“It
takes a thief to catch a thief!” goes the saying. Therefore, as I had caught a
misogynist what does that make me? I will be thankful if you do not answer
that!
I
have elsewhere advocated a random choice of the third person singular, particularly
among “he”, “she”, “him”, “his”, “her”, rather than the unwieldy, the no-brainer,
the politically correct yet stylishly bankrupt “he or she”, “he/she” and such
offshoots. I, harbored, mercifully not for too long, a soft corner for “(s)he”,
exclusively in the nominative. But, as that style could not be easily extended
to the accusative case (how do you derive “him” from “her”, I haven’t the faintest),
I threw out the baby with the bathwater!
That
is when I said, to myself and whoever who cared to listen, that we should try
to pepper both the sexes in our writings and conversation randomly. I did not
know Professor Kaushik Basu listened to me and had used that logic in his book,
Beyond the Invisible Hand. I refer to
a paragraph appearing in page 86 of my copy (Penguin, ISBN 9780143415756).
“Consider
the following scenario. There is a cobbler, with poor marketing skills, who
produces shoes (efficiently) and then markets them to customers (in his [my emphasis] own inefficient way).
Then there is the natural marketer who spends half her [my emphasis] day clumsily making poor quality shoes and sells
them rapidly to gullible customers.”
Parse
the above paragraph seriously. The efficient producer-cum-terrible marketer is
a man. The man can do his job but cannot sell even if his life depended on it. On
the other hand, the clumsy producer-cum-terrific marketer is a woman. She
understands that “gullible customers” are there to be taken for a ride. Of
course, one does not need to read between the lines to catch the implicit
sexism too: “She used her feminine wiles to lure customers!”
If
I am in a generous mood, I would dismiss this as unfortunate. I may have argued
that the good professor followed my advice and the choice of sex of the two
protagonists randomly fell on the good
male and the bad female (society
standards of “good” and “bad” and not mine).
But,
I am not in a generous mood. I am sure he matched the sex with the characters
of the two actors in the scenario as his experience must have shown to be true and
as reason dictated. I cannot but conclude, and happily at that, Prof. Basu is a
misogynist. I love him for that!
There
may be a clamor for him to apologize for this stereotyping (implicit or
otherwise). As he had already listened to my advice once, I am emboldened to
offer him the second one: Don’t ever apologize! You will be on the slippery
slope of Political Correctness in a trice with no exit ramps, and where you
would reach is anybody’s guess! Stick to your guns! You are a misogynist and so
am I. Political correctness is for sissies!
Political
correctness, as with anything that matters in social interactions, has to have
a backstop so that the laudable sentiment of gender equality does not regress
into vacuity. If there is no such safety arrangement, you might find yourself
arguing for hangperson in place of hangman, even if you are against death
penalty, missing the forest for the trees!
Raghuram
Ekambaram
8 comments:
Despite being a woman, I can appreciate the stereotyping of a cobbler and a shoe marketing person. Why? A little bit of talking shop, I had handled the Leather desk in an earlier posting, and was closely associated with an UNDP funded leather project for artisans.I know of no woman cobbler even as an anecdotal story.The women and children in a cobbler household help in the task of making shoes but the end product is always that of the man of the house. Now take the case of a shoe 'marketing' person. Yes it is correct that 'most' of the NGO/boutique running personnel who successfully market products to the gullible at a 'perceived value' are women.
I would like you to be in your generous mood..LOL...
That is a nice anecdotal defense of KB, Aditi! But, the question just jumps up one level. Did KB sketch this scenario for his misogynist views to be expressed, at one remove? Just kidding.
Thanks for coming back so fast and heavy.
RE
Thanks DS sir ... but in my generous mood I will be blog post-sterile!
RE
Raghu, there are people like I Me and Myself, no matter the quality, marketing skills and anything, they always end up buying only with a female.
another unrelated comment on your blog from me :P
Balu, you must be the proto MCP :)))
Thanks for the light hearted comment ...
RE
That's a very interesting example you've shown. But I think, like Aditi, it's more an example of stereotyping than misogyny. Of course, you must be joking!
Matheikal, I was and was not joking ...
My position is one has to be sensitive about the possible (mis)interpretations of what one says while also being not too sensitive because then what one says becomes anodyne. KB is truly gender asensitive (like moral, immoral, amoral). When I do read through the full book I am sure I would locate statements on the other side also. But, I chose to read it as a statement of misogyny, what he wrote in this particular instance - I was deliberately being oversensitive, just to make a point.
The point is about hangman / hangperson when one is against death penalty itself. Perhaps that point is not made strong enough. But, I would let that be.
KB neither stereotyped not exhibited misogyny, as far as I can see.
RE
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