I was thinking of the happenings in Mangalore recently when a group of seemingly self-righteous men marched in and attacked a group of young women in a pub. The men were activists of the self-styled Sri Ram Sene and the attacks were ostensibly carried out to protect Indian culture and uphold the purity of Indian womanhood.
My grand uncle Keshavan, if family folklore is to be believed, was some kind of sexual athlete whose abiding pastime as a man, until he reached old age, was to bed women. He married couple of times, conducted a few well-publicised liaisons and had innumerable one-night stands in places as distant as Devikulam in the high- ranges of South Kerala to Chemancherry in the North of Kerala.
For a person who sought pleasure and perhaps a degree of solace in the arms of various women, grand uncle Keshavan reserved his more acerbic and caustic comments for the fair sex. While discussing women, he was extremely dismissive and one could always detect an undertone of barely-disguised contempt. In modern day parlance, he would have been doubtlessly nailed as a male chauvinist.
We, his grand nephews, used to analyse this apparent paradox: Here was a man who, if we were to believe the escapades related in hushed tones by the assorted aunts in the family gathered around the ancient grindstone on hot April evenings, went after anything that remotely resembled the female form. The same man also happened to be a copper-plated misogynist who made sneering and cynical remarks about members of the opposite sex that infuriated the said aunts considerably.
The adolescent grand nephews discussing the problem reached a facile, but perhaps erroneous, explanation. We surmised how could he have any respect for them, if obviously he had in his youth found out that women were such easy prey. If the aunts’ accounts were correct, he did not have to really try hard for his various conquests: women came to him like the proverbial moths attracted to the flame. No wonder the man had such a poor opinion about women.
Now we know better. Modern psychology asserts that misogyny, hatred, dislike or mistrust of women, stem from unresolved conflicts between man’s intense need for and dependence on women and their equally intense fear of that dependence. A misogynist feels that his masculinity depends on dominating women. Essentially insecure and racked by deep-rooted anxieties, he feels powerful by subjugating women and tries to control them by destroying their self-confidence. Any encounter with a woman is a battle to be won. He can never say, “OK. Have it your way,” with any modicum of grace to any woman.
Suddenly the paradox does not seem to be a paradox at all and I am able to see the incident in Mangalore in a new light. No, I am not suggesting that Mr. Muthalik and his followers are misogynists and that is why all this happened. Nor am I forgetting the fact that the incident had strong political underpinnings, as it gives fringe political groups such as the Sri Ram Sene an ideal plank to push themselves into the national limelight.
But if we go beyond all these obvious compulsions and explore deeper, I feel we find deep and abiding male anxieties at play, issues of command and control.
What do you think?
Photo Courtesy: www.daylife.com
