Quote of the Day: May 19, 2008 Jill “When we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man, it’s probably time to reexamine our criteria for manhood.” stolen from Andrew‘s g-chat status message.
Does my heart good to hear a man say that. As the father of a daughter, our gender system scares me, but it scares me also as a father of sons.
men, no, i don’t know about it, got no interest also, but this is what i know for sure, loving another women makes me feel totally right and never made me feel anything other than ultra feminine.
This guy is great. I wound up subscribing to his YouTube page about 10 minutes of listening to him talk…
*claps* that was really cool. I’ve noticed that a lot of people have this obsession with having to know that some one is gay (and along the same lines but a bit more obscure: I observed a discussion about weather a humanoid dragon race should have breasts or not. Because heaven forfend we not be able to know at a glance if a reptilian person is male or female. I mean, they lay eggs!) I was at a party not so long ago with people from school and two of the guys remarked how ‘You know ****? He’s gay now’ ‘did you know when we were in school?’ ‘Yeah yeah I think I knew’ They kept going on in this vein, like it was so important to be able to identify what a guy’s orientation was. All I could think is why? Why is it so important to know?
Fantastic! Even more powerful for me was ‘being gay is…normal!’ So obvious, yet so great to hear it said loud and clear.
Now me, see, this stuff about les****, this is not our culture, no way. WE got top class morals and we are lovely in all ways and stuff like beauty care, hair care, dress and style, artistry of make up- no one knows more about this than Pakistani girls. Now sometimes one girl becomes romatnically frienship with another, and erotic love blooms and this is not being a les***, no, it’s nothing downclass or like that, it’s just lovely, warm, sensual, and it’s part of our culture also, like that, we’re just normal girls, look normal, act normal, think normal, dress normal, u think we dress in jeans and army boots like in America, huh, we’re in gold jewelry, expesnive shalwar kameez, top class make up, more beautiful, more lovely, more refined, like that, it’s just we love to be with each other for poetry, for music, for reading and painting, for full frienship, and yes, i will say also, there is a pysical and very erotic aspect also, but theres NOTHING BAD, our side as Pakistani girls it’s just lovely, u don’t know, u don’t know our culture, this is the problem. But sometimes, like with me, it’s going like we just rejections of marriage, then our culture freaks out and we are not just secret friends- we have become apostates of Islam and dissidents cos we want to be together, and then, of course, we got no place. Then u face hate, gossip, kick out, slander, threat, beating, forced sperations, like that. Is it cos you kiss and sleep with ure firend, no, that’s ok, we was doing that for years, its cos WE REJECT MARRIAGE AND MEN. Our culture, family and community reacts with explosive force and violence, why, why, why-all that was in our world was lovely and beautiful. I LOVE me friend. She got sent to Pakistan by force.
TPHG – You’re derailing a thread again. This thread is about the video and the quote above — masculinity, homophobia, and how the hip-hop community has problems with both. It’s not about your take on lesbianism or different ways of expressing same-sex love in your culture — there’s nothing wrong with that topic, but it doesn’t belong here. Furthermore, you can talk about that stuff without suggesting that “lesbians” are downclass or don’t dress or act “normal” somehow, or that somehow women who wear less expensive or less feminine clothes aren’t as good. Believe me, there are countless hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lesbians (women who use that word) in the United States who have personal style and relationships pretty much like what you describe, so it’s not exclusive to Pakistan — what you describe is found everywhere. In fact a lot of people around here use the word “lesbian” to describe something like your ideal of woman-and-woman relationship, and use other words to describe different styles. Of course, I think it’s great if you don’t want to use the word lesbian — it’s a western word, it has western connotations. Use another word, use no word. But this blog does not tolerate suggestions that some women should be looked down on because they dress differently, express their gender in a less feminine way, or are “downclass.” No more of that, please — and please stay on-topic.
I have some pretty eccentric buddies at Art School, including lots of “flamboyant” straight male friends. People are OBSESSED with knowing who is gay and who isn’t. “YOU KNOW FRED? IS HE GAY?” Er, no, he has a girlfriend, and… wtf does it matter anyway? My best friend got physically assaulted daily in high school for being a “faggot” (he wasn’t, but that shouldn’t matter), because he’s… I dunno, more interested in books than sports? Or whatever it is that disqualifies someone from their gender. *sigh*
jay smooth is a fantastic vlogger and human being. he is the new ze frank, as far as i see it. i second the mancrush!
I heard this quote in the YouTube video when it was linked on Feministing, and instantly loved it. It sums up the basic problem with the traditional concept of ‘masculinity’ better and more concisely than any other.
PakistaniHeritcalGirl, you’ve derailed your final thread. I appreciate your comments, but you’ve said too many offensive, off-topic things too many times. I’m sorry, but you’re banned.
I have read the Pakistani Girl’s comments and you, through no fault of your own have basically misinterpreted received cultural conditioning as outright prejeudice. She herself is obviously a lesbian, and she has suffered for it. Her sexuality is expressed on her own terms, not on ours. Her views of the west were conditioned at a very early age Jill, read her other posts, she seems to have thought that a sci fi John Carpenter movie was some kind of reflection of social reality in New York. She like many other women of her class and background were taught that the west represents moral failure and is a pollutant, the religious conditioning she so obviously experienced has set up in her head an idea of the west that while she totally rejects her own culture, she is also confused by and suspicious of the west’s also. If she has conditioned to believe that lesbianism is a western concept, that she will obviously want to show that she is valid in her own right. As she does this, she has tended to slip into the values of her own culture that she despises, but that is not her own fault, it a reflection of her environment. Integration is hard, we can see how hard it is here and there has to be acceptance on all sides and that can lead to understanding. Rather than banning her, what ought to have been done imho is to use this as an opportunity to break down cultural misunderstanding at a very basic level. The Pakistani girl is victimized yet again, rejected by her own culture because of her apostacy and lesbianism, rejected by the west due to that very same culture. These are the horrible dynamics that leave girls like this totally alienated and increasingly radicalized. I just think it could have been handled much better than this.
MaggieJordan…wow that was so condescending. TPHG said several times she’s not a lesbian. she seems pretty clear about her take on stuff, not particularly “conditioned”. and im not sure whats wrong with being “radicalized”? while i really disagree with a bunch of stuff she’s said here and elsewhere, this response (and possibly the banning her too, especially considering some of the complete ass-hattery ive seen from some folks on feministe) is just weird to me.
MaggieJordan: TPHG has derailed many a thread with off-topic comments, and has said things that verge on (or straight up are) racist, transphobic, apparently against lesbians who don’t look feminine, and otherwise offensive. She’s been asked repeatedly to stay on topic and quit the offensive stuff; neither has happened. It’s always unfortunate when someone gets banned, but I don’t think that we Feministe bloggers should be required to put up with incessant derailment, offensive statements, and comments that are actually targeted at us as individuals or parts of our identities. Additionally, I think that not holding her responsible for the stuff she’s writing here is pretty condescending and presumptive. And even if we were going to give her the benefit of the doubt in terms of cultural conflicts or misunderstandings and dismiss anything offensive, the constant, lengthy off-topic comments can’t be explained away like that.
MaggieJordan, I really don’t think you should call TPHG a lesbian if she herself doesn’t identify that way.
I am going to put it crudely, and this is based on my experience working, admittedly not in Pakistan, but in Eastern Turkey, specifically with Kurdish women in the Diyarbakir region. There is however a strong cultural similiarity between Kurds and Pakistanis. I have met Kurdish women who were attached to other women in a very openly lesbian way. They were also frank about their feelings and why they felt like that. Yet if I had been crass enough to suggest that they were in fact lesbians, they probably would have thrown a glass of mint tea in my face. To put it as frankly as I can, women in Islamic culture sleep with each other, often year on year, and yet do not see this as lesbian behavior. There are cultural nuances here and there needs to be sensitivity rather than steamrollering right in there. Not only is the dialogue very pointless if you do, you also end up really convincing these women that the west is their enemy.You also imply these women are hypocrites, al la carte- you sleep with her and yet you’re not lesbians? You simply can not socially categorize women from very conservative societies anyway you like. It is for them to define the nature of how and who they love, Jill, please, try to think out of the box on this one. Push against these women, they will reject it, trust me. And just for the record, any social anthropologist would back me up on the Pakistani Heretical Girl and I would like to hear from any who wouldn’t.
I have refered to TPHG and the millions of women like her as lesbian only in the sense that she sleeps with other women, period, which she does, obviously- they all do, though while totally denying their own lesbianism as we understand it, though not their sexuality. Their ideal is often to duplicate marriage after around the age of 23, when their behavior changes from girlish closeness in public to more formalized ‘escorting’ and ‘watchfullness.’ Here, these women are not self actualizing as lesbians, but as husband and wife, only one girl will serve tea, for example, only one will cook, only one will deal with guests and open conversations. Maturing same sex relationships in culturally closed societies almost replicate the power dynamics of heterosexual relationships, often, this is taken to extremes even with one girl requiring the other to adopt the veil. These girls do not and will not self identify using a western lexicon. But do you attack them for this?
Roham, radicalized? No, you don’t want to radicalize these girls anymore than they already are. PKK women in Eastern Turkey are known for their brutality and it was women in Lebanon, often from failed relationships, who pioneered suicide bombing in the 1980’s. There is a lot of work on Palestinian female suicide bombers coming out of the Israeli prison system and what the Israelis found is that many are abuse survivors and women shamed by their own communities into desperation. No, don’t radicalize them, that’s the one thing you would never want. Now that’s more than enough from me, I’m bowing out, just hope some of what I have said sticks.
Torri and Kelsey — The obsession with knowing whether or not a man is gay is IMO related to the obsession with being able to tell, immediately and from a distance, whether someone is male or female (hence the viciousness of disparaging comments about long hair on men and very short hair on women). It’s all about not mistaking someone in the master class for someone in the subject class. Gay men get “downgraded” to female status by the people who have that obsession. I find that a useful counter for that kind of talk is to ask them directly why it matters — they’re not looking for a sexual partner, are they? This usually derails their brains enough to let me either make my getaway or change the subject!
Kudos to this video! There needs to be more dialogue about manhood and homophobia in hip hop. I fear that the book, however, could sensationalize the idea rather than contribute to the dialogue. I suppose I’ll have to pick it up and find out.
Hi I think this guy is cool enjoy the intelligence around his aura. You should check out Ali Eteraz he has some real insight into muslim women feminism. (It took me a while to realise he was a man). His wrting is beautiful. The Satire is on the spot.