Talk the walk

The panel of hawks asked me serious questions about India going nuclear. They awarded me the scholarship, even though it was generally agreed upon that I was taking the “trendy Praful Bidwai position.” Still, my moral and political arguments weren’t as important to them as the way I looked. While walking out, I could hear them saying amongst themselves, “He’s finally cleaned up his act.” “Ha ha, yeah, good for him.” That’s what really mattered.

In the second story, a friend of mine is bicycling around Lutyen’s Delhi, clad only in clingy orange shorts. It’s a hot night, so he’s decided to leave his t-shirt at home. He’s stopped by the cops, put behind bars. His shirtlessness is a problem, but so is his goatee. The police are convinced that he is an ISI agent. Only ISI agents cycle around after midnight, wearing little but their goatee beards.

Both these stories point up the mundane truth that the way we look matters in the world, and to the world. Human beings are superficial creatures; we go by appearances, even though we are often fooled in this regard, both in love and at the workplace. I am a bohemian, a libertarian, an anarchist. God knows, I am so many things. But that’s me. It doesn’t change the world around me, which will always be a sucker for the image. So, as we grow older, we make peace with this terrible little fact. There are many things one wants to do openly but can’t because society doesn’t like it. We find other ways. For there is always a way.

In the debate about what women can wear, we have to also talk about what men are allowed to wear. Just like men can’t go to office wearing shorts and slippers, neither can women. Do muscle-bound hunks work corporate jobs wearing leather singlets? Would they be taken seriously if they did that? And if the girl in the next cubicle passed a compliment about his biceps, should he take offence?

The debate is not just about clothes. It’s about the pushes and pulls of society, and finding a tightrope which allows one to totter on one’s own terms, as much as is possible. There are many things I’d like to do but can’t. I’d like to walk around M Block market with a cold can of beer on a muggy June evening. I’d like to drop half a tab of E, and dance naked in the first rains of the monsoon or browse for books in Crossword smoking a Drum roll-up. But I can’t.

Taking Liberties

Ginger wondering why men are nicer to her than women are at the ice-cream parlour where she works and over the phone at the lawyer's office where she also works reminded me of this. Men are nicer to Ginger, I posit, because she is a young woman, and most men are (1) programmed to be pleasant to young women and (2) don't feel in competition with them. Women (1) aren't and (2) very often do. Saying most men are good implies that at least one man is bad and, poppets, there's more than one bad man out there 'cause I've dated two very bad men, and I've had some emails about even worse ones. And men can't take me to task for observing this, for it is men who feel the hand of fear grip their hearts when they realize their baby daughters aren't babies any more. People often ask to be my Facebook friend. But I very, VERY rarely become the Facebook friend of someone I have never met. I'm so out there when I write, writing both for Catholic Toronto for money and the Catholics and/or Singles of the World for free, that I protect my privacy on Facebook. I also protect my physical space. I won't go so far as to say that I never talk to strangers, but I certainly never put my private life in the hands of strangers. This is particularly true of male strangers. Unless we've been introduced, I usually don't want to talk to a male stranger. (The local customs of blethery Scotland mean, of course, that I end up talking to older male strangers at bus stops, but I'm married now, and that makes a HUGE difference.) The second way I protect myself is to reject dodgy blog comments. My dear ladies, for you are mostly ladies, you would not believe some of the comments I reject, for I try to reject them before you can see them. The worst ones come from men, including Catholic men who think they are righteous before God. Some men think they can come swaggering in here telling me what's what, but they are wrong. There are only four men I have to listen to: my husband, my father, my priest and my editor. All other men can take their scoldings and their "how dare you's" and jump in a lake. I don't permit such liberties. The third way I protect myself is with my invisible cloak of reserve. I'm not sure when or where I got it, but it means I am very rarely approached by men. I think I radiate a sort of "If you mess with me, I will rip off your face" signal. It helps to have a keen, smug self-regard, good posture, sense of style and the ability to be nasty to nasty people. Too many girls are trapped by the belief that if they are nice and gentle to everyone, no matter how wicked, they will be okay. No. Not true. The fifth way I protect myself is to be very careful about female friends who hang out with dodgy men. I don't shelve my self-protection for their sakes. There are women who come down with dodgy men the way other women come down with colds. It's very sad, but I have never been able to figure out how to solve that problem. I do like or love the female friends, but I can't stand some of their men friends. The way to deal, of course, is to treat the men friends warily and then to protest at their first sign of badness or weirdness, whether it is making obscene jokes or appearing before me in their underpants or a dress.* Having bus or taxi fare on hand is essential at such moments. Frankly, the best protest I can think of is a timely cry of "TAXI!" By the way, I should also mention that some nice men have some very not nice male friends, men who act like great guys around other men, but when alone with a woman, the mask comes off. Keep an eye out for those guys, and if one behaves inappropriately towards you, get the heck out of Dodge, and call up your mutual friend to tell him he shouldn't be introducing a guy like that to his female friends. If he's a good guy, he'll be mortified and apologetic, for being a good guy, he doesn't want to be thought of as a bad guy by association. . I care about what my family, friends and readers think of my soul, but that's it. All the general public deserves is a view of a tastefully dressed, recently washed woman who doesn't screech, hoot or reel drunkenly before it or make long, boring calls on her mobile phone. If someone thinks I am racist, classist or homophobic because I get off an elevator early, that's his/her problem, not mine. The Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan taught that knowledge is a three-step process encompassing Experience, Understanding and JUDGEMENT. Being judgemental, therefore, is a GOOD THING, as long as you are using your reason. NOT being judgemental is insane and even suicidal. You use your judgement before you cross the road, so why not use your judgement when deciding whether or not a man is worth a single second of your time? When I flip through my mental rolodex of the men with whom I enjoy spending time, I note that all of the non-priest ones--including B.A.--were friends of friends before I met them. I have made many female friends who were strangers to all--in fact, I pride myself on being welcoming to female strangers--but this is not true of the men to whom I now care to speak. (By the way, not all priests are good men. Almost all of my seminarian/priest classmates were great guys, but not all priests are. Watch out, especially when abroad or among ones foreign to your country, since they may have weird ideas about women who look like you. If, in a non-pastoral situation and apropos of nothing, a priest tells you celibacy is really difficult, say good-bye. "Celibacy is really difficult" is the bad priest's mating call.) And I will second the importance and utility of the "invisible cloak of reserve." I'm not sure that mine was fueled by an air of "I'll rip your face off" since my personal aura was more towards the "demure young maiden" end of the spectrum. (Well, except for the incident with the six foot spear.) But I was told by my female classmates that the males of our acquaintance were better behaved and used cleaner language around me than around most others.

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