weak—the weaker sex. They are traditionally associated with delicacy—the objects of male desire, not to be out in the rough world outside of their domestic male protection. They are for consumption by male gaze before their marriage and their respective male partners alone in their marriage. Nothing else. Being objects of delicacy to be consumed majorly sexually within the domestic space, women are considered to be treated exceptionally; that is, delicately. To avoid conflict, quite the way it was in prehistoric times, men spare each other’s prizes in most cases, and women traditionally being prizes, men spare their male peers’ women; they rather treat them with a sublimated delicacy of variable degrees of im/perfection.
In the middle of protestation and struggle between protesters and police forces, there is always male gaze and sexual desire sublimated into delicacy. This “delicating” force of the female sex is employed fruitfully in quite a standardized form in other areas of social interaction and transaction. There are times when men cannot deal with other men and settle things, and at such times many men know it is time for their wives, with their “delicating” power, to take over. This is also another form of nupigi thouna. But on closer examination, there is a sexists regime behind this romance of nupigi thouna, and both men and women perpetuate this romance as a mild form of public sex.
Women along the front line may not be aware of this fine tentacle of patriarchy coiling up at this subtle level, but the men at work feel the tug.
My argument here is not to maintain that women cannot exhibit courage because they don’t have it. Any woman, like any man, can exhibit courage because it is natural for humans to have courage just the same way it is natural for some humans to be cowards. However, I see no point in classifying courage along gender or sexual lines into nupigi thouna and nupagi thouna. While the latter, being the base line, has not even been named as if it were nonexistent unlike nupigi thouna, nupigi thouna has been hyped quite romantically as a subtle political rhetoric serving as an even subtler site of the social sexual desire sublimation for men.
However, there is something which, while not even unavoidable in itself like the inherent paradox above, have has treated either as inherent to the cause or as strangely characteristically prerogative only of women—nupigi thouna (women’s courage).
It is true that several many things men take for granted as nothing unusual and extraordinary to do take a woman at least some (if not a lot of) courage. However, that does not make whatever not bad a woman does commendable as a rare feat which could be achieved only through the application of an appreciable degree of courage, nupigi thouna. While women’s positive performance is accorded a larger-than-life status the world over, its phenomenal praise in Manipur as part of its non-unpatriarchal tradition to a romanticized extent feels like quite pathological to me.
Most Manipuri women seem elated by the nupigi thouna hype, and nupigi thouna has too often been (mis)employed in nearly all public protests in the state. But what is nupigi thouna anyway? Is the courage shown by a woman unlike the very human experience in a man caused by some chemical events in his body which is called courage? Why does the show of courage at the same level by a woman on the one hand and a man on the other elicit different degrees of reception or praise from the population? A little, usual and nothing extraordinary show of courage by a woman (as in the recent ILP protest in which a couple of girls took recourse to physical measures when confronting the police) sends a sensational wave across the population while a show of courage at the same or a little more degree by a man does not figure any more prominently than the other individually insignificant movements among thousands? What does this over-sympathizing with women’s activities mean in a patriarchal setting?
In a patriarchal setting like that of Manipur, men are expected, as an essential trait in masculine behavior, to condescend to women, and women (who nearly all in the state agree are week and need protection by men and any man who hits a woman is guilty of not condescending to the weak; i.e., of beating women, a patriarchist concocted social attitude perpetuating patriarchal causes) enjoy this comfort of protection entitled as a birth right to them. Manipuri women, thus, almost always feel secure in the civil social space in the knowledge that men will not deal with them physically on equal terms even when they (women) use full physical efforts. The police and other security forces don’t behave exceptionally even in desperate times.
Women, aware that they are secure (i.e., they would be treated exceptionally and would not be hit or manhandled in most cases including the worst of circumstances), walk freely into scenes of conflict between protesters and the state security forces who toes the patriarchal line of thinking of not hurting women (they call it honoring women). What is here for a woman to be considered courageous realistically, not romantically? Yes, it is unlikely that a timid person who trembles at the very sight of the security forces would jump to the front line and confront the armed men, no matter how secure she thinks she is. However, confronting the armed men largely innocuous to women folks does not necessarily make a woman courageous.
Nupigi thouna here has a rhetorical role to play, and the validity of this rhetorical role is predicated on a more deep-seated system of values central to the patriarchal regime—a sexists worldview. Women are considered weak—the weaker sex. They are traditionally associated with delicacy—the objects of male desire, not to be out in the rough world outside of their domestic male protection. They are for consumption by male gaze before their marriage and their respective male partners alone in their marriage. Nothing else. Being objects of delicacy to be consumed majorly sexually within the domestic space, women are considered to be treated exceptionally; that is, delicately. To avoid conflict, quite the way it was in prehistoric times, men spare each other’s prizes in most cases, and women traditionally being prizes, men spare their male peers’ women; they rather treat them with a sublimated delicacy of variable degrees of im/perfection.
In the middle of protestation and struggle between protesters and police forces, there is always male gaze and sexual desire sublimated into delicacy. This “delicating” force of the female sex is employed fruitfully in quite a standardized form in other areas of social interaction and transaction. There are times when men cannot deal with other men and settle things, and at such times many men know it is time for their wives, with their “delicating” power, to take over. This is also another form of nupigi thouna. But on closer examination, there is a sexists regime behind this romance of nupigi thouna, and both men and women perpetuate this romance as a mild form of public sex.
Women along the front line may not be aware of this fine tentacle of patriarchy coiling up at this subtle level, but the men at work feel the tug.
My argument here is not to maintain that women cannot exhibit courage because they don’t have it. Any woman, like any man, can exhibit courage because it is natural for humans to have courage just the same way it is natural for some humans to be cowards. However, I see no point in classifying courage along gender or sexual lines into nupigi thouna and nupagi thouna. While the latter, being the base line, has not even been named as if it were nonexistent unlike nupigi thouna, nupigi thouna has been hyped quite romantically as a subtle political rhetoric serving as an even subtler site of the social sexual desire sublimation for men.
