Female women's rights advocates: The convenience of the plural identity for the singular benefit

The Devyani khobragade incident is stuttering, heaving and swirling on two subcontinents, buffeted by those little storms that are created out of ego, one-upmanship, brinkmanship and stark raving stupidity. When, where and whom that particular teacup hurricane is going to hit next has been bisected, trisected, dissected, reflected, detected and chopped up into a thousand itty-bitty pieces by a thousand itty-bitty people. Ugh! Let is lie…let it fly…let it die.  I am not interested.

Ms. Khobragade does interest me though. Not because she is a diplomat whose arrest started an excellently constructed, beautifully sound-tracked and brilliantly choreographed diplomatic and legislative ballet but rather, as an alleged women’s rights advocate.  I use that term “alleged” in its accusatory form because she has never been charged with that particular crime and any claims to her guilt on the matter are based, as far as I am aware, only on the fact that she held a conversation on “Women’s Rights and the Influence of Demographics in India” at the Australian High Commission on the New York Young Leader’s program in April 2013. According to the Australian High Commission, “as a woman of the Dalit caste, Dr. Khobragade provided a unique perspective on gender and social equality in India and she spoke passionately about women’s rights”.

Hrmph!

Phrases like “unique perspective” and “passionate speech”, need to be second guessed when they are part of diplomatese and she could very well be unique in condemning women’s rights and passionately speaking against the inclusive treatment of Dalits in Indian society. Possible but doubtful. As a diplomat she just wouldn’t dare even if such was her belief. Overall, I think there is sufficient evidence to prove that Ms. Khobragade is guilty of being at least a woman who stands for women's right if not an outright women’s rights advocate.

Why guilty?

Simply because the alleged slavitude in which she is supposed to have kept her female domestic help should automatically revoke her right to speak on behalf of the rights of women.

In the name of women, I smite thee!

Now, I am not sure what caste that domestic help Ms. Richard belonged to.  I am not entirely sure if the alleged abuses on the part of Ms. Khobragade happened at all. I am not certain that her alleged behavior towards her maid was a nasty personal payback against all the abuse that has been hurled upon the heads of Dalit women by people of higher castes for centuries. I am surprised that someone though she could transport a tradition based South-Asian idea of what constitutes the working hours of a live-in domestic to a rights regime based America. I am unclear whether an Asian female rights advocate has an entirely different idea of what constitutes a right than her western counterparts. I am incapable of looking into a crystal ball and finding out if the charges would ever be proven. Regardless of all that, and despite of the fact that in the diplomatic and  legal worlds, truth is primarily an inconvenience, it seems as if there is sufficient factual and circumstantial evidence to attest to at least some parts of Ms. Khobragade’s treatment of her maid. Paragraph 5 of the “overview” section of the indictment states “Once in the United States, Khobragade made the victim work often up to 100 or more hours per week without a single full day off, which, based on the promised salary of $573 per month, would result in an actual hourly wage of $1.42 per hour or less” .

At the very least she was underpaid with respect to her “employment rights” in that specific geographic situation. If not, there would be no need for the legal dance, no basis for the fevered behind-the-scenes orchestration, no requirement for the immunity drama – act 1, scenes 1-3. Let us therefore, reasonably conclude that she did violate the rights of her maid and that therefore, she should not have the right to speak on behalf of women’s rights.

I wish Ms. Khobragade is an isolated case. She is not. I know of a female Gender Lead of an IFI in Sri Lanka who forced her eight months pregnant assistant to walk up and down two flights of steps eight times in 40 minutes to remake a photocopy of a document she corrected slightly each time it was brought to her for review. I have had a male express his disgust at  a female head-of-department at a leading university in Sri Lanka who refused to let a clerk working under her go home to feed her newborn half an hour before close “because she had finished her maternity leave” despite the fact that the girl was expressing milk and her saree jacket was soaked through with it. I have seen women exercise the slightest differential in power to abuse women under them - more brutally, more manipulatively, more creatively and more disgustingly than a man ever could - even as they speak uniquely and passionately about the rights of women.

Seneviratne is a revolted and worried man.

He is revolted because there is something obscene and vulgar about the aforementioned abuses that women perpetrate on women. Make no mistake; he is angry when men abuse women. But he is disgusted when women abuse women and, when a female women’s rights advocate does it, he is horrified to the point of hysteria. He knows that an advocate for any kind of right deserves the worst possible censure if he or she violates, directly or implicitly, the slightest, smallest part of that right.

He is worried because his belief system is compromised. He believed that women should speak for their rights but that belief he no longer holds to. He understands that rights advocates have to first execute their responsibilities to the rights they uphold but he is no longer sure that female women’s rights advocates are acting with responsibility in their personal engagement of women.

He sees a critical slicing of the whole issue. A woman who speaking for women’s rights, is speaking for a woman’s rights – her own. He sees this in an alarmingly large percentage of female women’s rights activists and advocates. He sees the collectivization of the gender simply as a ruse. A convenience.  He sees that as long as she can obtain her rights by utilizing “women”… “woman” be damned if that woman is not herself.

Ms. Khobragade and quite a few others of her ilk, fit this slicing to the T. They will talk rights all the way to heaven and back, encompassing the planet in waves of passionate appeals but fail to see that the woman in front of them needs their protection – not the exercise of their power differential. Ms. Khobragade’s missive to America as she left it “You have lost a good friend. It is unfortunate. In return, you got a maid and a drunken driver” smacks of an attitude that places equality and rights second to social status and differences in power strata. Coming from a rights advocate this is bad. Coming from a Dalit it is awful. The female women’s rights advocate will, in the name of women, ask for the protection of women’s rights in the plural but she cannot and will not protect a woman’s rights in the singular.

“Protection” is a word that is very subjective and easily subject to attack. It is a vicious word. It is the word that has been the cause of most, if not all the wars on this planet. Gender and rights tied to this word have had the same result.

Be that as it may, in general, women can and do protect children and look to their well being and they are far better at it than any man could ever be. In general, men can and do protect women and they are far better at it than any woman could ever be.

Yet, both have frequently fallen down on the job. Both have abused their position and stature in the ordering of societies.  Both have violated trust.

A little known statistic is that percentage of women who abuse, neglect, cause pain of mind or assault children who they are supposed to protect is comparable to that percentage of men who abuse, neglect, cause pain of mind or assault women who they are supposed to protect. The former is not very fashionable to speak about, hold conferences over, discuss incessantly, create vigilante or advocacy groups to counter or finance to eradicate. The later- well! We can’t get enough of it.

Who respects whom depends
on where, why and how

In their manipulative advocacy, based on leveraging disinterested collectives for personal advantage, these women do great disservice to the majority of women for whom these rights are irrelevant and irreverent.   Through these moves, that majority gain neither respect nor protection. In their communities, they won’t have constitutional guarantees or legal frameworks or social institutions or trustable enforcement agencies to watch over them and allow them to exercise their new found "rights" and they will lose the only respect and protection they have – that of their families and that of their communities. 

Seneviratne would like advocates for a particular cause to be truthful enough not to take an exception and promote is as a rule using collectives as an excuse for individual benefit. He would like them to think wide, think deep and be compassionate in their engagement. He would like them to realize that anger and fear are horrible masters when it comes to advocacy. He would like them to have untrammeled sight of the fact that rights are preceded by responsibility. He would like them to understand that contrary to popular hope, belief and bulldog dogma, no one is born equal and every historical attempt to enforce equality on the unequal has failed without exception. 

Seneviratne does not see any of this happening.  Not now. Not in our part of the world. Here, we are attempting to impose equity and equality measures on a culture attuned to understanding life in terms of disparities and differences. What we end up with is a murky swill within which splutters, heaves and swirls a clash of ingredients in part fertilized by attitudes and traditions and in part fertilized by rights. That gunk is unpalatable. Those who try to digest it end up burping loud, belching bad and getting dirty looks from all sides.

Unfortunately for them, Ms. Khobragade & Co. seems to have taken a very large helping of it and are now looking silly.

(My wife, Manjula contributed great insight to this post. She earns far more than I do, works far harder than I do, looks after our family to a level that is impossible for me to do, knows her great strengths as a human and a woman, understands her weaknesses as a woman and a mother, knows mine as a husband, a father and a man, and navigates through that choppy sea without capsizing)

Super nothing: The choice of nutrients over food

Serried procession of the outcomes of processes

The supermarket is an amazing place. Whenever I am in one of those joints I wonder how much work must go into stocking those shelves with nothing, encouraging buyers into believing that there is something and hypnotizing them into thinking they got everything when they step out of its doors.  A truly superlative effort. A superior hoodwinking. And, of course, supremely superfluous. Make no mistake folks, those markets really deserve the adjective “super”!

Actually , I am kidding good people. Modern man is easy to hoodwink and even easier to hypnotize. That there thingy that the supermarkets do to the consumer does not require an MBA or thrillingly creative adverts. It is the easiest sell in the world and requires no marketing at all on the part of the market. All they need to do is keep proliferating like a virus, knocking down the small time grocers and open markets so that when people need to get anything, they have no choice but to go to that brightly lit, rack-filled box and get whatever they are selling. I emphasis – get whatever they are selling – not what you want to buy or what you need to buy or what is good for you.

Mostly, what you end up buying is nothing.


Did you know that in Sri Lanka, we have close to 500 natural foods without counting animal products and multi-purpose plants that are spices or medicines but double up as foods? Do you know the amazing properties of the Durian shell curry? Have you ever eaten a croton salad?  Whether you know of these things or not, I am sure you definitely know that there are no more than 10 types of grain, 45-50 types of vegetables and about 30 - 35 types of animal products at a supermarket. You are also probably aware that you purchase on a regular basis only 12 of that entire set.  Everything else came out of a machine. We call them processed foods. Some… such as TVP are so processed that you can leave it out for as long as you like and not a single roach, rat or mite will touch it  - essentially proving that it is not food! In fact, if you take the contents of five of the seven aisles and leave it all out, no animal will touch any of it except for that really silly animal known as a human being who has been … you got it… hypnotized into believing that nothing is actually something and that textured pieces of old leather is a good, healthy and nutritional oral input into its diseased body.

Ah, I’ve covered in that last sentence three words I want to worry you with in this post. “Health”, “Nutrition” and “Disease”.  These days, very few people consume food although a great many people eat nutrients. These days, no one takes treatment for illnesses but everyone has to contend with diseases. These days, almost everyone is doing everything they can to keep themselves in that perpetually debilitated state that results from a 15 year old disease known as CCC - chronic calorie cholera. All in the name of health. This fifteen year old fashion is supposed to be the outcome of increasing advances and developments in the sum total of knowledge of the human race. A small problem here though.

Nutrients have not made us any healthier nor has evacuating calories made us any slimmer nor have medicines cured diseases. Instead, all they have done is encourage the human animal to go to that there supermarket to feed its habit of stuffing its face with various chemicals that are either bottled, packed, sealed or shrink wrapped, look weird, smell weirder and have tiny little labels on them saying “nutritional information” or “active ingredient”.  Sounds like the type of thing they put on a barrel of nuclear waste eh? Most have even tinier disclaimers that notify the poor sod who buys something that the manufacturing company is not responsible for a stalk growing out of its head after consuming the product. Come now folks – if people need to be told that they are handling a bomb – then – to all intents and purposes, that is not food. If they have to be told of the constituent chemicals and contraindications of something, then that something should be kept sealed in a leak-proof vault, 2000 feet underground in the middle of a desert. Yet, we, in our blind vote for uninformed, misinformed “wisdom” believe that our neighbor’s Doberman is a greater threat than the nameless goo, grind or gravel inside that next bottle we pick up at a supermarket and hold in our hands.  This is where the meanness of the process of marketing nothing comes to the fore. There is near universal acceptance of the usefulness of the useless.  There is a near total addiction to the desire on the part of a human being to make incessant trips from home to supermarket and back. And the result is…….?

Well!

When everyone is addicted to the same thing, no one considers it a bad thing!

No one realizes that they’ve been had. No one notices that they have been taken in, hook line and sinker. No one understands that they have been sold down the river of marketing mass hypnosis. No one understands that they will never eat well nor ever get healthy.

No one considers the fact that we need to cure ourselves of the habit of popping nutrients and pills do we?

No one thinks – “Oh hell, I’ve been taking nutrients for yonks but I am still as fat as a cheeseburger, I am breathless, I cannot lift this stupid sofa nor climb that silly tree so I think it’s time I  acknowledge to myself what a terribly debilitating addiction I have, check into rehab at ‘the natural world’ and start eating food for a change”.  No one thinks, “ Oh zark, I’ve been taking meds forever and I still cannot kick any of the things that cause me dis-ease so its time I check my doctor into rehab at ‘Cheaters Anonymous’ and start guzzling a few medicinal plants”.  No one thinks, "Oh darn, we eat the same food but my wife is a stick insect and I am a hippo so what's this rubbish about calories". No one asks “Why are there 40,000 advertisements for so-called foods  that come off a processing line but none that say ‘eat something natural today at one tenth the cost of this here supplement and you never have to spend money on this here supplement or any other supplement’”.  

Everyone knows what a pathetic creature a heroin addict is. Sick, sniveling, snorting, slobbering, watering and blanking… insatiably expending its life force and its resources on dreams and puffs of smoke… that apology for a human would rather die than kick its habit. I beg to differ. The heroin addict knows what it is doing, understands the consequences and accepts them. 

The majority of nothing guzzlers don’t even know they have a terminal, category 5 addiction problem. 

However, ask them to remove three of the seven staples of their lunch (dhal curry, fried potatoes, kan-kun/mukunuvenna/gotukola, fish, sambol and papadam) and they would not call it lunch. Remove chicken fried rice from the dinner menu and they would go hungry to bed. Prevent them from taking a shot of coffee and creamer and they would not wake up. Stop them from stocking their homes with a zillion useless canned or packed or shrink wrapped products and they would overthrow the government. Tell them to stop meds and they would drop dead. Ask them to rotate 400+ natural foods over 12 months eating at least seven of them a meal at 1/10th the cost of a pack of chicken fried rice and they would start shivering uncontrollably. Tell them that eating an average of just 12 types of natural foods out of about the 100 or so available at a supermarket would  be the equivalent of intermarriage and would leave them stunted, ill and unable to cope, and they would kill you rather than change their consumption patterns. Tell them that calories and fatty acids are only marginally important and that coconut oil is better than vegetable oil and they would wonder what sort of nuthouse you escaped from. Tell them that all they’ve been doing is stuff up on the equivalent of stale, 3 day old cement and they would want you restrained in a straightjacket and thrown in a nuthouse as fast as possible - with a board around your name saying "danger to society" . 

Remove the average human being’s access to a supermarket and you would think that a heroin addict is an angel in comparison to what that very very pathetic wretch would become. Me?  Rather than have that eventuality visit me, I’d rather collapse in utter ecstasy while waiting to pay heart attack prices for something whose total substance is a little less than a puff of air – to an apron clad kid - at a checkout counter – in a supermarket – in some unfashionable neon-lit box - anywhere in the world. 

Enough!

Let me now take a rest, gasp in a few labored breaths, reach for a soda picked up at a supermarket, and then… proceed to cackle insanely and hysterically while blubbering about the millions of chemicals used on so-called natural vegetables and explain to myself patiently, carefully, thoughtfully and rationally, the great technologically engineered marvel of vegetarian chicken and keel over insensate as only a true addict can when his habit has come home to roost. Do I sound like I am super mad? Well, the supermarket is only partly to blame for that.  My super dumbness, just like that of any substance abuser, is the bigger culprit.