میرا ٹیڑھا پاکستان - Mera Terrha Pakistan

Lately, I’ve been reading online about feminism (particularly radical feminism) and its enthusiasm for women as superior beings. Way back when I learned about radical feminism, about 10 years ago, I learned about it being body-focused, body-centered, the liberation of the body. I read some Andrea Dworkin talking about penetration as a violent act and read it as a kind of drama piece, a monologue or something, rather than a treatise on the reality of human relationships. That’s not what she intended, probably, but who cares, I can read things how I like. The rest of radical feminism I read as being a woman-centred look at the universe. And I was certainly on board with that.

It occurs to me that I possibly missed some key texts in radical feminism. Otherwise, it would have hit me earlier that there’s a strong separatist trend in radical feminism, a desire to get these male buggers out of our hairs for good and just be women-on-women action all the time.

Speaking as a bisexual woman, I would like to say, ein minuten bitte.

First, the obvious: my dad’s a man, my best friend’s a man, my other best friend’s a man, my academic mentor is a man. My mom is married to a man, whom she loves and without whom she would be very unhappy. My mom, additionally, does not like sex with women and would not survive in a lezzie world. These are just some of the people I care about who would fall victim to a radical feminist holocaust of men. (Remember, please: I’m referring to a separatist strand of radical feminism, not all radical feminism everywhere for all time. Untwist knickers now.)

Second and quoting Philomela:

But…surely part of feminism is upholding women’s rights to have relationships with whoever they want, It also makes me think that many heterosexual feminists have no idea how power struggles and infighting play out in lesbian communities and relationships. It seems some heterosexual women don’t know that lots of lesbians are not feminists, that lots of lesbians perceive themselves and express themselves through certain sorts of masculinities, (in fact almost all of the women that make me go ooohh her! do  this)  that are often  seen as the antithesis of radical feminism.

When I was in university, it was possible to be a BUG - Bi Until Graduation - and I was lumped in with the BUG category because a) bi women are untrustworthy in their allegiance to queerness and b) I was Pakistani so for sure I’d go back in the closet when I went home (which I did, for a while, and I don’t apologize to anyone but myself for it). And if you were feeling BUGish, you would feel guilty about desiring men, doubt your own ability to stay the course of your beliefs as well as your feelings and belief yourself to be easily swayed by the cool factor. I thought I’d been easily swayed by the cool factor and that’s why my insides were turning to jelly at the sight, sound, smell, suhbat of certain women. This would not happen once I was out of this hellish den of hellish sinful sodomitic hell!

Quite.

Reading Philomela reminded me of all this just now. Of the sheer stupidity of thinking that bisexuality is a changeable state of being. Talk about self-oppression! “I am bi and with a man therefore I must be the enemy.” Meanwhile, straight women are going about saying they would be lesbian for the wo-man cause if only they could get up the guts to actually desire women. I know girls. Pussy smells funny. And you’d miss that lovely cock taste so much.

Being Bi is really fucking hard. It takes ages for your partner to feel secure that you’re not going to leave them for a different gender, that you’re not desiring the other parts in your sex life. And then there’s people constantly asking you, “Are you sure you are into men? Are you sure you’re into women? Are you sure? It doesn’t seem lke it, sometimes, that’s all. You’re not really the type.”

Kiss my ass. No bi person needs to feel guilty for desiring someone. There’s no superiority in partnering with a woman over a man. Love is love. Love may be political, but politics doesn’t dictate who you love; who you love explains your politics to you. Shows you your power and your privilege.

Asshattery. Making people feel like they’re not fighting the good fight because there’s a friendly penis in the vicinity. People are NICE. Some people are MEN. Get the fuck over it.

You are not - you were never - broken. That someone came and bent you at the soft places means that someone found your soft places. I have seen the skin where it’s not broken. I have seen the scar not made. You who cannot reach those parts feel welts where there is only purple. Pretty purple. Now that it’s gone. You were never broken, love. You stretched yourself straight and tall and beautiful and, maybe you didn’t notice, you’ve been walking on.

Once again, it’s been nearly a month since I’ve written anything. Last time I wrote, it was about feeling like a crappy partner because I like to be alone sometimes, or because I just feel like a crappy partner. Now, I’m feeling very homesick and horrendous, so there is more whining afoot. Consider yourself warned.

I’m finding it difficult, also, to deal with negative feedback I get on this blog. There isn’t much. And it’s not overt. But there is the questioning of my life and decisions, occasionally, that makes me uncomfortable. Not because the questions shouldn’t arise, but because sometimes I wonder if I’m cut out for answering those questions. Questions such as

• why are you whining about a relationship  when you went through so much to get it, and so did she?

how i read it: you broke up a het marriage, you ingrate, how dare you be anything but blissful after doing something so despicable.

This reading is my problem. It’s not what is said that I’m quarreling with here. It’s how I’m reading it. I must still feel guilty. Even though I haven’t go reason to, intellectually. I have no reason to because you can’t break up a marriage you’re not in. Lovely did that. Lovely wanted to do that.

But I feel the need to make a public defense of it because this is Pakistan and in Pakistan women should’t end marriages. Women should be grateful that someone married them in the first place.

That is also subtext. I live a very privileged life. I’m out to my friends. I’m comfortable in my sexuality.  God is kind to me. In my life, there is no overt demand on me for a) marriage to a man, b) gratitude for the attentions of a man, or c) harassment on becoming an ‘old maid’ no one will marry.   But my father wants grandchildren and a straight daughter from which they issue, and my partner’s family wants her not to live like a married person with another woman. If she does, she’ll bring shame. No one will marry her siblings. We’ll be stoned to death. Ad nauseum. Ad infinitum. Soon my father will add to this  a mix of difficulties that I can’t even predict yet. And I’m afraid of that. So, by extension, every bit of feedback that isn’t utterly supportive and woman-loving flowery yayful stuff makes me feel like dying.

That is entirely my problem. But I wish there was a way to get past it with other people. I mean, other than just me and Lovely and this blog. I wish there was some way to form a community around it so it didn’t just always feel like the hysterical edge of an abyss of badness.

There. Enough whine for you?

The purpose of this blog has been to out some struggles without outing me in a context where me being too out will not benefit me even a little. Outing the struggles serves only one purpose - finding people to engage them and so, make it easier for gay people to be gay in Pakistan.

The blogosphere is stupid place. It encourages stupidity. It did so way back when it wasn’t a blogosphere, but just a bunch of bulletin boards and chat rooms. It did so when all we had was listserves to wank on. But now, stupid has proliferated into a kind of art form.

My favourite stupid of the moment is the stupidity in using the term “safe space.” I learned it when I was in college, in my women’s studies classes, and I learned pretty much simultaneously that there is no such thing as “safe” space. There might be “safer” spaces, where you specify what constitutes your personal safety and can agree on that with a bunch of other people, without threatening them over some issue of safety that you haven’t discussed already because of your own privilege and blindness.

If this logic is not easily followable, it’s because I wrote it wrong. Suffice it to say that some contexts are safer for some people than other contexts; and when people are in the minority, then they will seek out similarly disenfranchised people, hang out together and feel relatively safe.

Well and good. But when feminists decide not to feel safe at the drop of a hat because someone else on another blog has said something disagreeable - I don’t know where to put my head.

So, two things that are pissing me off lately:

1. “I’m such a fucking victim and so in danger all the time because I have a cunt and the world is so unfriendly to cunts that, even though I spend all my time with other cunts, I’m in constant danger from the cuntless and the cunt-appropriator and the traitor cunts.” Fuck that shit. I don’t know what’s so  radical about only engaging the choir (she says as she refuses to invite her own non-choir to this post… sheepishness ensues). I don’t know what’s so radical about fighting with other people who are fighting for female power. I just don’t get it. What happened to engaging patriarchal discourse? Oh. This.

Shit, I linked it. Now I’m in trouble.

2. “You can speak here ’cause I say so and you’re annoying me and lalalala I’m putting finger in ears now, I can’t here you, OH SAY CAN YOU SEEEEE!”

On the one hand, I absolutely agree. It’s a blog. It’s owned by a person. It is not a public forum, it’s a private forum publicly available. The blogger has every right to throw whoever she wants off the blog.

On the other hand, it’s so ridiculous to start a controversial conversation, get a fuckload of negative feedback that argues with you, some of which is downright rude and obnoxious, and after a while, just delete the lot because you didn’t like how it went. The blogger is, I must point out, within her rights. But it’s just so… ridiculous.

I get the impulse. I’ve had some comments on here that really made me feel like shit. But people think like that. People have horrible opinions - of women, of queers, of sex-positive feminists, of feminists against prostitution and sex-work, of transgender folk, of bisexual folk. People are horrible.

But surely the purpose of blogging publicly is to reduce the horribleness of people, one’s own and other people’s? I mean, what’s a feminist intervention if you’re in a safe space all the damn time?

There’s a bunch of examples I could link, but I’m lazy and I’d rather spend the time weeding through the reference literature for my thesis than trawl through the web re-looking at things that pissed me off.

Yeah, I’m just that pussy.

Agena and Aliyah Battle, Sedrick Harrington

FBI Crime Alert for Eddie Harrington