hee hee, procrastinating, of course. I’m in the writing phase actually, I dont actually TA anymore, tho I did for many years. Thinking of starting a south asia history blog, so I was perusing some of these online sites for ideas I can steal… There arent that many such sites out there, actually. The crowd here seems pretty normal (tho its not a humanities/soc sci blog either, which might explain why its normal . I must say I disliked the Chapati Mystery crowd (subalterists to the core! UChicago, of course). As far as they were concerned, the revolution was imminent, gandhi sucked, and chattarjee (or SOME bengali, anyway) is going to save us all — and anyone who says otherwise is either a hindu fascist or is naively playing into their hands. Sheesh. Not much room for discussion there.

That’s where I was going with that.

I understand. There are lots of ways to approach the problem, tho I think we both agree it is or will eventually be a problem.

When was the last time you saw two men making out in the MAINSTREAM media in a hot boy-on-boy scene while his appreciative GF watches, digicam in hand?

agreed, its lopsided. (priyanka’s pics werent that tho, of course. Dont know why I felt obligated to defend priyanka. Oh wait… I remember now. ;D

OH! and *gasp* you don’t like Spivak and the Sub-Altern Studies gang? Oh hellfire awaits, you my friend

hee hee, I know.

I’m at a very conservative faculty studying “Hinduism”, and sometimes, you have to bring up thier spectre just to scare the Kashmir shawls off the creaky tenured profs who still like to secretly refer to themselves as “Indologists”.

I have the opposite problem, I’m sorrounded by quite militant pomo/poco folks. Over the top and in your face. They’ve long since scared off the ‘indologists’ and ‘orientalists’, but now they have set themselves up on a similar throne and they rule with about as much tact and tolerance as their predecessors (which is to say, not much).

My question is: Why does our field – south asian studies – need to be squeezed between these two intolerant binaries – hindutvavadis and subalternists? I’d like to reject both – and on similar grounds most of the time. I realize that means catching hellfire from both sides; but if that happens, actually I’ll start to think that i’m on to something!

Hey, email me if you like (link above). What year are you? In writing phase? whats your thesis? what are you reading? how did you fall into grad school? etc, etc.

No wonder we spend so much time writing pages ranting about a notoriously vapid men’s magazine – are you procrastinating on handing something in/grading too?
Yes… I see your point. And oooh believe you me – I squarely point my finger at capitalism. And when I say “sexual ethics” you should know that I don’t really buy into that term – especially the “ethics” part of it… wha?? huh?

Just to clarify – it wasn’t a (sex) ethical problem I was having with Maxim (are you as tired of typing that word as I am? I never want to have to see it again) it was in fact perhaps, to steal the term you’ve been employing, the monopoloy, the dominance of that comodified form of sex. I’m not going to get into the feminist issues tied up with that… you know what I’m talkin’ about. As for the girls making out… here’s a short opinion on it. Women: Do it if it gets you hot. But if you’re doing it for the benefit of your boyfriend (check out a site like Hot Or Not for an example of what I’m talking about – almost every girl who identifies as “bi” wants to pick up another woman to bring home to her and her man) then acknowlege that. Girl-on-girl action has a certain kind of currency in this type of media. And it’s not some kind of sexual rev. because you don’t have the same thing happening with the boys. When was the last time you saw two men making out in the MAINSTREAM media in a hot boy-on-boy scene while his appreciative GF watches, digicam in hand? That’s where I was going with that.

OH! and gasp you don’t like Spivak and the Sub-Altern Studies gang? Oh hellfire awaits, you my friend I don’t buy into everything they go off about either. However, I’m at a very conservative faculty studying “Hinduism”, and sometimes, you have to bring up thier spectre just to scare the Kashmir shawls off the creaky tenured profs who still like to secretly refer to themselves as “Indologists”. And then they whisper things about you behind your back… like “Watch out… she’s going to become one of those post-colonial feminist types”. Uhh…

Thanks for the link – I’ll check it out. Get back to that grading!

I don’t like seeing women objectified in general.

I understand where you’re coming from, totally. But I still find this approach problematic. I cant get myself to condemn the ACT, the way you do. In certain contexts this act – objectification – by men OR women at and by either gender – seems to me could be perfectly valid and even natural. Remember what Freud said; the difference between a neurotic and a ‘normally’ functioning person isnt the acts they do but that one obsesses and one doesnt. Thats what I mean too: its not the act; its the monopoly.

somehow more critical and astute and picky than the general audience in the west and reject this one mode of heterosexual, misogynist sexuality promoted by magazines like these that would be really great.

Again, I resist the ‘automatic’ assumption that objectification is misogynistic. Context must matter.

If we see a response in India where these magazines co-exist with a conscious effort on the part of the public not to privilage the kind of sex it sells, I’ll both be amazed and extremely happy.

You and me both. Incidentally i dont expect it to actually happen, any more than you do. But I’m saying we should perhaps deal with that problem not by banning objectification, but by arguing for/calling attention to the monopoly’s effects.

A theatrical enactment of frat-boy fantasies perpetuated and reinforced by the media perhaps? Uh huh. I only mentioned they were desi girls to draw the parallel between what happens in “western-style” media and within “brown” circles – and sure, if the girls want to suck face – whatevs.

Seems to me here you’re trying to have it both ways? On the one hand you say ‘if they want to suck face, whatever’. Thereby granting individuals freedom to objectify and act out whatever they like. On the other hand you say “frat boy fantasies” perpetuated and reinforced by the media, ie, objectifying, misogynistic, etc, etc. Clearly you dont mean to say ‘whatever’ here.

believe me, i’m on your side. I’m just asking: how will you tell the difference between indoctrinated women and women having personal fun? And: on what grounds will YOU intervene? And I’m suggesting: you wont be able to answer these questions if you approach the problem thru the lens of trying to identify ‘objectification’ as the culprit. I agree that capitalist media promotes certain styles of reading that become monopolies at the expense of other points of view (read: sex sells), and like any monopoly, that eventually has measurably detrimental effects on society. But this seems to me a capitalism problem rather than directly being a sexual ethics problem. You might say sexual ethics is affected by the process, but then it is the consequence, not the cause, of the problem.

I still think we’re not too far apart on this, prolly just emphasizing diff sides of the same coin. As a lefty, I’m just tired of us pursuing a politics of reactionism, thats all. Whether in gender studies or race or class or post-colonialism. I think leftists havent benefited much in the last 20 years by doing that, and I actually sometimes think we left behind much more productive analyses by embracing that approach. Seems more productive to me to contextualize and see the bigger picture rather than go after particular and individual behaviours (and just be resented as being the PC police). I guess thats a criticism that I increasingly have come to agree with.

(p.s., I also think the subalternists and spivak have really mucked things up for progressives. thats prolly the MOST un-pc thing a south asian studies grad student could say! Mucked things up by being unrelentingly reactionary, that is.

“Young women having fun in the back of the bus does not AUTOMATICALLY constitute an ethical assault on the nation.”

An ethical assault on ‘the nation’? No way. A theatrical enactment of frat-boy fantasies perpetuated and reinforced by the media perhaps? Uh huh. I only mentioned they were desi girls to draw the parallel between what happens in “western-style” media and within “brown” circles – and sure, if the girls want to suck face – whatevs.

My issue isn’t that it’s brown women being objectified. I don’t like seeing women objectified in general. And because this new medium is being introduced to India, it’s worthy of comment. It’s just as outrage-inducing when it happens.

As for the monopoly issue… yes… fine. If the brown public (and here I’m talking about general masses not the intellectual elite) are somehow more critical and astute and picky than the general audience in the west and reject this one mode of heterosexual, misogynist sexuality promoted by magazines like these that would be really great. If we see a response in India where these magazines co-exist with a conscious effort on the part of the public not to privilage the kind of sex it sells, I’ll both be amazed and extremely happy.

I should probably let you know RKS that I’m currently TAing a course called “Sexual Ethics” and my focus is South Asian Studies so if I seem obsessed… there’s a clue why

By your logic, I should want to be dating what the media props up as the sexual “object” par excellence i.e. white women.

not sure where i said THAT…

Girl on girl action keeps getting fetishized in the media and there’s an increasing number of videos of “ordinary” girls on spring break making out, girls on the desi bus back from some “culture show” in my undergrad making out with each other etc. etc. Coincidence or correlated? Sexual freedom or base debauchery?

I think the point is – is it for YOU to decide? Surely you dont think india has been free of sexual debauchery until the West showed up! THis is a perpetual problem with trying to inject ethics into the complexities of sexuality and its representation. There is nothing wrong with objectification AS SUCH. The only thing wrong is when it – like anything else- becomes a monopoly – and as you say, thats a problem both here as well as there. It is the monopoly that causes the “complexities of real women” to be buried – not the simple fact of objectification. The difference is important. The difference is what will allow feminism – which I’m all for – to not simply become part of the politics of reactionism. The difference would allow feminists (and i consider myself one) to not simplistically see all objectification as part of the ‘assault’ on womanhood (or manhood). Young women having fun in the back of the bus does not AUTOMATICALLY constitute an ethical assault on the nation. We have to be able to let local situations remain local, or to be able to tell the difference between what is local fun and what is national assault. The only way to do that is to modify what we’re looking for: I say look for evidence of monopolies and criticize those; dont just simply demonize the ACT of objectification. Doing the latter is a very de-contextualizing act. Thats bad.

Who is this beneficial to exactly? The problem isn’t trying to get people to HAVE sex with each other (and Maxim India is not playing to those of us with white “back up plans” – its target audience is desi who hook up with other desis) the problem is trying to get people to admit the fact that they themselves (not other people) are sexual and therefore open up about it. People will have sex, not to worry – with or without the insights from this magazine.

Maybe it seems like I’m harping on about it. But as a feminist – I can’t see why we have to first turn women into objects before we’re okay to have sex with them. What’s wrong with the complexities of real women? And where is the male counterpart to your argument? Are we coming up with a quick and easy formula to make male sexuality more palatable too? Or is it okay as long as the women are being turned into sexualised domesticated playthings? And just to get personal for a second, I didn’t “jump into” relationship with white men because they had less baggage – they each had all KINDS of baggage. Sex isn’t easy. Relationships aren’t easy. No matter how many sexy girls you put on a hood of a car or have bent over a couch or pouting up at you from on the floor – that’s not what’s going to ease our tensions with our partners.

I’d like to end this by tempering what I’ve been arguing: all this is on a idealistic level. These issues exist and are just as much a thorn in my side here in the west. Of course Maxim is going to be in India and of course people in India should have access to all kinds of media. But as people who read and post and analyse South Asia, it’s important to also be critical of the media available in South Asia to and to be as hard on issues of female representation/identity, homophobia, patriarchy, race relations etc. as we would be if it were part of the mainstream media here.

yes, this is exactly what i mean – believe me, it works the other way too – the vast majority of brown men who i know who grew up here have only dated white women. at least, those who have made any real attempt to become a part of this culture, that is. its almost like dating brown women would be ‘awkward’ in some way. Why is that? Isnt it absurd, if you think about it?

I would argue that it’s not the objectification of women that we need more of, it’s a greater awareness and comfort with sexuality as a whole.

I agree. thats why i’m saying lets not pick on Maxim too much; maxim is just a small part of the whole picture; in fact, its when we FORGET that, that we run into trouble. That is, arguably, those who use Maxim to objectify women in bad ways – have forgetten exactly that – that maxim is just a small part of the whole picture, that there is more to sex than just objectification. So lets ourselves not also forget that, by arguing objectification is itself bad. That is, if we do that, we wind up ‘forgetting’ the big picture exactly like those whom we’re criticizing. I think the right way to fight bad objectification isnt by denying the validity of objectiication, but by drawing attention to the small place it has in a much larger scheme. Thats a subtly different argument to make, but the devil is in the details, I think.

And while it’s clear you don’t support violence against women,

Thanks for noticing!

I’d ask you to consider who exactly is benefitting from this “objectification” in these glossy men’s magazines? It certainly isn’t your average brown chick. She doesn’t look anywhere close to Prianka Chopra – just as no white girl I know looks like oh I dunno, Angelina Jolie.

Here’s another counterpoint: I disagree with you on this, on the following terms: Who is benefitting from angelina jolie’s picture being splashed across our media and held up as an ideal beauty? Not white women? OF COURSE WHITE WOMEN! Yes, they dont look like her, for the most part. Yet, can anyone deny that PART of the reason that we americanized desis more easily jump into white relationships rather than brown ones – as both you and I have done – is because it has less baggage precisely because it is more mainstream, validated, legitimated, for white folk to BE sexual objects, A LA angelina jolie? Or let me put that as a question: Isnt that so? I think perhaps it is part of the equation. IF thats the case, would not the same validations seep into brown desi culture precisely BECAUSE of maxim’s objectificatinos of brown priyanka and others? and who benefits – brown women, brown men, in their mutual objectifications. no? Its a question, I think an open one.

India is already immensely sexual

No argument here; but we’re talking about how that sexuality gets expressed and massaged and channeled thru mainstream representations and from there how it influences desi-on-desi social relations. No question that india is a pot of raging sexuality and always has been. I agree with that. The question is what if anything does MAXIM change in that, and whether that change is ‘good’, ‘bad’, or ‘undecided’/neutral.

we’re just importing something in hopes of playing catch-up. Why? The revolution needs to be on brown terms, and Maxim is hardly the prime candidate to lead the way

I think a brown maxim is PART of a brown sexual revolution. Ie, on what grounds do we separate Maxim (capitalism, westernization) from Priyanka (brown, indian sexuality). They are on the same page together, colluding, making a statement at both browns and whites. I agree that the forms of western objectification, when they reach monopolizing power, can be unhealthy, like any monopoly. Lets criticize that, sure. I’m just saying we should criticize it by contextualizing it rather than by demonizing it. For the moment the monopoly of western male gaze hasnt yet arrived in india. For the moment a priyanka-in-maxim is legitimating indian sexuality if a very public and international way. For the moment i think thats good. When the said monopoly arrives, it will be a problem just as it is in the states. but the culprit wont be the act of objectification, but its monopoly. Again, subtle difference, but i think that difference should inform our critiques. I’m sure you recognize what i’m saying; it doesnt sound like we’re too far apart on this.

Yes, India (just to be specific) is rapidly being embraced by the rapture that is late capitalism. And so ideals like individualism, free markets, ‘global culture’ etc are becoming inevitable parts of the country’s and culture’s landscape. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way for India to negotiate what is coming its way without being closed off to it. Japan is always touted as a great example of a culture able to both negotiate and in many ways, transcend the thrust of western modernity. We, as consumers and voters (democracy and capitalism – it’s what we sing) do have a say in what gets marketed to us and what we choose to embrace and what we choose to reject. But it takes responsible choices and a willingly educated and politically mobilised people to do so.