I wish I were a man. Really. Their problems seem so much more…significant, no?
At least, that’s how I feel after reading a Washington Post article entitled, New Wives Bring New Hope to Sri Lankan Widowers.
Thanggod! Some good news about Sri Lanka, I thought, as I clicked the link and started reading:
Plunged into despair after the tsunami killed his wife and two of his four children, Ruknadhan Nahamani passed the first months after the disaster in an alcoholic fog, drowning his sorrows in the potent local liquor known as arrack . But grief was only part of the problem, he said.
“There was nobody to wash my clothes and take care of my kids when I went out to work,” said the wiry 32-year-old fisherman, whose teeth are stained red from chewing betel nut, a mild stimulant. “It was really difficult.”
But Nahamani is a single parent no more. In June, he exchanged wedding vows and jasmine garlands at a Hindu temple with a woman from a nearby village. “We are very happy,” he said outside his tent at a refugee camp as his new wife, Leelawathi, heated cooking oil for the evening meal.[link]
The man survived a tsunami and lost almost his entire family and lives in a refugee camp. Of course he deserves all the happiness he can find.
But the grinchy pebble I call a heart couldn’t muster more joy when I remembered all the war widows in Sri Lanka. Some 40,000 at last count.
And the fact that women drowned in massively disproportionate numbers (three times more) during the tsunami because they’re not taught to swim.
And the fact that widows are still treated like amoral harlots in most of South Asia.
Where’s the bloody community support for them?According to Sri Lankan human rights activist and lawyer Manouri Muttetuwegama:
“Widows were marginalised by their communities, orphaned girls were deprived of basic education, and thousands of female-headed families struggling to survive are still waiting to be counted in official statistics so that they can receive aid”, she says.[link]
But let’s return to the happy fisherman:
In [his] village, 31 of the 37 men whose wives died in the tsunami have remarried, according to local officials and aid workers.
In the first months after the tsunami, virtually all of the 37 widowers [of one village] dealt with their grief — along with more pragmatic concerns, such as who was going to cook for them and raise their children — by drinking themselves senseless.
Widowers from the village appear to have had little difficulty lining up new wives, often with the aid of relatives or friends.
Why do I feel sour reading this? Why is it ok for men to have a pity parties while women are expected to hide and fend for their shameful selves? Can you even imagine how this village would react if a woman hit the arrack while her kids yowl with hunger around her?
Maybe I’m still a little steamed from watching 1-800-INDIA on PBS tonight. Young, single women earning enough to support themselves and their families…I was all set to have a happy hour in front of the telly. The show did address some ways in which traditional gender roles are loosening, but single girls, living with (female) roommates? Aunties, Uncles, and SuitableBoys, all say – “Sluts!”
Dismayingly, it’s a hypocritical refrain I hear even in NY, among the American-born…Men want to meet a sexy thing at a club, but not the woman they want to marry. What gives?
I ain’t trying to pour haterade on all the lovely SepiaBoys who visit this site. But while we tut-tut over the latest rural Panchayat decree sentencing a woman to be gang-banged by half the village, don’t we feel rather superciliously removed from it all?
I dunno. If you want to discuss this further, please come find me. I’ll be at the bar with a hipflask full of arrack.
Nykol,
Read my third point on my post #36. Obviously — depending on the woman’s personality, environment, and/or social circle/peer group — some Indian women will have a certain preferencce for a particular non-Indian background, others will have no prefernces at all (“equal opportunity dating attitude”), and with others it’ll depend on what kind of mood/frame of mind they happen to be in at the time.
Punjabi Boy,
Mate, just when I thought the tone of SM couldn’t get any lower after Cicatrix’s original comment, you then drag it down even further !!
Very funny though, Peebs laughing
Jai:
Thanks for the reference. The reason why I noticed that part if the quote is because its reminiscent of many conversations/debates I’ve had with various folks about dating outside of one’s “race.” From the above quote, it seems as if for those quoted, there isn’t any other alternative: desi or white. In a number of communities that quote would be construed as exclusionary and for some, be read as “dating up (or laterally),” so to speak (both socially and economically).
But I definitely get the point, and the other comment that someone made about marrying “outside” one’s ethnic group as being taboo. I’m well too aware of that one.
I am curious: So, you think that women go to clubs with an intention to find the man they want to marry, and not a sexy thing?
untrue, it is because they have established social-networks and it is unnecessary to go beyond them. That happens to a lot of kids from the IITs as well. They find wayy too many alumni from college and find it unnecessary to break into too many new social circles.
Ofcourse, that does mean that they have a disproportionately large number of male friends 🙂
Nykol,
True but it depends on how the particular person regards members of other ethnic/religious communities — they may or may not regard dating white people as “dating up”. Plus there are other factors involved, eg. in many cases Indian girls will deliberately target non-South Asian guys (or at least avoid getting involved with South Asian men) because there are certain restrictive attitudes or cultural practices — even amongst the 2nd-Geners — that they’d prefer to get away from.
As people have already mentioned elsewhere on this thread, I think we all have to be careful not to generalise; some Indian girls will date men from other backgrounds for the reason I’ve just given, others will do it as some kind of immature act of rebellion or an ego-driven need to be (and to be seen as being) “unconventional” and “scandalous”, others will genuinely not believe it is correct/moral to discriminate against people on ethnic grounds and so will be more concerned about dating men based on some positive qualities they perceive in them, regardless of their background.
Of course there is also a noteable segment of 2nd-Gen Indian women, at least here in London, who are more concerned with pursuing money and the associated lifestyle, and will therefore go after any man (regardless of his background) who can offer them this lifestyle. But by no means does this apply to everyone, of course. I guess in some ways it’s a factor of the money-obsessed aspect of Indian culture, and although women everywhere may joke “I just want to marry a rich man” (ie. not for genuine love), the problem is that many younger Indian women actually pursue this for real.
It’s dating such people that’s regarded as taboo, not just marriage.
DesiDudeInAustin,
Well, maybe both explanations are correct in different measures, depending on the particular person, no ? I’m sure you won’t disagree that there is a very strong cliquey element to Indian culture/society — there’s a pronounced group-focused dynamic to it all, perhaps a little more than there is within the mainstream Western population.
What bothers me most about the categorization of women (slut or not) is that women are reduced from their complex selves to only that part which pertains to their sexuality and their behavior towards men. And sometimes, women (especially Indian) play right into the hands of these people by asserting their freedom and independence by whatever behavior is obsessed about and considered taboo, be it $2 whore clothes, dating, etc. In my opinion, a step forward is made not so much when women are able to dress in $2 outfits, but when we are able to focus on our career, hobbies, family, religion, (anything besides men or sex or club behavior) without having to explain ourselves or apologize for the lack of preoccupation with the latter.
It’s dating such people that’s regarded as taboo, not just marriage.
can you elaborate? my gf is white, and the only time i’ve been perceived anyone doing a double-take out of noticing us was when we were returning from a restaurant in the north beach district of san francisco and i could swear this brown chik talking with her friends (also brown) gave me a weird look. of course, she could have been giving me a weird look because i still had linguini on my lip, i don’t know. no one notes my relationship as peculiar in my circles, but then, i don’t have any brown friends really, so i am curious if there is a taboo perception among 2nd gen.
Razib: don’t know if I would say it’s a taboo, but among Americans of desi origin one often encounters an attitude (particularly if it’s a desi guy dating a Caucasian woman) of not taking the relationship seriously, or of weak-kneed armchair psychoanalysis (the guy is really just a self-loather; he wants to show he’s arrived, etc. etc.) I’ve always been puzzled why desi-Americans seem to have such hang-ups about inter-racial dating; with FOBs it is much simpler: either one is cool with the idea, or one just isn’t…
Jai:
I apologize if I sounded as if I were generalizing. I am actually just attempting to link some phenomena together (even though it may be faulty).
There are some common trends among desi and non-desi women who are not white:
-often dating/marrying inside one’s own ethnic group tends to be problematic, for the same reasons mentioned in above posts.
-although there are a number of non whites who are desi or from other ethnic groups who are well-off/wealthy, that number (at least in the States) is still relatively small in comparison (although growing). Therefore, the statement “I want to marry/hook up with money” is implicitly tied to its ideal type: a wealthy,white male. Wealth is still tied to race and power, and the attainment of such is also dependent on the ability/willingness to assimilate into its necessary hegemonic constructs.
And yes – it’s not just marrying, it’s also dating. Same here.
How did I miss this! DD, I’m furiously blushing from head to foot! (and I don’t care if you said that tongue-in-cheek – I’ll take my compliments wherever I can find them:P)
But you’re off by one teeny detail. You can’t suckerpunch when double-fisting drinks. But I’ve still got your back girrl! I’m known to kick shins with the silent speed of a ninja 🙂
These comments about how indian girls only go to clubs where indian guys are and how these indian girls need to turn elsewhere are OBVIOUSLY from people not living in the midwest.
I’m pretty jealous that indian guys have indian girls that show an active interest – of course, it seems that our brown brothers f- it up by getting drunk, fighting, etc. Out here, talking to a Indian girl at a non-Indian event is tough. A non-Indian comes up and pulls some corny-ass line or does something inappropriate/odd is seen as “charming.” We do that kinda stuff, and we’re automatically labelled as weird. Not only that, most of the brown girls here don’t even show interest in us, but some non-indian will have her all over his shit by just saying hi. I have a girlfriend (from the east coast – surprise, surprise), and she noticed this too.
So, I guess I’m trying to say this – before the girls start bashing the guys, give us a chance…Show a little interest, or even if not interested, for god’s sake at least BE FRIENDLY! Talking to the vanilla girls isn’t that hard, but some ‘desi’ girls out here won’t even acknowledge your presence, even if you’re just saying hi.
-although there are a number of non whites who are desi or from other ethnic groups who are well-off/wealthy, that number (at least in the States) is still relatively small in comparison (although growing). Therefore, the statement “I want to marry/hook up with money” is implicitly tied to its ideal type: a wealthy,white male. Wealth is still tied to race and power, and the attainment of such is also dependent on the ability/willingness to assimilate into its necessary hegemonic constructs.
what kind of gibberish is this?
Asian Indians lead Asian minority on socio-economic indicators: U.S. Census:
Asian Indians, often labeled the “model minority,” is living up to its name going by the latest statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau. This group has the highest levels of education, earns the highest incomes, is most likely to have management level jobs in the country says the Census Bureau report, titled ‘We the People: Asians in the United States 2000.’
i knew a programmer who made real good money. he complained that chix didn’t like geeks and that’s why he hadn’t had a girlfriend in years. i told him straight up that he stank and that his dandruf was out of control. i think we need to keep a perspective and realize that a lot of time people have little success with the opposite gender because of their own failings or their own high standards. now, if my friend had been asian or brown or black perhaps he would have tacked on “white chix don’t dig non-white dudes” onto his litany of excuses. of course there are serious issues, but a lot of times i get the impression that individuals are conflating their own personal failings with a structural-social ailment.
STL_Maximus, I’m sorry to say that saying “hi” back gets taken as an invitation to grope. Not by all desi men, of course, or even most. Maybe it’s just a few, really. But I’m afraid those few times stick out.
I’d like to say it’s just the young hyena-like thug-wannabees who do this, but I’ve said hi back to old Uncle-ji types, just to be polite, and found a too-hot hand suddenly around my waist. Ew. Since I dress like I just ransacked a thrift store, It’s doubly weird. Only it’s not, right? Cuz if I were a ‘good’ girl, I’d be home.
razib:
The term “model minority” proves my point. That label speaks for itself.
And please keep your tone civil. “Gibberish really wasn’t necessary.
Maxi, it works in the opposite direction to. Like some white cat stepped up to me in the bar with bad intentions because he thought I was checking out his desi girlfriend. I have also met desi girls who proudly announce that they only date white guys. By the way, none of this bothers me in the least, date who you want to date. That seemingly liberal attitude doesn’t exclude the observation that some white guys have a straight up fetish for desi girls, and some desi girls straight up fetishize themselves for white guys. I did choke the shit out of the cat in the bar, if for no other reason than his girl was hideous.
The term “model minority” proves my point. That label speaks for itself.
And please keep your tone civil. “Gibberish really wasn’t necessary.
ok, tell me what a “hegemonic construct” is.
bureau-cat writes:
Seemingly being the operative word…
M. Nam
razib:
here’s wiki’s brief take on hegemony.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
When I used the word “construct,” I meant what folks unconsciously or consciously make up vis a vis hegemony. That’s all. No diss to South Asians at all. I was just thinking in terms of a larger sociological context.
So, in terms of “model minority,” a good question to ask is: to whose standards are we referring? The US Census Bureau’s? Their own standards? The “American Dream”?
She delivers helicopter kicks without spilling a drop!
As for the hi=please grope me, you’re dead on. At a desi New Year’s party last year, brown guys were acting like horny cocker spaniels. Where most guys will at least chat you up or say hey before the commence trying to dryhump your leg, these dudes would just roll up and the ladies were all like “um excuse me, just what are you doing back there??” Meanwhile, me and my pal were basically playing “whack-a-mole” and defending our single friends’ honor as we ran the leg-humpers off one by one…
Guys, at least chat a girl up rather than namelessly pelvic thrusting at her leg. please.
. So, in terms of “model minority,” a good question to ask is: to whose standards are we referring? The US Census Bureau’s? Their own standards? The “American Dream”?
look, the problem i have with this sort of “discourse” is that people often take me on a merry ole chase. let me give you an example.
“brown people are oppressed.”
me: but brown americans are affluent.
“yeah, but that’s cuz we work like dogs in business!”
me: actually, brown americans are often professionals.
“yeah, but that’s cuz we suck up to the white man and become coopted by the mainstream power structure.”
etc. etc. etc.
honestly, it sounds like a whole lot of griping and no much doing (to change your own situation). it is almost certainly logically impossible for everyone to live in the best of all possible worlds because the preferences and values of individuals sometimes contradict each other. life is about compromise. you can sit and deconstruct to the cows come home, i really don’t see it getting us anywhere. so, stuff like incomes, median asset, % with college degrees, that tends to get the conversation flowing in my opinion because they are hard tangible facts. something like a “hegemonic construct” is slippery as an eel because everyone has a different construct of a different hegemony. i had friends in the asian pacific student union in college and the spent a lot of time showing just how oppressed asian americans were. boy did i have to listen to long lectures about how being a “model minority” really sucked, that being pressured by your parents to become a professional, or working long hours in your own business, that those were terrible choices forced on asian americans by the powers that be. i didn’t buy it (my gf is a white business owner, and she works 7 days a week, 10 hours a day, for most of the year).
Its too much to be a desi guy. I am feeling under attack and pressure. Everyone is cussing us. Only desi men are dogs apparently. Everyone has a story about how desi men are scumbags. Everyone extrapolates everything from individuals they met.
I can take it anymore!
No more Mr Nice Guy!
I’ve had enough!
As you say I am so shall I be!
All those tight-pant camel-toe girls get ready!
I wanted to be a sensitive indie boy but there’s no point as I have brown skin we are all bastards!
You pushed me to it!
You made me bad!
All women are sluts!
There I said it!
I hope you are all happy turning a sensitive introverted boy like me into a hard hearted sexist bastard who only wants one night stands!
You pushed me away!
I was so sensitive and kind!
Now I am a cold hearted lothario!
Because you never understood me!
Wow.
I want to be like this guy.
Did your face look like Al Pacino in Scarface, you know, when he is about to kill someone?
Psst! Punjabi Boy….I know where you can get arrack by liter. Top shelf, first class! wholesale prices, yaar? very cheap. You are seeming to need a lot, and I am liking you very much, so I can sell for special price!
Do Indian girls really expect to find their future life partners at clubs? Men in general act like jerks in clubs, regardless of colour or creed. If you want to find a nice Indian boy, major in computer science or engineering. Not all geeks are averse to regular bathing and grooming, and the female-to-male ratio is so skewed in those disciplines that even not-so-cute girls get treated like Helen of Troy by their male counterparts.
P. Boy Try it sometime, you seem to need the release. All I have in this world is my balls, and my word, and I don’t break ’em for nobody, jou understand?
cicatrix
Dont try and stop me!
Just leave me alone to nurse my poor wounded poets soul.
I am going home to burn all my Smiths and Morrisey albums.
Oh dear.
Well, for the oh dear comment to work, you’d have to hear me quietly chuckling over this converstion…..
Poor things.
I try to release at least once a day.
Hopefully with MD quietly chuckling in the room
b-crat
Didnt the police catch you after you strangled the cat?
P. Biddy: Nah, I pleaded self-defense.
So you can strangle cats in self defence? Cool.
PB, some chicks like the hardened cynical dude who treats them like crap. You’ll probably get more action now that you’ve dropped the cool nice guy bit 😉
M.I.A. is a gangsta ho, I bet she’d be all over you.
I would make her my bitch 😉
And if any cat looked at her funny I’d strangle that cat.
Punjabi Boy & MIA. That’s hard kaur 😉
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Women have often felt that the instant they say hi back to a guy who’s approached them, or treated them like human in the least possible way, the guy assumes she wants him and digs his heels in. (We’ve all been there, right? Dancing at a club, someone comes up from behind, etc. If you show even an iota of interest or treat them like they exist, they assume you want them.) This is ALL men, not just the desis, unfortunately.
It’s a little unfair to generalize this just to desi guys. As another midwestern-ite, I find that desi guys generally aren’t comfortable approaching desi girls in a non-predominantly desi situation. It’s probably because desi girls are leery of desi men who are too friendly, and immediately write them off as wife-seeker or weird. (My brother constantly complains about how desi girls won’t even make eye contact with him at clubs, so he doesn’t even try anymore… ladies! You’re really missing out.)
Ladies…if you’re at a club, try to treat that desi guy (fob or not! you could be surprised 🙂 who approaches you as politely as you would treat the white guy who approaches you. If you’re not interested, just say so, but don’t roll your eyes and laugh at him to his face…that’s a little bit rude. (Obviously I don’t have stats for you but I’ve seen this happen in my own group of friends.)
Unless you do a “Michael Hutchence”, and accidentally strangle yourself first whilst searching for release. MD might not always be there.
cicatrix
First off, since no body seems willing or able to say this, it needs to be mentioned just how offensive this whole thread is. Brown guys don’t hit on you in clubs and notice only the cameltoed girls is very comparable to drunken dysfunctional hell of some Sri Lankan man trying to put his life back together. I can see how being marginally employed and having barely enough resources for survival stripped away by one of the largest disasters is really just the same as the upper middle class troubles of an American Indian Princess Honestly it really is All About You.
punjabiboy
Grow up. If you’re going to be a jerk, don’t be a fucking martyr while doing it. It’s comes across as a bit desperate.
But if you really want to get rid of your smiths and morrisey albums, I’ll buy them from you.
Ok, lay off Michael Hutchence, twenty-somethings. I saw him open up for Adam Ant in 1983. He was really, really gorgeous. The most beautiful thing I’d every seen, sexy, tan, and mesmerizing. Really. I mean, really.
Vandesi, yes, this thread is a bit silly, but the kids are only having a little fun. And I don’t think that anyone begrudges those men a chance at happiness after what has happened to them. I don’t think anyone is making an equivalence – the comments section here often goes off on tangents that have nothing to do with the original post.
Dude I’m rolling on the floor with laughter!
razib:
you are totally right – about the melodramatic complaints and griping about being a “model minority.” also, we could deconstruct this til the cows come home – but that’s just not gonna happen. we’re both too busy for that. but just a few points on “hard, tangible, facts” and some other things to which you point:
-although useful to some degree, the “hard, tangible facts” can also be misleading and also used to pit ethnic groups against each other. The label “model minority” is capable of doing that very thing – it’s divisive and patronizing. The implicit message is “See, they’re a good minority. They can do it, why can’t you?” This message is then translated into other ethnic groups as having some type of character flaw without taking the social and historical factors into account.
-just because one is brown doesn’t mean that the individual isn’t privileged or looking for ways to gain access to privilege and power. You can be both brown, black, for that matter – green AND affluent, yet still be a casualty of oppression by simply being different (sex, class, whatever).
All I’m saying is – virtually all folks navigate the “system” to their own advantage. Some people have more access than others and do such in different ways. The phenomenon of marrying/dating “up” or “out” is just one of those ways. And of course I’ve seen this in both Hispanic and Black communities.
and thanks for bringing the griping point up. i forget about that sometimes.
razib and nykol, if you haven’t read karma of brown folk by vijay prasad, pick it up. very interesting discussion of the “model minority myth” as it applies to south asians. it’s very much in line with the posts you guys made and he actually did do his research until the cows came home 😉 (in my opinion anyway, though i don’t agree with everything he says)
the complaints about desi guys on this post are amusing to me because they apply to sleazy guys in general. not all desi guys are sleazy, and not all desi guys are pulling off this act at the clubs. i spent most of last year subsumed in the the “club kid” culture of SF and i met a lot of brown and non-brown people. if girls want to go to clubs to have fun (and by fun i mean enjoy the music, dance and drink unaccosted) they should find the right places to go to. at least in SF, it’s not hard to find clubs that are not overflowing with sketchballs that are repeatedly committing drive-by freakings.
i’d usually got out with 2-3 girls and i didn’t have to worry about “protecting” them. yeah these were non-desi clubs, but as someone else pointed out earlier, if the desi girls are aware of what’s going on somewhere and they don’t like it, they’re shooting themselves in the foot by subjecting themselves to it.
the attacks on desi guys for issues with sexuality and such are played out. any racial group will have its members that others are ashamed of, i don’t see this as a distinctly brown problem and i’m tired of seeing it portrayed that way. punjabi boy’s sarcasm hits the nail on the head.
if you want to do some actual real research on this, on friday you’ll have the chance. Dhamaal is hosting Worldly IV @ 1015 in SF. Karsh Kale, MIDIval PunditZ and Cheb I Sabbah are the headliners so you know there will be a strong brown presence at the club. I submitted this as a news tip but for some reason social events on the east coast only seem to get coverage here…
Punjabi Boy,
I think she’d make you her bitch, bro….Better find a tube of vaseline. And a comfy cushion.
vandesi,
I don’t know how many of Punjabi Boy’s previous SM conversations you’ve read, but if you were familiar with his personality then you’d know that throughout this current thread he’s just been joking around. Including the fake self-flagellating remarks.
MD,
Not everyone on this thread is a twentysomething. Myself and Sumita are two obvious examples.
Bureau-Cat,
I think you’ve just found a devotee in the bhangramuffin-shaped form of P-Boy. Train him well.
DesiDancer,
You’re absolutely correct in your comments on the behaviour of male desis. Apart from the lack of necessary interpersonal skills on their part, I think it’s also partly to do with a sense of “ownership” over their South Asian sisters. Desis sometimes “cross the line” in terms of their interaction with other desis — not respecting emotional/psychological/physical boundaries — and this is another manifestation of it.
Razib,
When I was talking about the “taboo” aspect I was referring to “traditional” Indian culture (yes I know it’s a vague concept), which for those of us living in the West has to a great degree been defined by the older generation. (At least until recently — considering the explosion in Indian satellite/cable channels etc).
I may be wrong about this (and please correct me if I am) but, setting the South Asian angle aside for a minute, people living here in the UK are under the impression that interracial relationships are much more of a controversial issue in mainstream culture in the US compared to here. Such things are so common on this side of the Atlantic that, on the whole, and at least in terms of mainstream British culture and its reflection in the media, it’s hardly regarded as something to consider at all. Obviously it’s slightly different for the Indian community here, but I thought I should mention it.
“Many male desis”, not all, of course. Just in case that needed clarification.