Subject: Re: Indian Women in U.S...

From: [email-masked] (Subbarao Kambhampati)
Date: 27 Jun 91 01:42:02 GMT

[Unmindful of the rank stereotype of himself that he is helping to
perpetuate, rao goes for the bait...]

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked]
(Viswambara) writes expressing doubts about "these liberated women":
 
>I have also observed that those women who think they are the independent 
>kind seem to be the most confused or worst effected ones since they take their
>sense of independence and convert it into a unbending and non compromising
>attitude which if married kills the marriage or else if unmarried they become
>extremely closed to compromise and they get rigid and most end up getting
>more and more cynical about Men. But again all these are general observations
>and personal experience.

Hmm.. Let's see--it stands to reason to assume that there are at least
as many men who think they are the independent kind as there are women
who think that way, right? And yet, you seem to imply that marriages
fall apart only if the women are the independent type! Is it possible
that independence, even if it is of the "uncompromising variety" is
supported in men, but punished in women?

>Is this what our Modern India coming to?
>Are we socially suited for taking on this kind of Marriage -Divorce 
>on finding small Compromisable faults. 
>No I am not talking of keeping
>marriage alive where there is physical or Mental Abuse on either side
>constantly, But breaking up on trival issues or for convienence seems

This seems to be the familiar ploy of "Are we ready to endorse freedom
of choice for women, 'cuz if we do, then, Aiiyyayyo we will have
OOODLES OF DIVORCES in our midst"!!

First, let me ask if Mr. Viswambara can point out some portentous
statistics that would convince us that marriages are falling apart for
trivialest of reasons because of the "independent" women?

Second, let me add that the pitfalls of this type of argument are
many. Suffice it to say that I would rather stay with a system where
people are "free" and divorce rate is slightly higher, than a system
that provides artificial stability by denying freedom of choice to
half the population!

Finally, let me get to the first para of his message..

>  I would though 
>like to know how many of these woman have successfully managed 
>their career and their Family life? I have come to know of lots
>of women have had either to give up one or another and they have 
>always seemed to do this with some regret.

If Mr. Viswambara ever asked himself the same question about men, then
he would have realized the glaringly lopsided state of affairs. The
fact of the matter is that for generations upon generations, men were
able to have career *as well as* family!! They were able to do that
because women *by societal pressure or out of choice*, stayed at home
and took care of everything.

Now that women have fought for and got a chance to exercise their
freedom of choice vis a vis their careers--we are turning back and
telling them:
 
 "look, we are all for your career etc, of course--but we
  hope you take care of all the family matters that you used to take
  care of before!!"  

In other words, to exercise their freedom of choice, women have to be
"superhuman"!  This after all is the message that is drummed in by the
popular media--such as a Femina interview where Mrs. X. says that she
has built her 100M business, but still puts her family first before
her business.  All this succeeds remarkably well making "career-women"
(yet another play of words--did you ever hear an appellation
"career-men"?) feel guilty about their choices.  What is more, we are
quite good at telling them that it is all somehow *their* fault--that
the anguish and guilty feelings that they are having to deal with are
things that they had brought upon themselves! [** I heard an
interesting anecdote on a radio interview with an NYT columnist
recently. Apparently, this woman (whose name I forgot), used to write
a family advice column for NYT and was quite well received by her
readers. That is until the day when she wrote in her column that she
has a baby sitter to take care of her infant and toddler for several
hours of the day, when she is at "WORK". Suddenly, she got angry
letters from her readers saying that she should be *ASHAMED* of
leaving such small kids with babysitters that way, and that they would
no longer take her family advice seriously. This woman wonders: "When
do these people think I write the advice column? At 3 AM in the
morning, after all my family goes off to sleep??***]

Is it any surprise then, that more and more women, who can't afford to
be superwomen, are faced with the "Sophie's Choice" of family or
career--a choice that men never had to make?

This state of matters will not change as long as we continue this
position of "If women want careers, women can get careers--as long as
they don't ask us men to change our life styles because of them".

Equality should mean equal responsibility.  Things aren't going to be
"the same" for men. We cannot afford to cling on to the lifestyles and
work-place ethics that were designed to suit an eigteenth century man!
Men should be just as responsible for their families, and bringing up
children etc. as women should be. The quandaries of juggling family
and career should be SHARED by both the partners.

Rao 
[Who, even as we speak, is dashing towards Amex Travel Services office
  for  booking his tickets to go to Alok V's July 4th party in New
  Jersey]

---

From: [email-masked] (Subbarao Kambhampati)
Date: 29 Jun 91 07:40:42 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Jon Sreekanth) writes:
>
>While being in violent agreement with Subbarao's post here, maybe it 
>was tangential to the topic ? The original message only peripherally 
>brought in the author's feelings about women and careers. Primarily
							   ^^^^^^^^^
>it seemed to say that women came to the US for a new life, and 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>wanted to see some discussion on that. 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Is it really? The poster(s) of the messages made no secret of their
misogynist-views. Consider the following excerpts:

 "Also the Spite (as in Spitefull) of a woman is much more poisonous 
 than Mans. So the Independence which Man always had and Used and
 Misused as the case may be would be much at lower level than the Misuse or Use
 that a woman can do with it"   -Viswambara SCI, 27th June

 "I have also observed that those women who think they are the independent 
 kind seem to be the most confused or worst effected ones since they take their
 sense of independence and convert it into a unbending and non compromising
 attitude which if married kills the marriage or else if unmarried they become
 extremely closed to compromise and they get rigid and most end up getting
 more and more cynical about Men." -Viswambara SCI, 26th June

[and many many more--just read their two (extremely badly written)
articles carefully. The misogyny is so thick, you can cut it with a knife!]

The author(s) claim that they are trying to "survey" the behavior of
Indian women with independent nature. In a private mail to me, Mr.
Viswambara said that all this is in aid of a survey to be published in
Eves Weekely (that august tabloid of Indian women's studies) around
december/january.

 You would expect that people doing a survey will generally be a
little less blatant in exhibiting their own prejudices! If they so
clearly state their own jaundiced view of the world (as evidenced by
the excerpts above), won't they run the risk of biasing their survey
such that only the subjects who fit their hypothesis will ever come to
them? 

Is this the tone of unbiased people interested in getting to the
truth? Or is it the tone of people who already have a hypothesis--viz.
  
  "Indian women, given independence, can cause chaos to the family structure"

and have set out to prove their hypothesis by collecting "anecdotes"
with a high dose of selectivity? You tell me? 

The author(s) of the article don't seem to have any doubt about their
own intentions. In a mail sent to me, a Ms. Nita [who claims *she* is
the person conducting the study, and "Viswambara" is the last name of
her hubby which  she is using to get "the necessary cover" (sic)]
says:

   "There is a Bias involved in the whole thing and this is because I am
   looking for something specific and not those cases which every common
   person has heard of , And I am not here Just to fritter my time, I
   have my own Financial and Time, constraints, So I have to keep moving
   on with it."

Bingo! Of course, they don't care about the reality or actual
statistics! Would Eves Weekly publish a boring survey which said only
the obvious?

And what is more, by making their biased nature clear, and showing on
which side of the issue their sympathies lie, they were apparently
quite successful in getting their *survey*. Ms. Nita brags in her mail
that after their last message with those "X Y" stories, they got 18
replies from "GUYS who had some sort of experience" (sic).  

How does *that* sound for a manufactured survey?

[And why all this secrecy and indirectness? The same article that
Viswambara posted on SCI, appeared with all references to India
stripped off, in Soc.Feminism on 26th June, from the same account but
under the name of a Prashanth K.  And today, I get a mail from the
same account, but this time from a Nita!]

So, why am I worried about some stupid folks in Pittsburgh fabricating
survey that they want to post in a second-rate tabloid? Am I just
over-reacting? 

Well this is no academic exercise for me.  I have a sister with a
newborn who is struggling to balance her career and her family right
this minute. As if she doesn't have enough on her hands already, she
has to endure the misguided flak from the conservative society
surrounding her ["Aiyyayyo, how can you keep on continuing your
studies, when you have this newborn kid at home"?].

The last thing she, or a million others in her situation, need is a
misogynist reporter out for a quick buck publishing a sensationalist
story in a putative magazine for modern women, trying to prove (by
hook or crook) that women with independence are somehow evil, and that
women and careers just won't mix.

I wouldn't have worried as much if I was sure that people can see
through the fabricated nature of such a study.

But, if the highly educated readers of SCI itself can be deceived into
overlooking the thick mist of misogyny in the author(s)' writings and
can be made to believe that this is a legitimate survey and those "X
Y" cockamamie stories are somehow representative of a substantial
portion of the Indian women with independence, how can I be sanguine
that such surveys don't effect people more steeped in a conservative
mileau?

disgusted and apprehensive
Rao
---------------
	"Don't go silently into the cool, dark night;
	   Rage, rage at the dying of the light."
				-Dylan Thomas

---

From: [email-masked] (Rama Ratnam)
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 91 16:47:36 CDT

Ref your posting above.
I was intrigued to get a similar letter from a Ms. Nita, claiming
she is "Mr. Visvambara". "She" said that Visvamabara was "her" husband.
I had raised the issue of the sex of "Mr Visvambara" in a posting which
was a reply to that of Ms Uma Dutt. She was commenting on Mr Visvambaras
article. 

It is not clear to me whether Ms Nita is also who "she" claims to be.
I ignored that mail, coming to the conclusion that there was a deeper
game that I didn't care to be involved in. Quite frankly, i found
Ms Uma Dutts article also quite dubious.

This is for your perusal only.
Personally, I am in agreement with what you have posted. Its just
that there are too many shady  games being played in the net. Our
friends from aacross the border are the more obvious ones, but
there are Indians who are not averse to acting in peculiar ways.
No need to reply.
-ratnam 

-- 
==============================================================
Rama Ratnam,  Theoretical Biophysics, Beckman Institute
Dept of Biophysics, University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign
[email-masked]
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