By Dedunie de Silva
“If the price for civilisation is the leeching of our empathy and the stoic non-involvement in the face of social injustice, then I would rather we regress, than take a single step forward upon such a path!!”
I am sure by now, there are very few amongst us unaware of the ‘Bongso Fiasco’ that gained much traction via social media recently – i.e. there was a post put up on facebook a couple of weeks back about an incident that had taken place at a leading supermarket, where, as was later revealed, Mr. Faizal Bongso was standing at the ‘under 5 items’ check-out queue, having far more items in his cart. When the cashier had informed him of this fact, he had proceeded to yell at her in raw filth and when a female bystander (who put up the initial facebook post on the incident) had spoken up in support of the cashier, the filth had then been re-directed at her in the presence of her 03 year old son, who was traumatised by the incident! Not only did the silence and inaction of the rest of the entire super-market give complete impunity to this tirade of verbal abuse and gross misconduct against women by a public personality, but his actions gained further credence with him hosting an All Women 60th Anniversary Celebration just days after the incident!!
Amazing how none of the sequence of events of this incident was in the least bit surprising – not the fact that there was a flagrant display of unchecked male entitlement and patriarchy in a public forum against unsuspecting females; nor the fact that the perpetrator was a well-known public personality, who opted to use his position of power by being belligerent and bullying his way into controlling the situation; nor the complete apathy with which the rest of the bystanders and supermarket staff handled the matter, despite numerous complaints by the mother post the incident, requesting that the perpetrator be blacklisted and a statement be made in support of their staff member!
Notwithstanding, what I found most disappointing and frustrating, was the fact that an All Women’s Group of over 5000, chose to hire a man to compere their event in the first place, despite the abundance of very talented women in this field. And this was long before the incident in question took place, which, after it was made known to the organisation, they had refused to take any action on account of having already paid him! This would have been a viable explanation under ordinary circumstances. But this was no ordinary circumstance and when a women’s organization blatantly disregards the public humiliation and violation of other women, without using the incident as an opportunity to make an important political statement, we have a very ironic and sad situation of women condoning and applauding chauvinism!!
Herein lies the root of the problem! We keep blaming men for the reinforcement and propagation of patriarchy, when all along, it is us WOMEN that do it to ourselves! We not only practice it in our households, work place and every other sphere of our existence, but we actually believe that this is how a society does and must exist. There is a complete lack of genuine love, care and empathy amongst women, as opposed to the blind loyalty, complete trust and camaraderie amongst men!
Countless are the times I have encountered misinformed women (wittingly or unwittingly) renouncing ‘feminism’ as some sort of radical movement having no merit and full of angry misandrists, serving only to reinforce patriarchal ideologies, without taking the effort to read up on a little bit of history of the origin, importance and absolute necessity for it!!
For the edification of the uninitiated, South Asian feminists have defined feminism in a very simple yet inclusive manner: “Anyone who recognizes that women are discriminated against within families, at the place of work and in society in general, and who takes action against this discrimination is a feminist”. According to this definition, MEN can also be feminists, thereby clearly renouncing the irrational assumption that feminists are all man-haters!!
Less hate, inaction and blame of others and more self-examination, action and love is in order!!