Poornima Manco

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All routes (should) lead to love

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What an incredible weekend I have just had! My first ever Pride parade and attendance at the Attitude Pride awards. It has been illuminating, educational, poignant and exhilarating.

My first contact with a gay person was at the age of twenty. Trinny was charming, funny and ever so handsome. He was also clearly not interested in women. Having just finished an English literature degree, I had a hazy sense of what homosexuality meant because of the multiple references in the various texts I had studied, but this was the first time I was encountering a homosexual in person. Luckily, having been brought up in a very liberal environment in India, this did not faze me in the slightest. Trinny and I struck up an instant friendship. He brought to the table something my other straight male friends never had – an irreverence, a crazy sense of humour and a complete lack of toxic masculinity. Of course, at the time I wouldn’t have been able to describe it in those terms. All I knew was that I felt completely safe with him and we had a blast together.

Time, circumstances and life moved us apart, but I never forgot my first encounter with a gay person. This was to colour all my future interactions. There was always an immediate sense of kinship and safety, and I relished the cutting sense of humour I inevitably came across. Over the years, I have had many, many gay friends and I consider myself privileged that they have embraced me and accepted me into their fold.

Therefore, it is heart rending to note that even today, in so many parts of the world, they are not accepted. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender are just labels. We are all living, breathing human beings underneath all of that. Yet, they are discriminated against, criminalised and marginalised in so many ways, big and small.

At the Attitude Pride awards, each of the winners had intensely moving stories to tell. From losing a lesbian partner to a stray bullet, to being sexually attacked as a man by another man, to having to suffer abuse while playacting as a woman in a gay marriage, to fighting to decriminalise an archaic law against homosexuality in India, each story was powerful and disturbing. Yet, in hugely difficult circumstances, they had overcome all sorts of obstacles and in proudly accepting who they were and what they stood for, forced the world, to not just recognise, but also to reward them for their efforts. I was alternately moved to tears, while cheering them on from the sidelines.

We are who we are. None of us choose our sexuality. It is built into our DNA. So why do we view with contempt those that are different from us? Look at the multiple colours that Nature grants to the world. Doesn’t that make for an exciting and varied life experience for all of us? Imagine if every landscape was the same, if there were only two colours to choose from and if everyday was a repeat of the one before? Wouldn’t we just die of boredom?

The LGBT people amongst us are all the colours of the rainbow. They are what add spice and flavour and beauty to our lives. They are, in their differences, in their multiplicities, in their abundance and profusion, as unique and talented and incredible as any of us.

50 years ago, the Stonewall riots, started a movement, which allowed the LGBT community to fight for their rights and let their true colours fly proudly. 50 years on, the Pride parade is a celebration of all people: it’s about diversity, inclusion, acceptance and most importantly, about love.

Even as I sprinted through the various groups marching in the parade, trying to catch up with my own group, I was struck by how much happiness and love there was in the onlookers and the procession. Everybody who was there wanted to be there. This wasn’t just people wanting to watch a spectacle, this was about people wanting to be a part of history. In supporting the LGBT community, we are paving the way to erode all kinds of discrimination, whether that is on the basis of sexuality, colour, caste or creed.

50 years from now, let us hope that humanity will understand and accept that differences are important. They allow growth, change and progress. In learning to love another, despite all perceived disparities and diversities, we ultimately learn to love ourselves. All routes, must and should, lead to love. ❤️

 

 

The ubiquity of abuse

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I was having coffee with a bunch of ladies I didn’t really know. A common hobby had brought us together and as we met (some, for the first time) and chatted and ordered coffee and cake, the conversation veered off course as it inevitably does when you put women together. This wasn’t a business luncheon, it was very much a ‘getting to know you’ do. Our common hobby had brought us together, but we wanted to know if there was something else, beyond that, which could connect us.

As we talked backgrounds, languages, cultures, careers, husbands and children, we delved into each other’s lives, hesitantly at first, and then boldly, asking forthright questions and receiving some compelling and often hilarious answers. A sisterhood was emerging right there in that little coffee shop.

Interestingly, because we were, in effect, strangers to one another, there was a frankness and a candour to our conversation. There was no previous baggage nor was there any judgement. Each one was free to divulge as much or as little as they wished. Which is perhaps why some shocking truths emerged.

I have thought long and hard about writing this blog post. Am I betraying these ladies’ confidences if I do? Is this a kind of treachery to the very sisterhood I espouse? Am I worthy of being a confidante if I am unable to zip my lip?

However, upon reflection, I decided that yes, I would indeed write about it. No names or details of the women in question will be revealed here. That is not the purpose of this post. The purpose is to highlight the vulnerability of young children and how, it is so important for us as adults – parents and carers, to be vigilant about any possible signs and symptoms of abuse.

70% of the ladies at that table had been subject to some kind of sexual abuse as children. This ranged from an elderly relative using his trustworthy position in the family to inappropriately touch a child, to older children molesting a young girl in their midst, to a cousin leveraging his way into his sister’s affections to try and rape her.

Where were the adults when all this happened? Oblivious, too trusting or incapable of translating the traumatised child’s words and actions as a symptom of their ordeal.

Following on the heels of the #MeToo movement, the awareness of society’s ability to use and discard vulnerable adults has emerged strongly into the forefront. Yet, child abuse is so much more rampant and ubiquitous than anyone of us could have imagined.

All of these women were educated, erudite professionals who had carved out amazing careers and on the outside looked as put together as anyone else. Yet, fragments of their abusive past still lingered, making them feel ‘less than’ and handicapped in ways that even they could not articulate. If our pasts are the foundations to our future, it must have been doubly hard to build their future on the quicksands of trauma, betrayal and abuse.

I have spoken freely about the kind of sexual harassment I encountered growing up in India. Thankfully, because my mother was a very forward thinking individual, she was particularly circumspect about the adults who had access to me as a child. I had been told time and again to tell her if anything inappropriate was said or done to me. I was amongst the lucky few.

How many others had to stay ‘schtum’ because of the joint families they were growing up in wouldn’t tolerate any rent in its fabric, even if the casualty was a child’s innocence? How many parents believed that shrouding the truth or simply disbelieving the child were the only ways forward? How many ‘uncles’ or manservants got away scot-free because the ‘good name’ of the family was far more important than offering the victim love, support, understanding and challenging the perpetrator’s dirty deeds?

Too many.

Which is why it is so important that we talk about childhood sexual abuse. Children have nothing to be ashamed of. They are completely innocent of any wrong doing. It is the sick and depraved adults who choose and groom their victims alongside their families, that need to be brought to task.

I hope there comes a day when that coffee table conversation will not be limited to the tales of abuse suffered by young children, but will go on to elaborate the punishment society accorded to the abuser, and the counselling that was offered to the child to overcome that early trauma. As things stand right now, most children have to find their own coping mechanisms and unlike my ladies, can and do, spiral into self destructive behaviours.

I am not naive enough to believe that we will eradicate child sexual abuse completely. Wherever there is a power imbalance, abuse will exist and thrive. Sadly, there will also always be individuals with a sexual predilection for children. A multi-pronged approach that includes awareness, education, therapy, counselling, stricter laws and most importantly, a gradual erosion of patriarchy, may bring about the much needed change that will protect our children and ensure a safer future for them.

 

 

A cautionary tale

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A colleague mentioned that she wanted to binge watch ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and I had to advise her that it wasn’t the best approach to watching this series. As gut wrenching and traumatic as it is, I do advise people, particularly women, that they MUST watch it. Just not watch more than one episode at a time.

Margaret Atwood’s dystopic novel written in 1984 has been adapted into a movie before, but this Television series has gone much further than the source material, and filled in the very many blanks between Offred’s departure in the novel to the epilogue of the scholars’ study of the rise and fall of Gilead. Needless to say, the blanks are filled with horrifying details that seem almost designed to shock or manipulate the viewers’ emotions. From the legalised rape, to the forced illiteracy of women, to the subjugation of the wombs of the handmaids and the horror of the colonies, none of the women in this story escape unscathed in the state of Gilead. Yet, as Atwood has repeated in many of her interviews, none of these atrocities are of her imaginings alone. She just had to look at History and  the various forms of torture against women in various ages and various nations, and bring it all together under the umbrella of Gilead.

To those who are unfamiliar with the premise of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, simply put, it is the rising of a theocratic state within the United States of America. In a land where population levels have fallen to scarily low levels, a Christian group referring to the Bible as their saviour, plot and overthrow the government, establishing the Commanders as the supreme rulers of the land. The Commanders are all male, their wives the blue robed aristocracy reduced to playing the role of consorts, yearning for the fulfilment of the biological destiny that has been denied to their wombs. The handmaids are the fertile women indentured to the different commanders and raped in a ritual ceremony, held down by the wives and penetrated by the husbands. All other women are either Marthas (cooks/cleaners/general dogsbodies) or eco wives, married to the men in the lower echelons of power.

Why, you might ask me, should one watch something this horrifying or depressing? Well, aside of the fact that it is brilliant television- the writing, the casting, the acting- it also serves as a cautionary tale to those of us who are complacent in the face of all that is wrong today.

Only a hundred years ago, women suffragettes were fighting for votes in Britain. Over two hundred years ago, women in the West were still considered mens’ chattel and had no rights to their own lands or property. Women in Saudi Arabia have only just begun to drive legally, and women and children in Afghanistan are still denied an education. Child marriage is rampant in many parts of the world and human trafficking, particularly of young women and girls is at epidemic proportions.

Can we, as women, really take our freedoms for granted?

The inherent irony within ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is that one of the visionaries at the helm, a lead architect of Gilead is herself a woman. A woman who is so convinced of her mission, so immersed in the teachings of the Bible that she constructs the downfall of a state that has enabled her education and her sedition. As soon as Gilead comes into being, she pales into insignificance and gets relegated to the background. Her intelligence is forgotten and/or deliberately ignored. She is a prisoner of her own making.

It is hard not to see the parallels in today’s world. Governments and leaders that are openly misogynistic are propped up by women who feel they are doing the right and moral thing. Women eroding other women’s rights, supporting laws and lawmakers that are threatened by a woman’s civil liberties, her intelligence, her rights over her womb. But to what end?

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ might be fiction, but it is fiction rooted in reality. The best kind of fiction always is. It also serves as a warning to those of us who are passive in the face of  the misery of others, secure in our belief that none of it will touch us. We are safe and we are protected. But for how long?

Watch ‘The Handmaids Tale’ and learn how quickly everything can be lost. Watch and learn and absorb the messages within. Watch and learn to fight for not just your own, but others’ rights as well. Or else, in the words of the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller, there will be no one left to speak for you….

 

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

      Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.