Life as I find it

So many things to write about, so much to do.

I describe myself as a nomad. The life of Nomad is one that is interested in all, yet lacks attachment. In a positive way, it could be said that I belong to nowhere and am at home everywhere.

Many things are happening in life, and some synchronicity is leading to insights about myself as a woman. The roleof women in society is all crap, as we know it. Each person has their own fantasy of what society “allows” without halting to reflect that it is them that collectively create society. Anyway, all that is irrelevant to my current ponderings.

I read Germaine Greer’s book – Sex and Destiny, where she talks about the role of our sexuality in out life and the impact of the world on us based on our gender. The book is an awesome read as well as a life changing line of exploration, but what is currently on my mind is the chapter she wrote on “a child is born”. She describes a “western culture” which admittedly is unfamiliar to me, yet some observations strike a chord.

I have started seeing this whole business of contraception and family planning as a wholesale cultural hatred and negation of a woman’s fertility. Identifying goals as a working woman in a relationship with a man has taken a whole new meaning. No? Think about this:

• Pregnancy is a normal state of being for a woman – yes/no? If it is normal, why doesn’t anyone trust a pregnant woman to know what’s best for her?
• We see having more than the “prescribed number of children” as a socially embarrassing thing and consider an excess of children to be a drain on personal and national resources. Never mind if a rich man can afford a hundred kids, or a poor man can’t afford one. No one thinks that a rich man having plenty of kids will eventually lead to an increase in the population of rich people, or the division of the wealth between them will lead to decreasing differences between the rich and poor. Thinking is superfluous – the statistic is the allowed fertility.
• A woman’s fertility is unacceptable and needs to be allowed only in the form of “planned pregnancies” where the focus is not so much on her being a fertile woman as it is on planning ovulation, contraception and then living by the word of some expert (earlier it was midwives, which graduated to doctors, and now its, gynaecologists, sonography techinicians, etc) who knows better what she should do with this alien state of her body till it is rid of its alienness through birth of the child.
• Contraception is a way of removing the consequences of intimacy and reducing the requirement for commitment. Yet, how many females want to remove the requirement for committment? How many males are willing to take responsibility for their intimacies? I don’t know, but my hunch is that by solving the symptom on the physical manifestation level, we have left an entire culture vulnerable to emotional consequences.

As I sit here staring at my screen, I am wondering what impact these insights will have on my life. Will it mean a more meaningful intimacy with my husband, where awareness of the implications of the intimacy between us as man and woman open up an entire world of beauty? Or will it be a hesitation to rock the boat, where we continue to see fertility as a thing to be “controlled”. Can we acknowledge that as a woman and man, our fertility is a part of it?

I seem to be on a learning swing. Just back from the Group Relations Conference in Bangalore, and as I headed to my email, I saw that Cisco certification has a possibility for a review to be written. So I headed over to their site to take a look. No surprise so far.

What I found there was a relatively newish site with an eye for quality. This I admire. Further exploration led me to the learning center where the first article to cath my eye was one about soft-skills in IT managers. NOW, this is what I appreciate in an educational institution whether online or physical.

Just the last week, on an induction programme for young IT professionals in a leading organization in Mumbai, we had talked about how important it is to forget the competition orientation of education and learn to collaborate and achieve practical functionality.

The unfortunate fact of life is that people want to know what you know, and your own claim of competence is not an adequate measure in their eyes. So unless you are a mighty famous professional, it is important to have an idea of where your skills lie, build on them and get them officially acknowledged to certain standards to make them more visible and credible to those employers who have no clue of where your talents lie.

We had spoken of different ways to accredit and improve on this competence. In my opinion as both a consultant and an active webmaster, it is important to not just keep learning and updating our knowledge, but also to be able to apply it in a practical and functional way. One way of doing this is to step out of your comfort zone and take a risk to test your knowledge and get a stamp of acknowledgment.

The sorrow of much education today is that it doesn’t account for the human factor, which is what actually makes things work. To find a site that talks about soft skills while encouraging the certifications in various subjects makes me happy to be.

The online world is a good place to unfurl wings and chase development and growth in our chosen careers. This site is a useful tool for those.

The certifications themselves are well thought out and useful. In a world of competence, it is getting increasingly important to have skills verified and attested, which is exactly what this site helps you accomplish. Rather than duplicate the contents of that site to tell you everything about it, I invite you to actually experience it and perhaps you may want to share how you found it here.

I am currently involved in an online debate about the conditions of women in society. As a self-aware individual, I am aware that I find the perspectives put forth extremely repulsive.

There seems to be a stereotype of “woman” that is endlessly needy, fragile and “requiring encouragement” for their “upliftment”. Worse, there are women who see themselves like that, rather than choosing to see what it is that they are doing that they could change to be in a condition they would enjoy better.

It is really superficial to say that women are victimized. What I see happening is a callous lack of looking beyond stereotypes. I see men victimized too, when their emotions need to be in a certain format for the world to acknowledge them as humans. Really, is crying the only symptom of sorrow?

What I see is a sheer lack of sensitivity toward self and others leading to messes that just don’t get solved with patchwork.

The woman is a victim, because the husband yells at her. Fabulous. Here, we are de-humanizing this said husband, who seems to be like a comic book villain, incapable of having anything good in him. What is really happening, is that there is a lot of emotion churning in this guy, that leads to him yelling to force his point home. Do we yell, when we feel that we are being heard? On the other hand, this woman is a pure victim, and someone needs to rescue her from the aforementioned villain. Does she have no responsibility for what is happening? Is she indeed so powerless that a person can come and yell at her and she will not respond? And if she is, how is setting her free going to achieve anything beyond changing villains? Because, believe me, there are plenty of people who are happy to walk all over people who will take it. We are de-humanizing the woman as well, by believing her as incapable of acting in her own self-interest.

Then, we have a whole rush of patchwork to explain how the yelling must not be done, and how the woman is a “poor thing” who is basically dependent on the man to do her a favour and change.

It happens in all situations. Yet, solutions are not looked for by looking at what people in healthy relationships do. Solutions focus on erasing symptoms and creating a “happily-ever-after” image ASAP.

Wake up folks, there is no such thing as happily-ever-after except in fairy tales. Good relationships require commitment from both  ends. They need acknowledgment of the other’s perspective (not necessarily agreement). I find a very subtle but important factor at play here.

This is our stereotype of men. “Men don’t cry” “Men provide for the woman” “Men are stronger” “Women are emotional” etc. This is reinforced so strongly with time, that even men who will proudly say that they cry at times will not be able to admit that they “don’t know” or “are helpless” when they are. What is really happening to the men here, when their emotions are not even looked at as relevant to their being? Is it any wonder that the few times we see emotions, they arise from frustration/desperation and come out with excessive force? Who wouldn’t use all the force they have to ease their own discomfort and make stand if they believe that it will not be heard?

An excessively possessive man, is looked on as an extremely undesirable thing. Yet, do we see the caring and wish to protect and need to continue being loved that drives that insecurity (even if we don’t want to be protected)? Do we see it? So, if his caring hasn’t registered, and he sees the object of his love doing somethig he perceives as dangerous, how many choices does he have that don’t involve “laying rules”?

Does the woman really acknowledge his love for her and reassure him that she will be careful, and not take unnecessary risks, or does she simply see the dominance and rebel or succumb? What choices does she have when her freedom is sacrificed that are other than rebellion or becoming victim?

I don’t see how we, as a society can lay down endless rules for behaviour and upliftment, without empowering people with self-awareness and sensitivity toward others.

Call me old fashioned or ignorant, but I am well aware that I am not entirely cues in to this feminism thing. I am female. I am a housewife, a mountaineer, a professional in multiple areas at my whim. They are all aspects of me. Why should it be that my being a housewife is wrong or makes me weaker in anyway? For that matter, why is there a need to have an exclusive label, if equality and empowerment is the idea?

Does being protected make something stronger? Is that equality? I think feminists are the biggest danger to women power, because they demand that separate platform, rather that empowering women to simply be themselves and powerful.

I think that this whole thing is so hyped and people are so aggressive about it, that all sense of perspective is lost. The original idea of setting women free from social pressure has now given was to the pressure of expecting a woman to reject all that is “traditionally” allotted a feminine connotation. That’s plain silly.

No matter how many women burn their bras, its going to be a hell of a long time before there are as many female construction workers as males and if it happened, it would be plain stupid and a mismanagement of human resources.

Rejecting traditional female roles and beginning afresh is like reinventing the wheel. I am a woman, and only one who doesn’t understand people at all will imagine me to be weak. That strength didn’t come from competing with males or insisting that I be the same as them. It came from being myself and if some expectations crashed, either from the traditional end or the feminity end….. *shrug*

Males don’t get PMS. Women have multiple orgasms. On the other hand, orgasm for a male is guaranteed. Men have more muscle mass than women, women do have breasts, and I’m not even going to get into the psychological differences. Just grab a copy of the Mars and Venus book.

I can understand how it is important for a woman not to be oppressed and how it is a violation of her personal rights. What about the rights of those who are expected to accept women even where they don’t believe it works?

I think woman power is not about “Equal-to-man” power. Why use men as a scale anyway? Are they an ideal? I think its not about woman power even. It is about being yourself and having the guts to go through with it, whether you are male or female. There is no point dragging gender in as a measure while claiming that the ideal is removing it from the public domain.

So people, figure out what exactly it is that you are trying to say. And yes, this is a kind of direct response to a “burn-the-bra” type who had the guts to look down her nose at me for being a housewife. I am a housewife, because I don’t want to land up for work everyday. What’s more, I have managed to figure out a life for myself where I can work 10 days a month at the most and afford to live happily.

I refuse to believe that my feminity requires me to slog 30 days a month to prove I’m powerful. If I can’t ensure my freedom, what power do I have?

So we now have a woman president. That’s nice. Honestly, I don’t care less if the president is a man or a woman, as long as they take the country into better days. I’m not really into preferring either male or female in most situations.

However, considering the long drive for women’s empowerment in India, I guess this can be seen as a shining star in its cap. Like my neighbour hastened to point out – “Not even the US has ever had a woman president – we are even more modern that them in some ways”. While I don’t understand the immediate need to compare happenings in India with the US, she does have a point.

Women in positions of power was not really a very big problem in India, its the everyday life of the common woman where the fight is. We have always had loads of them from warrior rulers and politicians, to social reformers, activists and educators and all other influential areas too. The percentage of women isn’t the same as men, but I can say with all honesty and pride that they are plenty and well respected too.

What I find remarkable in having a woman president, is that a president in India also commands the army. So its a pretty symbolic and powerful position for a woman in a society that is serious for women’s empowerment. Its a statement of trust and belief in capability. I like that.

I think this is not really a statement in terms of “woman-president” but actions speaking louder than words in the field of women empowerment. We have a person capable of leading the country well. That person becomes president. It happens to be female. So what? Its that “so what”, so easily typical of India, when its accepted an idea that’s the beauty of it.

With due credit to our neighbour, Mrs M, she has an important point as well. I did promise her that I would mention it in my writing. I don’t think she understands how ordinary a blog is – she thinks I’m writing important stuff that will stay on record for all time. In a way she’s right, but well…. its still ordinary in these times.

She wants to point out (rather triumphantly) that it is America speaking of womens rights and empowerment and all that, but have they trusted their country into a woman’s hands? Indian women are meek and mild, so they are easy to bully in some cases, but in other cases, they are just quiet and that is not a bad thing. When the time is right, see what is happening. An Indian woman is president, and the country is very happy about it.

I think this is pretty much the gist of what she is saying. While I don’t necessary with the “meek and mild and naturally quiet” parts of it, I guess she’s saying it like she sees it. I think she’s just not seeing all the bold ones out here, including me. For her, the typical Indian woman is still the one who’s quietly efficient, modest, and designed to drive me nuts through sheer lack of open communication.

Whatever, we have a new president, and I have duly celebrated the fact that she’s female. Now let’s watch and wait to see where our journey of development as a country leads.