Let me warn you at the very outset: this post is not meant for hypermasculine, militant, sexist, insensitive men!
Have you ever stayed with a bunch of young catastrophically middle class (not to say LS) Bengali men in the same room? If not in the same room, you have certainly shared space with this species in some point of your life. But staying in the same room is a different ballgame altogether. Provided you are sensitive, intelligent, insightful, basically tolerant by nature, and not sexually starved, and of course, do not subscribe to the Victorian morality and taboo associated with the s-word, you are sure to sense some kind of claustrophobia growing into your soul and threatening to eat you up. I have never experienced a real famine; but my stay with a bunch of these men (hypermasculine and sexist at its worst) has given me a fair idea how insufferable it is! It’s a suffering which these people do not recognize as suffering, for they have pitifully become used to fantasizing about s-related things, in the most crudest way possible for the ‘real thing’ is a taboo to them, and bask in the pleasure of having ventured into ‘forbidden territory’ by watching downmarket pornography and discussing aloud the power of the male organ, at their mother’s, girlfriend’s or wife’s back! Hey, they are that regressive, believe me! They still believe that power resides in that protruding tool, the fantasies and meditations on the dimensions of which occupy many many important moments of their life.
Let me describe a typical evening, well morning…no night…actually anytime of the day, how does it matter? What you would immediately recognize is that, that is if you are that insightful and objective, that no matter what time of the day it is, they, at the slightest opportunity, plunge into lewd jokes and juvenile puns which might not have interested you even when you were in school, almost effortlessly. These jokes often give way to the narration of other peoples’ experiences on bed. These tales mostly work themselves out through the binary of the strong man and weak woman. The man in these stories could well replace Jackie Shroff in the Musli-Xtra Power ads, and is enviously appreciated by the narrator and his intent listeners. Sometimes the binary is reversed: these stories have Circe-like women who really know how to dominate over the men. If you closely follow the expression of the narrator and the reaction of his listeners, you may notice a thin streak of fear and of course, disgust for the heroine who dared to…you know what! All this is of course drowned in unthinking laughter, for they have been interpellated into this convention that once a lewd joke is said, you need to laugh, no matter how terribly stupid it may be! And when, they are not cracking these mind-boggling and suicide-inspiring jokes, they watch pornography. Most of them use their newly purchased laptops to this much celebrated noble end of watching porn, and their degree of popularity is contingent upon their ability to provide the starved population with endless supply of nudity. See logic in this: which neta wins the election? Of course, the one who can meet demand with supply! In this case, the supply is usually measured in Gigabytes…the more Gigabytes of porn the more popular you tend to be! And you cynics out there blame Rakhi Sawant for her endless stunts for cheap popularity! See, what you are missing out! Well, ironically, these Gigabytes also measure out the depth of their sexual frustration, mind it! It's a different thing, that they do not realise this.
And one of my very nice female colleagues who has no choice but to participate in this male homosocial group, most often than not, finds herself at the receiving end of several bawdy jokes…but has a big heart to laugh them away, only lamenting that she can’t believe that she is, by default, the chosen site for the ‘libido sublimation’ of these famine-stricken guys! And she says that aloud! But the impact of such humour is lost on them! For, most of these guys do not understand English, and let me tell you, they are college teachers! Ha ha ha! Shocked? You are in West Bengal, my dear, which was officially de-English-ed some two and half decades ago.
And, once in a while, when pornography does not interest them, they watch heroic films such as Troy, appreciating the hypermasculinity of Achilles and the brotherly affection of Hector (now and then, rewinding and pausing to ogle at Helen’s exposed parts), or World War movies, imbued with belligerent violence. This female colleague of mine, aware of my interest in Gender Studies, has asked me to turn my gaze away from books and focus on this reality I am an unfortunate part of. And, she is right! Very right! Well, I surely would, provided I survive the painful claustrophobia of having to live through this great famine in which these men are caught up for life!
6 comments:
Repeatedly talking about sex can be understood in terms of foucault. They endlessly translate their libido into language to offer a safety valve to their repesssed sexuality. This proves their serious lack of 'potency' (yes I am speaking in their language). Their chi! chi! cannot be read seperately from their ufff... and ummm...They seem to be interlocked. It would be wrong to think that they dont realize the follies of their utterences - their wishfull yes and no's, only they cannot face it. These faiths ingrained in their tender minds at an young age has provided a false protection from the trauma of growing up and they remain forever young. The other possibilities or impossibilities however continue to unsettle them time and again. To deal with this they cannot but rhetorically translate them in their own favour. This is a technique of self-management. Problem is that what is epistemological (I mean sexuality in its very conception or misconception as it is culturally produced) is transferred through language into ontological as if inscribed in the being of man already. If we read simply what they say as it is it would be beguiling, taking for granted the signifier points exactly towards the signified. It is rather important to read what they avoid saying in their sayings. As I have pointed out already they say in order to avoid saying or confronting the manifold repressed possibilities of sexuality that is incompletely repressed. It acts as a radical other which one dares not to confront. It is like death - the dissolution of identity - the presence of which we always know but never speak out. Yes I mean to say that this rhetoric of hypermasculinism is inseperable to the identity of these people and leaving it would be like a loss of self for them. The rhetoric they use is only a strategy of defence. It is no doubt a famine and their words are false promises of relief measures. If there is no famine how can one perform the sacred rite of delivering relief!
This is a very humorous post and meant to be taken lightheartedly. Hope other people understand how it should be taken. And as you have been saying that some new acquaintances of yours has been mindlessly mimicking you in every walk of life, i hope they don't end up imitating the theme of the post in their blogs. if they do so, come up with an equally bitchy write-up to teach them a lesson.
thank you for referring to only my large heart, and not my largess in general that these colleagues of ours regularly take advantage of.
seriously, what is all this anxiety regarding everything S and in extension, female?
Well, I hereby acknowledge Samata's largess...for she is the one who has been quenching their thirst for beverage with some superlative brand of tea when the canteen tea tastes venomous, and often supplying them with food when the usually absconding domestic help does not show up...yet, most of them walk away nonchalantly, thumping their cups on the table leaving us to clean them up...not even offering help, as if we were there to make tea for them, and nothing else...
A timely post for the room sharers! I wish to add something with this "catastrophically middle class" - this is not to be equated with the middle class per se. This is about a group of people living in blurred margin between the urban and rural (if we can define as such) sectors. Urban exposures and rural hangover, lack of acceptance and insatiable curiosity to the unexplored may be the reasons for them behaving in a childish/strange/immature/insensitive manner (strange to you and me of course). The lenses we have, through which we see these things with the analytical precision is a result of the wide reading and the disciplines and interests (as we see in the post and in Emperor's comment). People with whom we share our rooms are depressingly positivists and I guess except a few, others never looked beyond their disciplinary boundaries of equations and formula! On the other hand our lenses are gifts from our disciplines and readings. So blame it on the social and academic environment. Either we try to expose them like we did once regarding the gender bias of the occupation and marriage relationships, or we remain silent!
Choice is ours, because our lenses are shaped by a different programme which 'others' do not have. Right?
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