4 minute read
The Cultural Looking Glass
by Pritika Sinha [CW: misogyny]
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“Don’t you feel any shame?” As a South Asian woman, I’ve noticed that I get asked this question a lot. Shame? Shame regarding what? Have I hurt someone? Have I insulted someone’s pride? Have I committed any crime or wrongdoing? Why is “shame” being enforced upon me? Oh, because I went against family pride and explored my sexuality.
There is a concept I’ve been familiar with since I was a child. It is the concept of “Izzat”. Izzat is referred to as the notion of “honour”- in particular, family honour. South Asian women tend to carry the weight of this “Izzat” in practically every part of their life and in every single thing they do – but especially when it comes to their sexual decisions. Hence, I wanted to delineate how this overpowering and overprotective culture over South Asian women came about, and why it still persists so strongly even today.
So, what exactly happens when this South Asian concept of “Izzat” fi nds itself in proximity to the Western context of sense and sexuality? The common understanding amongst Asian cultures is that when their people immigrate into Western countries, they are entering “sexually charged spaces” [1], and if you look at the media, it’s not an entirely baseless claim. In order to defend themselves against this supposed sexual corruption, cultural communities begin to audit, control and repress the sexual behaviour of their women. They use the concept of “Izzat’’ as a means to justify this repression, and because of this we see a long chain of sexual surveillance emerge throughout the entire South Asian community.
There is a historical basis to this behaviour that can be traced back to the days of colonialism – the days that led to the scholarly establishment of “Orientalism” – the landmark academic paper by Edward Said [2]. Within the theory of Said, in order to further dominate over the minority culture, the dominant power would constrict minority women into “colonial styles” of sexual oppression [2]. Thus prevails some sort of “European male-power fantasy” and the spectre of this fantasy still hangs over our heads today [1].
It is also important to acknowledge that this concept of “Izzat” does not bear the same weight for a son. This can be associated with the origins of Orientalism as a male-power fantasy, which helps form the belief that colonial power is best exercised through phallic exploitation of the vulnerable female. Subsequently, this gender selective exploitation has deeply affected South Asian culture to the point that it is one of the driving reasons behind sex-selective abortion within South Asian families [3] . If you can have a son, you’re better off. No one will question what he does. No one will criticise his decisions. For him freedom would be a universally acknowledged right, not a universally acknowledged burden. Once you’re born as a girl, you’re born into the panopticon: the constant watch tower of sexual surveillance.
Hence, one of the main mechanisms used against South Asian women in order to protect them against a supposed sexual “exploitation” by the colonial phallic agenda is to enforce shame. To be honest, most of the time it works. When you come home after a late night of a bit of fun, hearing your closest family members say they are ashamed of you and the person you’ve become leaves a mark harder than a slap on the face. This “shame” affects the way you walk, the way you talk, the clothes you wear, and the person you now present yourself as. It suggests you should hold yourself back, because it is the right thing to do if you want to protect the “Izzat” of
your family. Sexual protectionism perverses itself into your life, and suddenly the aunties have formed some sort of surveillance federation – “Why don’t you watch my girls, and I’ll watch your girls” [3] – under the supposed moral guise of protecting an honour that has nothing to do with you and your own individual decisions.
So is there anything that can be done against this? Or is the concept of Izzat so deeply interwoven within culture and lifestyle that it has a permanent imprint? It feels as though shame is branded onto South Asian women throughout their lives. As a defence against this perverse sexual control the best thing to do is to stop feeling shame – stop enforcing it on others. I no longer feel shame. Why should I? Once, I’m an adult – I am an adult in every sense of the word. I am not a victim of the Western agenda, if anything I am a victim of my own stupid decisions. So please stop feeling ashamed of yourself. You don’t carry the weight of your ancestors. You carry your own freedom.
References: • Le Espiritu, Yen. 2001. ‘We Don’t Sleep Around Like White Girls Do’: Family, Culture, and Gender in Filipina American Lives. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 26 (2): 415–440
• Said, E. W. Orientalism. Vintage, 1979.
• Mandeep Kaur Mucina.Exploring the role of “honour” in son preference and daughter defi cit within the
Punjabi diaspora in Canada.Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d’études du développement [Internet]. 2018;39:3: 426-442. DOI: 10.1080/02255189.2018.1450736
