COVER STORY 6

A JEST CAUSE

The Crest Edition

THE TIMES OF INDIA

BITCHY BALLADS
Amarsar de papad ve main khandi na/ Tu kardayen aakad ve main saindi na/ Chhadachadak teri bodi mere haath/ Meri gut tere hath/ Je tu rakhna hai rakh/ Je tu chhadna hai, chhaad dont eat Amritsars papads, I dont take your attitude either. And if you have my plait in your grip, I have your top knot in my hand too. If you want to stick with me, do so or else go, take a walk. That is a Punjabi bibi sharply berating her philandering husband. If you thought only an urban woman could take digs at misogyny, its time for a rethink. Indian folk songs have a long tradition of laying on the sarcasm thick and strong. Songs sung on a range of ocassions from weddings to harvest were remarkably full of subversive stuff and allowed festive license. Jagori activist Jaya Srivastava, who grew up in the Bundelkhand region, says that folk songs are far more blunt and funny about stating the womans point of view. Laughter has always been an integral part of folk culture, she says. And there is a lot of subversion in this humour. In the Bundeli song, Dil gare atta pe kay thaari, to the question why do you stand forlorn in your yard, the singer says the answer is neither that her husband has ignored her nor that her mother-in-law is giving her grief. It is that Maike ke yaar mohe sapte mein dikhe, khaye hilore, chhaati phate (I am dreaming of my old lover, and my heart heaves with longing). It cant get more irreverent than that, says Srivastava. Many folks songs of UP, Rajasthan, Bihar and Punjab also have powerful lyrics that help women vent their angst against the saas, sasur, devar, jethani, bhabhi. They also portray the wives as bright but stuck with moronic husbands in repressive clans. It is temporary catharsis and then the next day they are back at doing chulha-chakki, says Kamla Bhasin who has often used these songs, sometimes remixing them with urban messages, in her work with feminist groups. Malini Nair

So you thought
Smile, snort, grin, giggle and guffaw... the absurdity of sexism can provoke only one response
NISHA SUSAN
m a little baffled when people say feminists have no sense of humour. Id be less surprised if someone told me feminists laugh too much. To me feminism is not the reasoned explanation that follows after Ive stopped laughing. It is the reason Im laughing. However, I do sympathise with male and female amateurs who are confused. You have seen women laughing in the past but you never thought they were feminists (because if they were feminists could they have been laughing?) For future reference heres a handy guide for L-Board observers of feminism. You might want to cut-and-save it, as the IIPM ads say.

feminists dont laugh?

SANJAY SEKHRI

minute later, Lucys genial, middle-aged voice rang loudly through the bus: Take your maal away from my face unless you want me to cut it off. The man got off the bus.

A-NEEDLE-HIDDEN-INSIDE-THISBANANA-THAT-I-LOVINGLY-FEEDYOU LAUGH
This is a vicious variety and one you should hope you never see unless you want to be found dead with your eyes staring in horror. This is a particularly tough one to spot because the feminist is likely to be smiling a fixed smile, soundlessly. It comes without the warning laugh (see above). The reason why many people would like feminists to laugh is not the same reasons feminist laugh. Other people would like feminists to laugh so they are easier to like. They particularly would like women to laugh along when unfunny things are said so that they give others permission to continue being thoughtless jackasses. Innocuous and bright as summer fruit, this laugh will fool you into continuing to do whatever obnoxious thing you are doing right now (describing a female boss as an old bitch, talking about how your maid is exploiting you, about how the maid who was allegedly raped by Shiney Ahuja should have been just paid off, why the university students who said they had been sexually harassed were definitely paid off, taking credit for work your female colleagues have done). You will have no clue the axe is dangling over your soft, silly neck.

THE CANT-BELIEVE-YOUREFOR-REAL LAUGH

This is the most common source of feminist laughter. Its what cracked me up when Saudi newspapers reported last week that women can now ride bikes and buggies. Women are free to ride bikes in parks, seafronts, among other areas, providing that they are wearing fully modest dress and a male guardian has to be present in case of falls or accidents. These

you want equality y because you want to occupy py my place

thoughtful suggestions come after years of Saudi women agitating against the ban against driving. Or take Sharanya who is 19 and studies in a womens college in Bangalore. In January, a student comes to the door of her class to make an announcement. The college has organised a protest rally the following day. They are to walk a kilometre to mark the death of the young Delhi gangrape victim. All students are expected to participate. All students are also expected, the announcement continued, to be decently dressed. Two months later, Sharanya still has no words to express her indignation other than a spluttering and giggling. A persistent (but perhaps apocryphal) story has it that in the year 584 a bunch of bishops met in Lyons, France and decided that women are not human and have no souls. If it did happen there was definitely a lot of this variety of laughter that day. Note: The cant-believe-youre-for-real laugh might range from a short snort to clutching-the-walls-for-support variety. Usually, its a short snort because we have other things to do today than hanging around.

THE OMG, YOUVE-NEVERREAD-ANYTHING GIGGLE

perfectly appropriate. I didnt pour the tea. I giggled and went on typing. In a while, he poured all of us tea. Many feminists and others (its contagious) had this fit of choking laughter recently when they saw the New York Times obituary of Yvonne Brill, a scientist who invented a propulsion system that keeps communication satellites in orbit. It began, She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. The worlds best mom, her son Matthew said. Douglas Martin, the writer, intended this embarrassing beginning to create excitement when the piece later revealed that (surprise!) the woman (surprise!) was a rocket scientist. After everyone-went-through-the-OMGyouve-never-read-anything routine, the piece had to be edited online. I did think of the power of this variety of feminist laughter in 2009 when Renu Gora, an international prize-winning boxer was told to serve tea, refreshments and wash cups for random reporters and visiting bureaucrats at the National Institute of Sports, Patiala. Renu felt compelled to do as she was told for lots of reasons. I wished she had laughed and meaningfully stroked her gloves instead.

THE THATS-SO-TRUE SMILE

This is a tricky one. Its fleeting and it can go all the way from a smile to an unplanned, surprised giggle. Often this is when we are thinking of our own imperfections and vanities. Sometimes it is suffused with the warmth of meeting or reading about someone who has had the same experience weve had. Its what you feel when writer Caitlin Moran talks about oh, anything. Like when she said, To any idiot who says, You a feminist? Do you burn your bras, then, huh? HUH? You burn your bras, you feminist, you must reply calmly, Fool. FOOL. Bra is my friend. My bosomest buddy. My inti-mate. Except for that balcony-cup Janet Reger one that was an inch too small and cut off the circulation to my head. Yeah. That one, I covered in gas and torched it outside the American embassy. Or when she says, When a woman says, I have nothing to wear! what she really means is, Theres nothing here for who Im supposed to be today.

NO! i want equality because i want you becaus to occupy my place sometimes...
ADAPTED FROM LOLO, LA REPUBLICA COSTA RICA

This is how I giggled when, some years ago, I joined a tiny NGO with three men. I was hired to run their website. On Day 1 a colleague asked me to pour out the tea. My colleague meant no harm and was, genuinely, not being malicious. It was just that in his world, the act of asking the only female colleague present to handle the beverages was not an embarrassingly dated, utterly medieval clich of the My Wife is The Home Minister vintage. To him, it was

THE WARNING LAUGH

My friend Lucy specialises in this variety. In the bus on a sweaty afternoon she grew tired of the man standing next to her seat and leaning his crotch into her face. She looked up and uttered this warning laugh, a mere crack. He must have sensed that her broad, good-humoured face usually did not house these predatory sounds. He paused in his activity but he did not move away fast enough. A

THE IM-SO-PROUD SMILE

This is a cheeky, truly happy one that can run from the tiny-smile-to-the-rollicking-laugh spectrum. When we see the little girl once beaten by her vicious employers now riding a cycle to school. When your father scolds the nosy neighbour and says, No, my daughter is not married. Everyone doesnt need to get married.

Maybe we have a branding problem

PADMAPARNA GHOSH
TIMES NEWS NETWORK Why do you think the stereotype of the angry feminist still endures? It is because the radical feminism of 70s, the Andrea Dworkin (a radical American feminist best known for her tirade against pornography) kind, really forced itself into the conversation. It was also very jarring, with the kind of images and language that they used they were totally foreign. It is a very enduring image. But even more importantly, the real issue is that this image is sexist. All these women are/were demanding change, things need to be fixed and that we must be angry. But we are not shrieking harridans. How do you prove that you are not angry? By not being angry. Sure, we have anger but we dont exist in this bubble. We are actually pretty happy people. Laughing is a core human instinct and if you can make people laugh, then it is the best way to communicate. Lets take, for instance, a grave topic like abortion, Caitlin Moran says something funny about abortion rights and suppose I had a personal experience with it (abortion) and if both of us can laugh together at the same thing, it creates a special moment. Whether you call yourself a feminist or not, much of the ideology (of feminism) is ingrained in us. But the word itself has become undesirable with younger women. With women today, who are in their early 20s, everything that comes out of their mouth is feminist but they dont want to be called that. Maybe we have a branding problem. We have to decide if this is a branding game. Who knows, 20 years from now we will be using some other word. We spend so much time talking about what exactly is feminism that it kind of defeats the purpose. We spend more time debating this than the real issues. Do we need a movement like feminism to be snarky, edgy to remain relevant with this or the next generation? Does it make it more accessible? Often, laughing along with a joke changes a mind without the person even realising it. A joke is easier to grasp, especially at an emotional level.

Jezebel, one of the mostly widely read feminist blogs, is sassy, irreverent, fun and has had its own share of is it feminist enough controversies. Jessica Coen, the editor-in-chief of the site that has led the online estrogen revolution, talks to TOI-Crest about why the F word is unpalatable to several young women
Are there some aspects of feminism/gender rights that can never be joked about? We actually had a post last year on how to make a rape joke and whether it can ever be funny, explaining why people say rape jokes are not funny. My opinion is you can make a rape joke but it cannot be about the victim and the violence. You can joke about the unfathomable inhumanity of it all. You can joke about the culture that perpetuates it and make fun of the rapist. You can make them (the jokes) but the problem is that the people who are usually making these are not talented comedians. Most feminists do not believe that men should be part of the movement. What is your opinion? Do you get a lot of male feedback? Although we have a predominantly female readership, a surprising amount of men visit the site daily. Guys are definitely reading it and sharing it over social media. It is a cause for women but we cant do that without men. In the power structure, men are in power, so, if we are trying to affect change, it will have to be from the top down. They have to start taking steps. So many men in my generation (mid-30s) are very much engaged on this issue on larger platforms and various conversations.

Dont think im beaten down. This is my take-off position