Gender Roles

I was listening to a news report on NPR about an incident concerning a female sports reporter in a locker room (see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130244150) and recalled a guest column I had written for the Manila Chronicle. I'm not telling you when :-)  The column was called Gender and was a forum for different people to post their views.

Here it  is:

=================================

My Boys Don't Buy the Margarine Ad

Would anyone believe, when I stride along in a short skirt and high heels with my face made up and my nails painted, that I am a staunch advocate of equal opportunities for women and men?

Would anyone believe that my friend, an activist in the women's movement, would wait up till 2 a.m. to serve her husband a hot meal after he had been out drinking with the boys?

Yet neither my friend nor I am out to deceive anyone. It's just that this whole gender issue is a complex thing that can (and for me, must) be approached at different levels.

Is a certain standard of dress a correlate of sexual equality? Where does one draw the line between acts of subservience and expressions of love?

We are, after all,each in a trap, which is sometimes of our own making.

Over drinks with some friends, talk turned to relationships between men and women. (One (a career woman) started complaining about her husband not doing his share of house work. Trying to defuse what I had sensed could turn into an embarrassing situation (the husband was around), I remarked that before they go into a slanging match, couples who are having conflicts over sex roles should consider that a great part of the conflict cannot be resolved at an interpersonal level.

Who should take care of the children, for example, when both parents have careers? Internal arrangements between husband and wife are only a stopgap measure. A real solution, I argued, would require societal adjustments such as day care centers and job-sharing alternatives.

My friend retorted, "That's easy for you to say, you don't have to live with a man." And that shut me up (I'm divorced) but not for long.

My two children are boys in their teens and one of the things I would dearly like to equip them with is the ability to look at women as persons first and female only second. That task can sometimes be an awesome thing.

Only half-jokingly have I often remarked to my frineds that one of my worst fears is that I would raise a couple of mama's boys or male chauvinists. After all, quite a number of them have agreed with me that there seems to be something in Filipino child-rearing practices that spoils the boys. (And many women complete the process by spoiling their men.)

When a margarine ad claiming that growing children needed the energy the product provided showed a boy in various play situations and a girl doing chores, I wondered if the ad were influencing or merely reflecting social reality.

Knowing how much I was up against, I took my children's sexual education very seriously. One of the things I decided early on was to demystify sex.

As early as three years old (that's when he  got curious) my first-born learned the clinical description of procreation and childbirth together with the purpose of the condom. Where may parents would say "You'll learn that when you're older," I attempted to answer as matter-of-factly as I could. (Sometimes it's hard to keep a straight face, though.)

Part of this campaign was putting them in coeducational schools. The schools helped somehow in that home economics lessons were the same for boys and girls, which was not the case when I was studying.

As they grew older, I would try, without pontificating, to discuss the issue with them. My gripes against the margarine ad was one such occasion.

But to avoid the fate of the emperor who was unmasked by the boy, I had most of all to try to live by what I believed.

While I like cooking and don't hate washing dishes, I see to it that they take a hand in these things too. (It is often easire, believe me, to do te housework yourself than to convince and train boys whose consciousness is being hammered by such things as the margarine ad to do chores.)

The other side of this coin is that I can't afford to be dumb about simple electrical repairs or wait for a man to clean the drainage system.

While it may be too early to tell how they would really turn out, I think my boys got the message that women are not inferior beings to be bullied or patronized.

How can I tell?

Well, one of the women my 17-year-old admires is model Gina Leviste, who, he always points out, is a summa cum laude graduate of economics and is the marketing manager of the firm she models for.

As for my 12-going-on-13-yer-old, just a few weeks ago when we were kidding around and he was taunting me with a twinkle in his eye that men were superior, I asked him, "Now, seriously speaking, son, do you really believe that?"

And he answered, "No, I think they are equal."

Mother of the Believers

The title caught my eye-- Mother of the Believers. It is the story of the birth of Islam,  told as the memoir of Aisha, a  Mother of the Believers, as the prophet Muhammad's wives were called.  If you want to learn about the history of Islam from the point of view of a Muslim, this book is a very enjoyable way of doing so. I was describing the story to a Muslim friend, and he told me that I probably now know more about the birth of Islam than some people born and raised in Muslim countries. He also told me that this book was written from the Sunni perspective. (He was raised in the Shia or Shiite traditions.) The different branches of Islam arose after the death of Muhammad, a result of conflict on the question of succession. The conflict is touched on in the novel.

The author, Kamran Pasha, is described in the book covers as "an acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter and television producer" who was born in Pakistan and moved to the US at the age of three and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. When I saw his next book, "Shadow of the Swords" there was no question -- I had to have it. This second novel is the story of the Crusades --Richard the Lionheart battles Saladin.

A question and answer portion at the end of the book sheds light on the writing of this book.  Pasha wrote this novel in light of the current conflict between the Western and Muslim worlds. He says, "the Third Crusade represents in my view the closest analogy to the events of today, with one crucial difference-- the 'heroes' and the 'villains' are reversed." This novel is written in the third person because, Kamran Pasha says, "I wanted to be fair and true to the varying points of view about faith, politics, and warfare presented in the book."

While keeping true to historical facts about major events, Pasha adds fictional characters to bring across what he feels are important perspectives. The heroine of the story is Miriam, a fictional niece of the real Jewish scholar Maimonides who was court physician to Saladin. Pasha created Miriam, he said, "to give a woman's point of view as well as a Jewish perspective on both Christian and Muslim actions." Another important fictional character, Sir William Chinon, was added "because he represents what I believe is the true face of Christianity, a religion like Islam that at its best is about love, humility, and service."

Pasha is an excellent writer who makes you believe in his characters. I can't wait to see what he will write next.

Check out his Website http://www.kamranpasha.com/index.php

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I just finished reading Stieg Larsson's Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest), thank goodness! I can't afford another sleepless night!

The trilogy traces the mysterious Lisbeth Salander, tattooed social misfit crime solver par excellence, as she partners with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist to expose criminals within the establishment. The last mystery to be solved is the mystery of Slander's life, revealing her incredible story of survival.

I brought the third book to my doctor's appointment yesterday as I was almost at the end, and the nurse noticed it and said she was reading the same thing. She was as enthused about it as I was. She said she even brought one of the books to her daughter's recital and was sneaking in some reading while waiting for her daughter to come on, and another Mom in the audience noticed her and said she was also reading the trilogy and loved it.

Definitely a must-read, but before you start make sure you do not have any pressing deadlines for work or you will be seriously conflicted!