What’s Love Got to Do With It?

the good times?

It all started with Chris Brown and Rihanna.

I used to like Chris Brown’s music. Hell, I even helped choreograph a dance to the “Kiss Kiss” song. He seemed like a innocent, baby-faced teenager in all his videos and interviews. With her unique style and uber-popular club records, Rihanna seemed poised for pop stardom.

Well, that was until all of America got word that prior to the Grammys, the squeaky-clean Mr. Brown beat the living shit out of his (hopefully by now- ex) girlfriend Rihanna, who called the cops for help. Apparently, she had “grotesque” cuts and bruises all over her face and neck, and has disappeared into seclusion. Meanwhile, Chris B. posted bail and is looking at the possibility of jail time.

Superstar coupledom…ends in some good-old fashioned beating.

Rihanna’s gained a country-wide following of sympathizers, for good reason. In a perverse way, domestic violence couldn’t have asked for a better posterchild: a beautiful, young celebrity with everything she could ask for, no shortage of confidence and success- made to suffer at the hands of an equally famous and well-liked boyfriend. Message to the masses: anyone–ANYONE–can be victim of domestic violence.

These headlines are sensational to be sure. By treating this as a celebrity-centered story, we lose sight of one important truth: 1 in 3 women in the United States will be the victim of violence inflicted by a partner or family member. These women are your friends, your teachers, your aunts, sisters, and cousins. They are white, black, Asian and everything in between–rich, middle class and poor. And trust me, at one point in all of your lives, it will hit close to home.

I remember the story of Rebecca Griego , pictured here, in particular. Rebecca worked at Gould Hall, University of Washington’s School of Architecture, down the street from where I went to school. I walked in front of that building every day on the way to class. I had lecture a floor below where she worked.

On the morning of April 2 2o07, Griego’s ex-boyfriend Jonathan Rowan entered Gould Hall. He rode up to the fourth floor where she worked. There, around 9 AM, Rowan shot Rebecca in the head once. Then he shot himself. Both died before police came on the scene. I remember seeing that yellow crime scene tape draping the stairwell that I used to walk through every morning.

In the wake of tragedies like this, people often rally and organize. I wonder though, what are we doing for those who are living day in and day out with the threat of personal harm from a partner or family member? I wonder what drives men to beat and batter the women who are closest to them? And WHY is this the rule rather than the exception?

It is a known fact that boys who grow up in families plauged by domestic violence grow up to be batterers. It’s also known that in certain cultures, men consider it their right to exercise violent forms of punishment against their female family members. But it is easy to find exceptions to all of these as well, as noted above.

Rather, I think the answer lies in the use of violence and its portrayal in society, and how that is connected to ideas of masculinity. I think all too often, we try to dismiss partner violence as some kind of psychological problem. It isn’t. It is a societal issue, and one that transcends racial and economic boundaries. We focus on women as survivors/victims, which is all well and good, but I think it’s high time we looked real closely at the idealization of masculinity in our society. What does it mean to be a man? Better yet, what does it mean to be a man in a relationship, and what how does that connect to ideas of power, violence, and control?

In a nutshell, men need to start taking some responsiblity for the problem of domestic violence as much as women. Women should not be the only ones organizing to combat this problem. In order to educate the next generation (if Chris B. and Rihanna are any indication, very few young’ns have gotten the message that that shit is WRONG), a united front of men and women is needed.  Only then can we begin to address their issue in a truly constructive way.

some stats:

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, between 1998 and 2002:

• Of the almost 3.5 million violent crimes committed against family members, 49% of these were crimes against spouses.
• 84% of spouse abuse victims were females, and 86% of victims of dating partner abuse at were female.
• Males were 83% of spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderer.

Angry Little Girls

Preemptive Strike

“Sticks and stones may break my bones…but words will never hurt me.”

Whoever came up with that saying…is obviously not a female!

As any conscious woman on planet Earth knows, words are incredibly powerful weapons. So are relationships–especially when used against another female. But lest we forget, a girl must always be outwardly nice to everyone. Hence what becomes a girls’ “gun” of choice: emotional blackmail. Outward aggression, anger is most certainly taboo. 

Media has picked up this in the last few years. Movies like “Mean Girls” and groundbreaking books like “Odd Girl Out” have brought the unique world of female aggression into the harsh light of day. The social wars that women wage with one another are no secret. 

The more important question: why do women suppress their anger? 

I happen to a girl, and as someone who gets continually pissed off by things going on around the world (hence the title of the blog, folks!) I have a complex relationship with my anger. It inspires me, it drives me, it is righteous, it is irrational, it is strengthening, it is disturbing–and often suppressed, because girls can’t be angry. “Thou Must be Nice”.

Society has labels for Angry Little Girls: “Bitch” and “Psycho” come to mind. And neither of these has a positive correlation. Perhaps this is why outward aggression is so taboo: no one wants to be labeled as crazy. In my view, the crazy idea is that this is taboo in the first place. A woman cannot be “nice” all the time. We feel rage, anger, negative emotion and the like as much as any dude. Except not only do we have to control our feelings, we have to suppress them. We must deny them.

Pardon me if I don’t think that’s right!

I’m going to throw this out there: Why do you think anger is considered an unnatural expression for women? Give me your thoughts!

Relationshipolitik

FYI: This is gonna be a departure from my more “traditional” politically-oriented writespeak. But as I always say, politics are everywhere!

Romantic relationships have always occupied a unique place in American society. Endless rom-com TV shows, movies, and novels have been written about finding that “one true love” and in what context (marriage, tragedy, adultery, comedy–in no particular order). What’s funny is that there seems to be a real reluctance to politicize this stuff–to look at and criticize the realm of romantic attachment as a unique social and cultural contract, ever changing and always controversial.

Case in point: As a twenty-something who came of age in the post- dot com/millenial (apparently that’s what its called now) era, the hookup culture is a huge part of our social scene.  The NY Times recently published a commentary on the “Demise of Dating”. It suggests that the “hookup” (i.e. two people having a brief, seemingly random romantic attachment, which may or may not involve sex) has completely replaced dating–the requisite going out to dinner, lunch, or movie–as the context for romantic relationships.

So is this really the case? Is the hookup culture universal? And what does it really mean, anyway?

I’m not going to argue that the folks at NYT were completely off the mark. They aren’t. But it speaks to a subset of our society, and ignores the many cultural, social, and political factors that play into phenomenon. Take the gender binary, for example (I’m going to go with the straight-person perspective here). The way we as young people perceive relationships has a lot do with the gender equity and the balance of power between men and women.

If anything, I think that this sort of culture downplays emotional connection, trust, and mutual respect. The current status quo, heavily favors the dude side of things. Yes, there are women who believe that the playing field has been equalized to some degree, but I would argue that what has happened instead is a lowering of expectations. Young women no longer expect to be treated respectfully and have their companionship treated as a privilege. Men as absolved of any responsibility towards earning a woman’s trust before anything further happens. And whether you believe that marriage the stable nexus around to which raise a family: stable, lasting relationships are. I really don’t think our current culture is conducive to that.

Secondly, I would argue that the hookup culture is far from universal. America is a rapidly diversifying nation. People come from all sorts of religious, cultural, and native traditions that teach different attitudes with regards to marriage, sex, etc. Take Islam, for example, which stresses the marriage contract as the basis for male-female romantic relationships. As a result, young Muslims raised in the U.S. are exposed to radically different conceptualizations of how men and women should relate: through a traditional marriage framework based on religion, and the dating/hookup scene. Whether or not you agree one is more “right” than the other is a moot point. The reality is, we end up with some strange in-between. People date/hookup/etc at school or away from home, and among family they prescribe to tradition. What does this mean for our future? I really can’t say.

So what does our culture of romantic relationships say about our generation in general? I’ve given my opinion, but the discussion is far from over. Only the future will tell.

Blame Canada…Part I: Desi Ladies

Toronto Canada is one fascinating place.

Having spent a very eventful few weeks there recently, I just recently got the time to process, and finally got the time to sit my ass down on in front of computer to write about it. I could go on for days about all the crazy mind-bending shit that went down in Canadia. (Hence this being “Part I”). However, I recently began thinking about the subject of women of color and feminism after reading “The Or vs. the And”, a post to the ridiculously awesome blog Racalicious. 

Back to Toronto, Canada. I’m a born-and-bred Pacific Northwest/American chick, so being on the East side of Canada was still a culture shock. For one, it has one of the highest South Asian populations of any city in North America. Second, I’m related to about half of the Indians there (just kidding. sort of). I met more aunts, uncles, cousins once and twice removed, nieces and nephews than I can remember, and walking around was like literally being in a (cleaner, less insane) India. It was like a crash course: American/Canadian Desi 101, maximum exposure to Indian culture.

In retrospect, this was both positive and negative. Positive in that I got to meet a great many of my kin. Negative in that I realized my views regarding women, politics and so on were not the norm among my own people. For example: I had a conversation with a few other Indian ladies one night. We got to talking about the role of women in the Indian family (Not as dry as it may sound…trust me.) As expected, things got pretty heated.

According to a few, desi women were basically required to submit to their husbands leadership. i.e, whatever he says goes and a female can only “negotiate”. Not only that, women shouldn’t really work and if they do, they’re not raising their kids right. In their view, women are neither needed or should really have an active life outside of the home. And apparently they thought that Islam could justify all of the above. Oh, and lest I forget to mention: all of the women in question hold college degrees from India!

I was pretty shocked. Mainly because I didn’t expect educated women to think this way, and that they would be spewing the same old bullshit used by (some) South Asian and Muslim men to justify lording over their wives. It’s a disservice not only to Muslim women trying to work and make their way in a world that doesn’t approve them already, and to those men who’ve freed their minds from patriarchial ideology. And worse yet, it does a disservice to Islam, by misconstruing passages of the Qur’an and theological dictates–to justify oppression that does not exist within the religion. Regardless, it made me pretty sad. But I began to think: why?

Part of the answer, lies in the location itself. Like I mentioned before, Canada is a pretty diverse place. Where my fam lives you see nothing but Muslim, South Asian, and African people. White people are indeed the minority. It’s akin to living in a bubble: being surrounded by your own people is like a barrier: it insulates you from the outside Western world, and it keeps old modes of thought IN. Living in Seattle, my fam didn’t have that luxury. We point-blank HAD to deal with all sorts of non-Muslim, non Indian, non-ourselves people on a daily basis. No one was around to tell us to not step outside the bounds of conservative desi culture. That didn’t mean that we weren’t respectful of culture, but we simply weren’t immersed in it completely.

Anyway, its an interesting world out there, even within United States and Canada, where we find that where one lives, the environment has a huge impact on ideology and worldview. In sum, your ‘hood makes you who you are…for better or worse.