Under the cover of lies

I heard the other day that a young man of my acquaintance fibs. He is now adult and working with a multinational concern in his campus-recruited first job. Educated at a reputed institution, he is the former frat boy who survived gruelling initiation rites to learn the ropes of organized living. The family is immigrant, which makes the achievements more impressive. Yet, He lies, says his father, matter-of-factly. I question a person's deceiving where he need not and even fabricating rationales to compound the lies - more from curiosity about the motivation behind the pastime, than from a moral high ground.

The saying is: You can fool all people some of the time, you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time. But these old adages are hardly a deterrent! Lies have become an accepted form of social communication. Its practice is active across all of humanity, and knows no social barriers, age, education and gender. Although the purpose behind the action may vary in each case, do it enough times and lying becomes an end in itself.

For little children, their little untruths are a defence against a world where everybody towers over them. The motivation is fear, of being punished or deprived of rewards, mainly in physiological terms. They may give in easily to the joy of scribbling on walls or table tops, but the spirit is unwilling to take on adverse adult responses. Denial – even with the tell-tale crayon dust under the finger-nails, shows up their powerlessness. The same may be said for the poverty-stricken, the illiterate, the very elderly, and women that have no control over their lives. The lies are their survival technique before intimidating authority. The young man I mention is hardly in the same boat; he is of age, his destiny is in his own hands. Perhaps he has just not been weaned off the childish habit of fibbing.

It may also be that deception is the game he is now hooked on playing. In the age of information, new generations grow more accustomed to shades of grey than to the moralistic black and white of yesteryears. In the childhood of our time, the emphasis at home and in school is on honour, sacrifice and other virtues of righteous living – extensions of social collectivism in part, in part catechism. The story books we love to read transport us to the fantasy world of magical creatures, and each carries a lesson to learn. In school, to pass the class, we have to pass the moral science test. Right and wrong becomes clearly demarcated in the mind. Indeed, pithy proverbs pop out of long term memory at inopportune moments, to create doubt, dilemma, discomfort and the omnipresent burden of guilt. The moral science subject is now obsolete in schools, perhaps to reduce pressures on impressionable minds. The social learning at home too is in abeyance because families have shrunk, and both parents are employed. The books that fascinate the earlier generation have lost their allure. The young are left alone to role-play in the virtual reality that appears at the touch of a button. Fact is they know more about video game plots than they do about human values.

Furthermore, blatant lies have become the weapon of manipulation in today’s world. Lawyers, for instance are said to be liars by profession, scarcely concerned any more with justice. They weave webs of words to twist and turn perceptions of events, projecting as the absolute truth the perspectives of their own clients. In similar vein, the search for political power in any organization requires mastering the art of persuasion whereby a molehill may be made to assume the proportions of a mountain, and vice versa. The point is to bring down opponents wresting from them the reins of power. In corporate industry, the Madoffs, the Lehmans and the Lawsons of the world use their genius with numbers and technology with the same cynical disregard for human values to defraud their victims and even their own organizations of currency notes in the millions. They call it hustling, spinning elaborate cons to dupe the unsuspecting. There is no remorse in scamming the elderly and the financially weak out of their trust and their life savings.

Cynicism permeates the interactions of groups with other groups. There is take rather than give in this predatorial world that transposes going for the jugular from the wild into the organizational process. To use subterfuge to get close to the prey and to then move in swiftly for the kill is an act that plays out regularly in everyday life. People learn to be less disturbed by lies, which in fact interweave into their social masks. These hide their true natures or conceal their vulnerability. The motivation is again fear, but in psychological terms, because nobody wants to lose. To be the winner, the game must be played and played well. The humans tend to forget that their minds have evolved beyond that of the other animals; that they actually need to adapt to the world of other people, rather than to orders on the food chain.

The heroes the young emulate are in virtual reality, sometimes perceived as more real than real life may be. The ploy set up for immediate rewards can turn into the long term habit they wear like a second skin. They may begin to live the lie, believe in the illusion, and be caught up, unable to escape, in the traps they build for others. Like addicts, they seek the next score, the next adrenaline rush, and the next win in the games of their own making. Lies may become the compulsion that pushes people to deny their true self. Peel that cover of lies away and there might be a frightened child within, afraid to grow up, making believe his maturity. 

Image of a homeland

Within three decades of India’s independence, the brain drain raises a furore, as demographic migration to the West becomes a popular trend amongst the educated. In enlightened self-interest, the future generations of India’s freedom fighters willingly choose to break tradition and swear new allegiances. They actively ignore perceptions in the mother country of being mercenary, traitors to the nationalistic ideals of their forefathers. The assumption may be that people choosing to emigrate base their decisions on felt affinity with their destination regions. However, the emotional reactivity that tends to surface later suggests that the choice may have been economic opportunism.

A century or two earlier, while India was a colony, it was routine to forcibly shunt workers to other lands as cheap manual labour. The colonizers then decide to harness the Indian intellect as well, to increase profitability. The “Baboo culture” is thus born - that is, educated Indians, the Baboos, inducted to maintain the system, become the backbone of bureaucratic functioning. Education in India is structured along Western lines, replacing the indigenous universities of its more ancient civilization. Missionary schools spring up all around the country dispensing knowledge and conversions to Christianity. University colleges for higher studies open doors to Western sciences in the presidencies of the north, south, east and west. Obviously, the medium of study is also mainly English.

About the first quarter of the twentieth century, things begin to change politically. Satyagrahis (freedom fighters) burn symbols of Western affluence, clothes, etc., on the streets as demands to end colonial rule gain momentum. Eventually, independence is achieved. But the price of freedom, people realize, is empty coffers. Almost overnight, the erstwhile rich colony is stripped of its wealth. The Partition that carves Pakistan out of undivided India displaces thousands on the grounds of religion. Hindu families in Pakistan and Muslims in the new India are evicted from their respective homelands and pushed across the new borders.  The thousands upon thousands that are forcibly unsettled, that lose their homes, their lands, their families and their very identity in the political machinations, feel that they go from frying pan into fire. Ironically, they preferred to forge bonds with their erstwhile masters, and rage at one another. The traumatic wounds of this separation continue to bleed to this day between neighbours in the sub-continent.

At independence, there are about six hundred kingdoms and princely states in India. It is a momentuous task to bring them under the banner of a secular, democratic republic. Obviously, no consensus can be reached on elevating any one regional tongue over others as the national language, and there are twenty-two of them officially, along with thousands of dialects. English, the once foreign tongue, is the common medium of communication around the country, indianizing according to the grammar and speech patterns of each state. The bureaucratic system also survives social and political turmoil. Even today, the country’s civil administration is sustained by the “baboodom” of yore. It functions as before with paper files and manual entries, is loath to adapt to the modernity of electronic communications, and its incumbents often occupy the same spaces and look very much like their predecessors of that bygone era.

 

The traditional joint family structure that society is built upon disintegrates, post independence. The extended branches of family are now often separated by the new borders. Each splintered segment is compelled to find their own financial stability. The outlook towards women also has to change. For economic reasons, their education links to employment for the first time. Learning from European and Anglo-Indian teachers becomes a matter of course for boys and girls born in the new democracy. In the early days, knowledge dissembled is swallowed unquestioningly. What comes out of the Book is gospel truth – including for instance, nursery tales picturizing the white mother as thinner, prettier and smarter than any other, black, red or yellow!

No surprise then that the children learn to identify more with blonde hair, blue eyes, and the English language than they can with their own shattered roots. The image of the “homeland” also blurs. In the 1970s and ’80s, skilled young adults being westward bound are perhaps the logical conclusion to the childhood aspirations.

Moreover, the leaders of the new India struggle to run the fledgling democracy. The country joins the ranks of penurious developing nations. The people that had sought to become their own masters find they have to seek aid just to get by. Clearly, it will take decades for India to be at par with the leading nations. Getting out to richer pastures makes most economic sense. Besides, the architects of the new democracy failed to include compulsory service to the nation in the constitutional duties for its citizens and hence, the governments watch helplessly as new crops of graduates fly away to bring fame and fortune to their overseas employers. The brain drain leaves a vacuous workforce in the nation that, thinking future, nurtures the cream of its youth through years of subsidized education. The countries that grew fat on the gullibility of Asia and Africa are able to call the shots in the reconstruction of the nations they previously ravaged. They are now the lands of plenty beckoning India’s new intelligentsia.

 

Traditional values in India base on strong family relationships across generations. The family buffers its members against adversity, providing the social security and support the state cannot. Children live with their parents and care for them in old age. These are the just rewards for the many sacrifices they make to raise them to adulthood. But in the new reality, the elderly left behind in India find themselves unable to cope with living alone or in the care of hired help. Bereft of the traditional extended family environment they have grown to expect, their emotional suffering is acute.

The immigrant communities soon find out that their relinquished citizenship does not guarantee integration into the new society in the West. People brought up on collectivistic values gradually realize that multiculturalism in the West is a patchwork of demographic fractions maintaining minimal social interrelationships outside of work. While socializing in distinctly dissimilar cultures is difficult in itself, the immigrants from the Asian sub-continent and Africa also carry the colonized stigma. Consequently, each social group becomes inward-looking, fearing the decimation of their unique cultural identity. Realizing perhaps a little late that money is not everything, their focus shifts to forging strong intra-group bonds. They form a Little India, a Chinatown and so on, to preserve culture through the associations, norms, customs and rituals experienced in childhood. These become the heritage to keep alive in their adopted homelands thousands of miles away from their origins.

First-generation immigrants probably carry a suppressed sense of guilt that they abandon their familial duties for riches. Indeed, they are more strident in their attempts to recreate the way things were back home. They demand obedience and respect from their offspring in the mould of the traditional culture. They dream of establishing continuity with the past they renounced a few decades ago, including the segregation of gender. But often, they are unaware that the homeland itself has evolved beyond that point, while they cling to some obsolete image of it. Children reared in the West are caught between cultures. On the one hand, they imbibe the liberalness of the here-and-now environment they live in. On the other, they are bombarded with parental projections of there-and-then traditions that scarcely match their present experience of life. In a new cycle of change, this dichotomous image of a homeland may seem alien and meaningless to the rebellious young. The older generations thereby perceive their liberal leanings as mercenary, traitors to the cultural ideals of their forefathers...

Social: 3. The use of advantage

Ever since I had gained a moderate amount of fame, I’d had women offering themselves to me. I’m not special; the same thing happens to every man who makes his living in sports, music, television or movies.

So says a love rat – although the term used to derogate an unfaithful husband actually insults the rodent. (The real rat merely follows the inherited code of its species, while cheating is definitely a human characteristic.) Upturns in economic and socio-cultural status appear to bring deceit and dysfunction into relationship equations.

With revelations continually appearing on global social networks, it assumes proportions of an emerging trend in celebrity marriages, especially in the West. Elsewhere, women are yet to be empowered to fight for gender equality.

In truth, the “fame” that biker James (quoted above) basked in was not quite his own achievement, but rather glory reflected off his famous wife. His illicit liaisons made a mockery of their marital union. He writes further:

After all, when you take money out of the equation, what’s the point of being famous besides having your pick of attractive partners? 

 

James is not alone in his proclivities. The Gropegate allegations, and the bombshell of wife and mistress both pregnant at the same time under the same roof reveal the "dark truth" behind the success saga of America's most famous Austrian immigrant. Leigh writes:

… the real Schwarzenegger —  an immoral, arrogantly reckless man with a monstrous  attitude to women and a propensity for having unprotected sex. Schwarzenegger’s rampant womanising has been known to me since 1988, as have his sleazy beginnings in the world of body building, his fondness for sadistic practical jokes, his delight in humiliating women … he often targeted unattractive women because they were more likely to worship him and his muscular physique.

Driven to sexual gratification to prove their own worth, the love rats have few qualms in breaking matrimonial vows, and family values. Men that attain the power of resources tend to assume that being famous puts them beyond the constraints of common social norms. It provides them the licence to unbridled willfulness, reducing the women around them to commodities to be used and abused.

Although gender equality is claimed in the post-feminist era, patriarchal attitudes remain embedded in the social structure. Men count on this organized bias for the tacit understanding that boys will be boys. In France, the cultural view is that affairs of sex are the man’s personal business.  Chrisafis reports:

Nicholas Demorand, editor of the daily Liberation, said his paper would continue to respect politicians' privacy. "It's a democratic principle – hypocritical in some people's eyes, but fundamental ... Ditching this principle would lead to encouraging short-term buzz and trash over quality news."

Despite the faint acknowledgement that “trash” does abound socially, the media defers to power, afraid of being denied access to crucial information. They prefer to focus reporting on more important matters, thus deliberately overlooking the predatory nature of privileged men. 

The French are accused of showing more compassion for Strauss-Kahn than for the alleged victim in the rape case that caused his arrest in New York and also cost him his job as the IMF chief. Some women activists say that had the incident occurred in France, the story may not have surfaced at all.

Politicians strive to grasp the helm of a nation’s leadership and governance. In their speeches, they profess the very highest standards of integrity and ethics, and soundness of judgement. Yet in any country, political heavyweights flouting the same ideals are legion. Their public pronouncements appear to encourage self-control less, and more the assiduous maintenance of a false front.

The wealth and clout of their wives are often pressed into service to defend these public images.  These women, already victims of humiliation, demean themselves further denouncing the charges, perhaps only to preserve the appearance of family in the public spotlight.

The tenacity of investigative journalism has brought to light many of the transgressions over the years. In USA, in the 1980s, Senator Hart had declared his presidential candidature.   Then rumours began to circulate about his philandering on the campaign trail, which he robustly denied.

“Follow me around, I don't care, ” Hart was quoted as saying. “I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored. ”

Journalists McGee et al initially had no leads and gave the senator the benefit of doubt. Later they acted on a tip from a woman who said she didn’t want to see another liar elected. Piecing together bits of information about his whereabouts, they discovered his secret hideaway. The journalists conducted round-the-clock surveillance to gather evidence of his feet of clay. In the middle of 1987, they published their scoop. The scandal that broke permanently sank Hart’s presidential aspirations.

A decade after Hart, and, Clinton perjured himself during the trial conducted while he was President.  The crucial evidence of “the dress” eventually demolished his defences, bringing him to the brink of impeachment. One of Clinton’s then harshest critics was Senator Gingrich, a member of the political opposition. The thrice-married Gingrich himself formed relationships with subsequent wives while still married to their predecessor. As a presidential hopeful in 2012 he now admits to have indulged in other flings also.

The men put the most effort into preventing their being outed.  Their advantage of resources and position in the organized hierarchy are used to the hilt to lie, bribe, intimidate, and in the new millennium, to invest in super injunctions to gag their socially unequal mistresses.  

England footballer Giggs had the image of a devoted family man at the time when the sleazy relationships of other players were exposed in the media. His paramour was discreet, and the affair might have remained so too, because she thought they were in love and he genuinely wanted to marry her.

However, his intentions being different, the fear of exposure got to him. He obtained a Court ruling, as he claimed, to forestall possible blackmail.  But in reality, his priority was  self-preservation, as writes Allen:

…to protect his reputation and privacy both personally and professionally. His teammates certainly would not have appreciated the press hovering around the team during workouts. While the legal mandate was in effect it could have helped his team focus and perform well, which gave them a shot at winning the championship. … He was probably also concerned about protecting his sponsorship deal with Reebok and DVD sales for his workout videos.

She was slapped with the order to prevent her ever mentioning him, while no such consideration was accorded her. She could be named and vilified – and indeed it so happened. 

Twitter users, however, refused to be muzzled. On the global platform, many of them were outside the purview of the local Courts.  They took up the challenge to assert rights to freedom of speech in virtual reality. Giggs’ identity was soon splashed across social networks on the Internet.  Hemming, a British parliamentarian then named the player in the House using parliamentary privilege to also bypass the injunction.  He promises that celebrities who have such injunctions face ‘death by a thousand cuts’. 

The drama has sparked power struggles within and between the organized and unorganized social units in UK – the judiciary, the parliament and the global social networks. The social networks have "made the law an ass" and the intrepid tweeters have been threatened legal recourse. Twitter service providers are being pressured to reveal their identities. Parliamentarians insist on their legislative privileges.  Judges, on the other hand, expect laws passed by Parliament to be binding also on its members. 

The question that arises is why, somewhere on their upwardly mobile pathways, men appear to catch the common malady. James gives his reasons for his actions:

Mentally at a loss, desperate for something to make me feel as if I had some freedom, I ran through the list of things I could do to assert my independence. Infidelity, unfortunately, was at the top of the list.

Gringrich explains why in an interview:

There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate…

Excuses for the lack of self-control seek to blame environmental pressures, rather than the individuals concerned. The point is fame and fortune brings into sharp focus the inherent character flaws of the men who so avidly pursue wealth and power. They are motivated by private logic that leads them to believe that thereby - one, they are entitled, and two, they are untouchable.  Perhaps by repeating cheating behaviours they hope to gain a sense of worth, and raise self-esteem enough to convince themselves more than others that they have indeed arrived. 

 References for this post:

1. Allen, Amber. “Imogen Thomas’s Married Lover Finally Exposed – Footballer Ryan Giggs” wakeywakeynews.com.  Wakey Wakey News. com. 12 May 2011.  
2. Bowcott, Owen, and Halliday, Josh. “Twitter users and the courts go to war over footballer’s injunction” guardian.co.uk. The Guardian. 20 May 2011. 
3. Chrisafis, Angelique.“Strauss-Kahn case sparks debate about French media's deference to power” guardian.co.uk. The Guardian. 19 May 2011. 
4. Devlin, Kate. “Giggs sets courts at war with Parliament” heraldscotland.com The Herald. 24 May 2011. 
5. “Gingrich: Working 'too hard' led to affair” upi.com. Newsreport. US News. UPI.com. March. 9, 2011. 
6. James, Jesse. “Tattooed biker Jesse James reveals how fame and his weakness ruined their unlikely love” Newsreport. dailymail.co.uk. Daily Mail. 22nd May 2011. 
7. Leigh, Wendy. “How many more love children are there, Arnie? Schwarzenegger's biographer says the dark truth about the star is still to emerge...” dailymail.co.uk. The Daily Mail. 23rd May 2011. 
8. Linder, Douglas “The Stained Blue Dress that Almost Lost a Presidency” umkc.edu. Famous Trials. Clinton  Trial 1999. Dated 2005. 
9. McGee, Jim; Fiedler, Tom; Savage, James. “THE GARY HART STORY: HOW IT HAPPENED” unc.edu. First published The Miami Herald May 10, 1987.  Reprint undated. 

Motive: 7. Violence and objectification

Human beings live and work in groups. Each group develops characteristic behaviour patterns based on implicit theories, which become in time, ‘traditions’ that future generations are exhorted to follow. Differences arise between groups based on race, ethnicity, religion and so on.

Still, on looking closely, one might find that people across the globe are more similar than different, because of similar operative concepts, especially on the gender question. These can transform with new reality, but the basic threads of the ideology, the gender-role belief systems “rooted in the structural relationship between the two sexes” resist change. 

The traditions grow out of a continuum of positive and negative behaviours. Traditional masculinity, for instance, is associated with: personal sacrifice for dependents and calmness in danger. But it is also associated with: coercive behaviour, date-rape attitudes, high-risk behaviour and unemotionality. Thence ‘maleness’ finds expression in a collection of behaviours adapted to the needs of the specific cultural group.

A study in USA on the differential patterns identifies 5 endorsements types of the masculine ideology:

·        traditional

·        high violence/moderately traditional

·        moderately traditional

·        high status /low violence

·        non-traditional

These five endorsements were then related to the men’s gender-role beliefs in terms of:

·        Status/rationality

·        Anti-femininity

·        Tough image

·        Violent toughness

·        Gender-role egalitarianism

In the study, the non-traditional group of men was found less overtly masculine. They scored lower in the four variables of status, image, violence, and anti-femininity and higher than the rest in gender-role egalitarianism.

Each of the other masculine clusters identified – traditional, moderately traditional, high violence/moderately traditional and high status/low violence - were found to be moderate to high on ‘tough image’, ‘status’, and ‘anti-femininity’. To these groups, the presentation of an appropriate public image was the point.

Fischer and Good write:

… being perceived by others as tough, self-sufficient, and confident was at least moderately important… as a “ritualized form of masculinity that entails behaviors, scripts, physical posturing, impression management, and carefully crafted performances that deliver a single, critical message: pride, strength, and control… 

However, a difference was perceived in the mix regarding “violent toughness”. As the researchers explain their findings:

… men in both the High Violence/Moderately Traditional and Traditional clusters reported relatively strong endorsement of Violent Toughness as part of their masculinity ideologies … men who endorsed rather traditional-to-moderate beliefs regarding Status/Rationality, Antifemininity, and Tough Image also held quite nontraditional beliefs regarding Violent Toughness as important to masculinity (i.e., those in the High Status/Low Violence cluster).

In other words, they are divided on the display of machismo. Some wear the badge of violence; others emulate the minority ‘non-traditional’ group. Why the change? Considering their strong ‘anti-femininity’ responses, that ‘low violence’ men could be distancing altogether from gender domination and control is in doubt. Perhaps this group of status-seekers make tactical changes in the gender interface for impression management!

In many modern dual-income families, men may be uncomfortable with their wives choosing career development over part time jobs. Despite education and economics, the masculine devaluation and distrust of women is universally ingrained. At home and at work, women’s advancement may pose threats to their individual high status. In India, for instance, divorce rates and single-mother-households are both on the rise. 

Now, the high status/low violence group may be eschewing physical violence only to project in public the egalitarian image. To keep the progressives from unsettling the status quo, the subtle mode of gender discriminations may be applied instead, like objectification. Men of all cultures may ensure this feminine preoccupation with body issues with constant social reinforcements of the ‘standards’ to be achieved for their acceptance. 

What about the feminine ideology? In the patriarchal social structure, gender inequality is built in. “Female domesticity “ has been idealized throughout its history. Following the social learning in “subordination”, women eventually collaborate with men to carry forward the inequality. 

Jackson opinions that:

…women accepted male power outside the household in return for "rule in their own place."… they received "secondary gains" of social status, leisure, freedom from responsibility to earn an income, and the freedom "to devote a major portion of her time to personal adornment and attention to herself" through marriage.

In the last two centuries of organized social life, any change in women’s status has revolved around the basic tenet. More recent economic, political and legislative changes attempt to counter women’s subordination and gender inequality. But the outlook that arose from implicit beliefs and practices of male supremacy is yet to be eradicated worldwide.

Social norms targeting women cut across the divides of culture and race. For instance, women in Asia and Africa have over centuries, suffered torture to meet ‘standards’ of traditional beauty and sexuality. In the Asian Far East, the feet of female children were bound from birth to keep them small. On the African continent, young girls were forced to undergo genital mutilations to be acceptable for marriage.

Impett et al write:

Girls experience immense pressures to behave in feminine ways, both in their relationships with other people (i.e., by suppressing their own authentic thoughts and feelings) and in their relationships with their own bodies (i.e., by suppressing bodily hungers and desires to conform to prevailing images of beauty and attractiveness).

The objectification theory Fredrickson & Roberts formulated in 1997, suggests that women tend to internalize the socio-cultural values and “become their own first surveyors”. Researchers say:

… women learn to view themselves primarily through an observer’s perspective. According to objectification theory, society places more emphasis on attractiveness for women than men, such that women are constantly subject to appraisal of their appearance. Sexual objectification occurs when a person is treated as a body valued for its use by others.

Women have been taught over the ages that their personal sense of self and value in personhood rests almost entirely on others, especially the male gender, responding positively to their appearance – size, shape, colour, dress and what-have-you.

African American women may be more concerned about being judged on “skin tone, hair texture, and facial features”. Research has also found a strong link between skin tone and hypertension among this cultural group. Buchanan et al report:

…educational level, occupational level, and family income each were stratified by skin tone; higher mean educational attainment, greater participation in professional and technical careers, and higher income were associated with lighter skin tone.

In India, fairness of skin, a legacy of cultural invasions, has long been an index of beauty in the country. Fairness creams are the fastest moving consumer goods for women and men. Product advertisements suggesting associations between skin colour and upward mobility thus blatantly fill corporate coffers.

Celebrity endorsements are revered in this country, which the manufacturers utilizes to push their products. Film and TV stars gain fame leading the pack in fashion sense, and with globalization, the hot pursuit of the Western-influenced size zero dress measure. The obsession with body weight amongst the ‘white’ European and American women’s groups has often pointed to. Another emerging new trend noticed among young girls in UK is the following of porn stars. 

Buchanan et al write that:

Theoretically, this continual evaluation of the self in terms of internalized societal ideals may result in negative psychological consequences such as increased shame and anxiety. These psychological consequences of self-objectification may lead, in turn, to increased risks for mental health concerns such as depression, eating disorders, and sexual dysfunction.

Women in India and elsewhere, of the educated and employed circles as well, do little to improve their objectified status, and their debased self-esteem. The social learning has been to avoid conflict; hence the idea of confrontation is itself too stressful to contemplate. 

They would prefer to tune out of their present unequal circumstances, immerse in serialized soap operas suspending judgement and reflection on their subtle sexist messaging, or even fantasize that in individual suffering they contribute to the greater good. Implicit theories of gender inequality continue to flourish because women are yet to unite voices against second-class citizenship.

References for this post:

1. Bidisha “Pubic hair removal: The naked truth” Article guardian.co.uk The Guardian, Friday 11 February 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/11/womens-pubic-hair-removal-porn

2.      Buchanan, Taneisha S. Fischer, Ann R. Tokar, David M. and Yoder, Janice D. “Testing a Culture-Specific Extension of Objectification Theory Regarding African American Women's Body Image” The Counseling Psychologist Volume 36 Number 5, September 2008 697-718 originally published online 8 July 2008.

3. Fischer, Ann R. and Glenn, E. Good. “New Directions for the Study of Gender Role Attitudes: A Cluster Analytic Investigation of Masculinity Ideologies”. Psychology of Women Quarterly 22 (1998), 371-384
4. Impett, Emily A, Schooler, Deborah, Tolman, Deborah L. “To Be Seen and Not Heard: Femininity Ideology and Adolescent Girls’ Sexual Health”. ARCHIVES OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR, Volume 35, Number 2, 129-142. 
5. Jackson, Robert Max “Chapter 8. Disputed Ideals: Ideologies of Domesticity and Feminist Rebellion” nyu.edu Working Draft of DOWN SO LONG . . . Undated. 

Motive: 5. The touch of culture

Women’s representation around the world seems to have had little uniformity. The comprising subgroups have shown between them, permutations and combinations of variables – traditional, non-traditional, educated, illiterate, employed and unemployed. Men, comparatively, constitute a more homogeneous mass of individuals, all apparently marching to the same drum.

Group affiliations are central to male lives, with distinct behaviours, beliefs and attitudes distinguishing each. Sounds, symbols, and body language, facial expressions, gestures and signs express thoughts and feelings. These transmitted in characteristic organized patterns make complete sense to members socialized into the process, while remaining meaningless to those of another unique group. The ways of doing things, use of technology, and abilities in arts and institution building, become typical of tribes, communities, or populations.

 The male identity requires this reference group of other men for its development. Masculinity, in the sense of being an integral part of society, does not developed in isolation anywhere in the world, but in tandem with the particular group identity. The externally directed individual depends entirely on the concrete presence of this group to influence his existence, e.g., fraternity, religious or political factions. The inner-directed man may not be dependent on any immediate group, but draws sustenance from the implicit value system he constructs through knowledge and experience.

A “masculinity blueprint” constructed in the ’70s in USA, hallmarked 4 specific dimensions: avoidance of anything perceived to be feminine, status achievement, aggressiveness, and independence. The emphasis on any one or more of these roles is tuned to the particular social structure and organization. For example, where anti-femininity is a given, violence towards women should be of no surprise.

Some males however, are left with an undefined self-concept, and confusion of the gender role. Perhaps with conflicting messages from the environment, and inability to anchor to a specific reference group, their motivations are of the moment, and often frowned upon by the larger society. 

Wade holds that factors contributing to the traditional ideology are lower educational level, lower family income, and African American ethnicity. The influence of education and economics makes sense, but ethnicity? One would think that all cultures have the traditional, non-traditional and confused factions in their ranks – by dint of their social learning (or lack of it), and not genetics! 

Wade writes:

Masculinity … not only restricts men from exhibiting signs of behavior or thought attributed to the female role, but also entails a wide array of specific behaviors and self-perceptions to which men closely adhere. For example, traditional masculinity entails such characteristics as homophobia, competitiveness, physical and sexual violence, restricted emotionality, and restricted affectionate behavior between men.

His study has been on the ethnic African-American group, and while acknowledging that little research has been done in this field, Wade makes the association that traditionally masculine men have greater health risks.  The alpha-male attitudes responsible for keeping up machismo prevent clean living. That premise certainly holds true across the globe, for any patriarchal culture preoccupied with overt displays of manhood!

Another study, also on the African-American ethnic group, has associated perceptions of racial discrimination with mental health. Essentially the greater the perception of racial threat, the lower the mental well-being. Again, this is probably common across cultures with minority or backward social status, although there has been little empirical research conducted within these groups to confirm it. The researchers tested whether any factors had a moderating influence on the perception-mental health link, among them racial socialization experiences, and self-esteem.

Findings reported by Fischer and Shaw are that concrete socialization behaviours and experiences had a positive impact on the individual’s mental health. However, although self-esteem had the highest moderating effect, the direction of influence was contrary to prediction. They write:

In particular, we were surprised to find that African Americans reporting relatively high levels of self-esteem had poorer mental health when they reported perceptions of more racist discrimination…

It would seem that self-esteem that is built solely on the intra-community networking and interactions, suffers devastation in the more exactly interface between races and cultures. The reason for this may be the inward-looking socialization that, while creating the necessary support groups of family and friends, increases culture-centricity at the same time, attenuating both awareness and understanding of ‘others’ in the same universe. 

The fears of racism and “white flight” contribute most to pockets of demographically concentrated races, communities and cultures. Consequent to this forced isolation, although erstwhile homogeneous Western societies may now boast of increasing multiculturalism, there is little social integration between majority and minority groups.

Tariq Modood points out in his article that:

… all minorities – including Muslims – want to live in mixed neighbourhoods, and ghettos are created by those who move out…Society cannot be reduced to individuals, and so integration must be about bringing new communities, and not just new individuals, into relations of equal respect …not by denying that there are groups in society but by developing positive group identities and adapting customs and institutions that enable that.

Socialization within familiar environments does little to facilitate adaptation to the unknown; rather it is likely to accentuate ‘us-and-them’ groupism. I would submit that socialization that cuts across boundaries of culture and race would in fact encourage more interactions between groups, alleviating fears and perceptions of threat. As a result, the buffering action of a  hardy and stable self-esteem developed in an open universe, would more effectively moderate influences on health in any ethnic group.

  

References for this post:

1. Wade, Jay C. “Masculinity Ideology, Male Reference Group Identity Dependence, and African American Men’s Health-Related Attitudes and Behaviors”. Psychology of Men & Masculinity. 2008, Vol. 9, No. 1, 5-16. 

2.      Modood, Tariq. “Multiculturalism: not a minority problem” guardian.co.uk. 7 February 2011

3. Fischer, Ann R. and Shaw, Christina M. “African Americans' Mental Health and Perceptions of Racist Discrimination: The Moderating Effects of Racial Socialization Experiences and Self-Esteem” Journal of Counseling Psychology 1999, Vol. 46, No. 3, 395-407. 1999. 

Motive: 4. The need for status

Sexism - meanness in inter-gender relations directed at women - is traditionally attributed to men. It comes in two packages. Hostile sexism is defined as “antipathy towards women who are viewed as usurping men’s power.” Benevolent sexism, on the other hand, is “subjectively favourable, chivalrous ideology that offers protection and affection to women who embrace conventional roles.” Either way, the intent is a stinging set-down for women. It may surprise some that men are not its only practitioners; women also partake of this gender-based prejudice.

In India, of course, hostility within gender is not at all new. The virulent mother-in-law – daughter-in-law dyad has been the subject of poignant human stories and movie masala in equal measure over decades, if not centuries, of organized social life. It prevailed during the joint family social structure and carried over into the now nuclear units of the extended family.

Erstwhile close-knit families continue to blame the fissions in their generational relationships on the machinations of newly wedded wives (and their families of origin). Mothers complain that marriages of grown-up sons doom the cohesive mother-son bonds, and make them outsiders in their offspring’s lives. Daughters-in-law are suspected of using witchcraft to bind the men. In fact it is commonly said that it would be less astonishing to be told that two suns have risen in the sky than to hear that two women are able to live amicably under the same roof!

Women have been at the receiving end of abuse at the hands of their husbands through the ages in most patriarchal cultures. The social expectation has been to ‘discipline’ of wives in displays of authority, domination and control, or be accused of being under their thumb or worse, unmanly. Albeit on a lower scale, even in this new millennium of equal opportunity, reports abide around this country and the world of domestic violence, and dowry attacks, torture and death. 

The hope is forlorn that sexism is on the downturn in developed and developing nations. Gender inequality thrives almost everywhere in a form not immediately recognizable as such - benevolent sexism. The image of this behavioural type, translated from an Indian vernacular, would be the “knife of sugar-candy” that spreads insidious sweetness as it stabs (the spirit). The thin veneer of protectiveness overlays the motivation to keeping women off-balance, dependent and inferior. 

Glick and Fiske theorize that:

…this term [benevolent sexism] recognizes that some forms of sexism are, for the perpetrator, subjectively benevolent, characterizing women as pure creatures who ought to be protected, supported and adored and whose love is necessary to make a man complete. This idealization of women simultaneously implies that they are weak and best suited for conventional gender roles…

The “cherishing” of femininity is calculated to erode women’s resistance to the inequality and ensure that they remain in gilded cages happily admiring their chains. Many of these women insist that when their husbands/protectors treat them like queens, why on earth should they want for anything other than more of the same?

From their survey findings from about 15,000 respondents in nineteen countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and America, the researchers say that sexist beliefs are consistent across cultures. Gender prejudice is universal. Benevolent sexism is complementary to the hostile form and is perhaps the civilized face that set women a high bar for acceptance.

The sexist standard in the Indian scenario is the traditional pedestal of motherhood. A woman lives up to this ideal when she extends the unquestioning lovingness and nurturance associated with the mother-image into the marital household. She earns further social approval when she also delivers the male heir. In the process, she shapes into conformity; her individual identity becoming indistinguishable from the family she is married into. In earlier times, her given name too was reset to match.

Women in India have largely been looked upon as secondary to men and dependent on them for their identity. Times have changed somewhat with education and employment. In tune with feminine groups elsewhere, women of (Asian) Indian origins attempt to be in control of their creative potentials, and distance from stereotypical roles of simply nurturing hierarchy in the family and the organization. They disapprove of and reject the traditional hostile sexism. They are also more supportive of other women.

However, conflicts arise when persisting patriarchal attitudes collide with gender equality. The female drive to be assertive unsettles the status quo, and resistance from conservative family members and male colleagues receives tacit social support. Women themselves vacillate between orthodoxy and modernity, between traditional care-giving roles and the need to self-actualise.

Indeed the women’s interpersonal relations appear inconsistent and gender-based. They are empathetic with women, although they despise womanhood as weak and lesser than. This ambivalence is stark in work organizations, especially private or multi-national concerns, where attrition rates for women from entry to top management levels are also significant. Moreover, many women adopt the ‘masculine’ approach to decision-making, internalising the traditional (male) attitudes and standards of action.

The researchers say further that:

Dominant groups prefer to act warmly toward subordinates, offering them patronizing affection as a reward for “knowing their place” rather than rebelling. Open antagonism is reserved for subordinates who fail to defer or who question existing social inequalities.

A sisterhood characterized by “subordination and affection” is not quite genuine, but rather a disarming “reward” to reinforce the discrimination. By patronizing those even less favoured, women perhaps seek to raise their own diminished self-esteem. 

Their perpetration of subtle prejudice may in fact be a defence mechanism. Fischer speculated that:

…women’s benevolent sexist attitudes may be, in part, a self-protective response to environments they perceive as hostile to women.

In the study she conducted, women subjects were assigned to one of three groups at random. The experimental conditions of the groups differed only in the information that was given to each.  One group was told that studies show that men hold negative attitudes towards women. Another was informed that men’s attitudes towards women have been found to be positive. The third was told that men’s attitudes have been investigated but given no further details. Findings showed that the group that was made aware of men’s negative attitudes responded with the “strongest benevolent sexist attitudes.”

In regions where male hostile sexism is high, female benevolent sexism follows suit to also be high. Fischer explains the phenomena as:  

…some small bit of protest against the hostile attitudes, along with hope of reward for at least some members of the group (i.e., the right kind of women).

In other words, by exerting control over those lower on the totem pole, women indirectly justify and come to terms with their own need for status in the social hierarchy, precisely as the system’s dominant males would want it to be. Women as a group thus continue to be ‘invisible’ while the consequent emotional stress they are burdened with takes toll on their health and performances. 

Women need to reassess their conceptual premises, and understand how the standard received wisdom they have obediently swallowed so far hurts them as individual and group.  They need to reason with their emotions (not against them), and resurrect their suppressed identity. They need to perceive one another as real people, rather than caretaker tools for the traditional hierarchical system. And finally, they need to step up from the shadows and manage control of their own lives as the lead characters of the act.

References for this post: 

1. Fischer, Ann R. “WOMEN’S BENEVOLENT SEXISM AS REACTION TO HOSTILITY” Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30 (2006), 410-416, 2006. 
2. Glick, Peter and Fiske, Susan T. “An Ambivalent Alliance”. American Psychologist. Vol. 56, No. 2, 109-118. February 2001.