Dear Thinking Inside Your Box:Another excellent question! My readers are clearly intelligent and articulate people, so I don’t know why I don’t do this reader mailbag thing more often. And as it happens I know about the Savita Bhabhi thing this reader is referring to. (What luck!)
You write about feminism a lot, but you clearly have no qualifications to do so – and that’s good enough for me!
So tell me: do you think feminism can ever be counterproductive? And what about this whole Savita Bhabhi thing in India?
With love, A Reader Who is Clearly Not Thinking Inside Your Box, But Somebody Else
Let’s look at the second part first, and the first part second. If you haven’t heard of Savita Bhabhi she’s the star of an Indian porn comic. Enjoying porn comics myself, I came across the Savita Bhabhi comics a number of years ago but I didn’t know anything about her other than the fact that she’s a sexy Indian chick who keeps fucking dudes (and sometimes chicks, if memory serves). Anyone who knows anything about me knows that it’s something I’d be in favour of.
But then I read an article recently – probably the same one read by my astute reader – claiming that Savita Bhabhi is more than just a slutty toon chick, she’s also a heroine for feminism in India – that she’s helping to change the Indian culture when it comes to sex. I can’t speak too much to that because it’s too intertwined with Indian culture, of which I know nothing, but if I were to oversimplify the article’s argument, it’s that Indian women are supposed to be very passive and receiving when it comes to sex and Savita Bhabhi turns that around by being the initiator and having sex for the sheer pleasure of it. As the article says:
Her character is a tarty young housewife whose extramarital dalliances are nothing short of hardcore, with the same money shots and stock language you’d see in classic porn. But what’s different, for a country as patriarchal as India, is that Savi always calls the shots.As I say, not knowing anything about the culture in India I can’t really offer an opinion as to whether this is an astute observation or an oversimplification of Indian culture. Maybe it’s both; there may be some oversimplification happening in aid of a valid point. (There’s only so much room for nuance in a blog posting.)
But I will say that the article brings me back to the first question of whether feminism can ever be counterproductive. In my previous post on feminism I mentioned that some people – maybe a lot of people – maybe most people – have a fuzzy notion of what “feminism” really is, but that the media heavily favours definitions of feminism that involve hot young girly-girls demanding the right to be sexual without being judged for it. (Hot young girly-girls demanding the right to be sexual are often very photogenic, and the media likes photogenic.) I also mentioned that dudes are pretty fucking happy about this definition of feminism; it’s one we can get behind! (We can “get behind” quite literally, if you know what I mean.) If women can forget about all of that glass ceiling stuff and all that equal pay for equal work stuff and just focus their energies on fucking dudes (and each other), it will suit us just fine.
Also, there are a lot of women talking about “post feminism,” which, like the concept of feminism itself, is not usually very strongly defined but often involves women reclaiming the right to be thin and look sexy without being judged for it by other feminists. Also a great thing for dudes.
Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another previous post where I talked about the fact that women are consuming more and more porn, in fact it’s becoming quite common and mainstream to do so, so now they’re also becoming amateur pornstars in the bedroom. “Oh, is that how you’re supposed to have sex?” they’re thinking (subconsciously). “I’ll do the same, then!” And suddenly, boom, they’re claiming they love getting facials and getting it up the butt. Hopefully they really do.
So in some circles here in North America what we have is women becoming more and more like pornstars in every way – both looks and behaviour – and calling it feminism.
An oversimplification? Damn straight.
And so, though I definitely applaud women’s burgeoning ability to do what they want without being judged for it, that’s a good thing and is part of what feminism is, I also wonder if it’s also a bit counterproductive, at least here in North America. If your definition of feminism means that you are willing to become my eager sex slave it’s definitely great for me – you know how to find me, the comments are open – but is it good for you?
If it is good for you, if what you really want is to be my sex slave, if your definition of progress is that you’re getting really good at sex and look good in lingerie and you want to demonstrate for me (and maybe some of my girlfriends, if I want to bring them along), then we’re all winners. (Hell, if you’re really good maybe the other girls can get some tips and tricks from you.) But if you’re more interested in breaking through that glass ceiling or getting equal pay for equal work or being able to walk down the street without getting raped or even just getting the same respect at work that your male colleagues get, then you might want to look into some more comprehensive definitions of the word “feminism.”
Is Savita Bhabhi help or hindrance for Indian women? As I said above, I can’t really say. I’m not Indian, don’t know the culture, and don’t get the nuances of all that’s going on there. It may very well be helpful for women in India, as the article’s author posits, to have a female role model who not only enjoys sex but calls the shots, in a way that (the article claims) Indian women don’t currently get to do. But whether she’s helping or not, I know whose fantasies she’s fulfilling: The comic is written by a man, and Savita Bhabhi is exactly what men look for in their porn. Hell, she’s even what men look for in their girlfriends and mistresses. (Maybe not in their wives, men are kind of stupid about that, but if we were smarter we’d want our wives to be like that too.)
If Savita Bhabhi really is going to change culture in India and women are going to have more say in their sex lives, then men are also going to demand that the women behave like Savita Bhabhi in the bedroom. And again, maybe that’s a good thing; if women become more like Savita Bhabhi then they’ll enjoy emulating her in the bedroom. Or maybe they’ll just be emulating the male fantasy.
I’d definitely be more comfortable if the comic was written by a woman, at the very least. It doesn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t be oriented toward the male fantasy, but there would at least be a better chance of the comic being geared toward women instead of men. And a better chance that the comic was really subversive, really feminist, really aimed at the betterment of women.
As it is, even with all of my caveats about not knowing Indian culture, my sneaking suspicion is that it’s “just porn,” and if women are being benefited by it that’s a side effect, not the main effect. The main effect is dudes like me cumming into our hands.
By the way, don’t construe this post as me trying to tell women what to do. Most women I know are smarter than I am, they can figure this out on their own. They don’t need men to define feminism for them. But we should be aware that this is exactly what has been happening: Because of those glass ceiling issues, the media is still mostly run by men, and the media has been defining feminism as it wishes. Question what you see, that’s all I’m saying.
Hopefully the definitions of feminism that involve women becoming men’s sex slaves are really what women want. That’s what I call a best case scenario.
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