| Yawning
Bread. December 2006
Bedside reading
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Every Sunday, the Sunday Times would have an interview with some
newsworthy person about what he was reading, and then the interviewee
would say something positive about whichever book it was.
It has long struck me as not a little too convenient that everyone was actually reading a book, considering how low Singapore scores in book-buying and book-reading habits compared to many other countries in the same economic league. I mean, shouldn't there be one or two at least who didn't have a book habit? Moreover, there was something slightly incredible in how the books named were almost always serious ones. I'm sure there are many more Singaporeans who rarely venture beyond, say, scuba-diving or stock investor magazines, yet the Sunday Times don't seem to encounter any. Nor of manga lovers. Nor of anyone who'd admit to snuggling up with a bit of erotica. One has to keep up appearances, I suppose.
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Right now, for example, I have 4 books on my bedside table. This week, I am reading The God delusion by Richard Dawkins, so it's a good time for the Sunday Times to hypothetically call. But when I finish it, I may move on to something rather saucier, for 2 of the 4 books are compilations of erotic short stories. If the newspaper should call, should I still say I'm reading Richard Dawkins? But fortunately, I'm quite sure the newspaper won't call. That peace of mind is one advantage of not being on the Straits Times or Sunday Times list of desirable/respectable interviewees. They find it hard enough to print what they already know about me, why would they want to know more than they can handle? See box alongside. I don't really expect to finish the two erotica books. If I know myself, I will get bored with them well before the halfway mark. Nevertheless, I bought them because I wanted to see how good (or bad) the writing was -– would the stories be of the "It was a dark and stormy night" kind? In any case, short stories make for easy reading. They're a pleasure to have at hand, like chocolates in the fridge, for moments when you say to yourself, I don't care what good nutritional advice is, I just want something quick and sinful. Oops, wrong choice of word. Please note, I'm using the word "sinful" in a completely casual way. I don't actually consider erotica any kind of transgression against morality. Those two books were bought in Bangkok; I can't recall the name of the bookstore, but it had an entire section boldly labelled "erotic fiction", and no, the books were not wrapped in plastic. I don't believe they would be available in Singapore, which just shows the kind of stuffy censorship we have to live with in our own city.
You are advised to avert your eyes if you think you will be struck with an epileptic fit, be forever denied admission to heaven or else be distracted from contributing your 0.00003% to Singapore's GDP. * * * * * Interestingly, many extremist Muslims make a similar pronouncement on the evils of modern dress for women. A society that permits or encourages women to dress in a way that shows off her feminine appeal, they say, is dehumanising to women; she becomes little more than a walking mannequin.
This is a view not confined to male Muslims; many female Muslims too hold the same opinion. They do not, for example, consider the tent-like dress to be an infringement on their liberty, rather, they embrace it as liberating to themselves since the traditional dress offers no encouragement to the lascivious gaze of men. Yet of course, this argument is contradicted by the experience of women in societies where they freely go around in hotpants, strapless tube tops and miniskirts. They don't think that they are imprisoned by their choice of clothing; some of them actually think they wield power through their control of their sexual allure.
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Why is it that in some societies, the lascivious gaze is a threat, and in other societies, it is much less so? Or, as my father wondered more than once during this week when the Asian Games were going on in Doha, Qatar, with all these female swimmers, divers and athletes going about in bikinis and the barest of running shorts -- how do the Qataris reconcile all that with their Islamic injunctions to cover up? The other test that any theory of objectification must submit to is whether the same effect is observable in gay porn. Do gay men objectify other men as a result of watching gay porn? I doubt so, but then you might say it is not a good test because they're both the same sex. Well then, what if straight women started watching gay porn in numbers? Ah, then gay men might start complaining about being seen as no more than objects of female lechery. So maybe there is something in the indictment that porn offends by dehumanising those who are featured in them. Then again, might it be a smokescreen for another kind of perceived threat -- that of power inversion? Gay men watching other gay men is fine, but women watching gay men is not. Thus, rather than porn (or skimpy dress) being the culpable activity that objectifies and dehumanises the Other, it may in fact be no more than a catalyst that brings primal fears of subjugation to the fore. That is, a power differential must first exist, and porn is objectionable because it reminds one side painfully of it. Likewise for dress. The lascivious gaze must first exist, and the woman must feel that the lack of social and legal equality makes her particularly vulnerable to it for the defence of dress to become as important as it is. With increasing social and legal equality, she has less need for that defence. Thus, porn and dress may not be in themselves the problem. The root of the problem may be in how women are seen as subordinate in the first place. For example, the culture may teach that women should dutifully serve their menfolk; wives should obey their husbands and daughters their fathers. Sexual rights are rigidly regulated. Sexual freedom as represented by alluring dress, let alone porn, upsets the social order, and those -- male and female -- with the most invested in that order, would feel acutely threatened by it. This may explain why societies with the widest power differential between the sexes direct so much of their moral ire towards pornography and "immoral" dress. At its foundation, such cultures tacitly teach that women are basically there for the convenience of men, and to serve men. Yet, at the same time, right-thinking members of such societies can see the potential abuse in it, so they try to counter the abuse by waging war against sexual exploitation of women. But all these efforts may be misguided. It was recently reported that the Malaysian state of Kelantan had the highest number of visits per capita to pornographic websites, compared with other Malaysian states. Kelantan is the only state ruled by PAS, the Islamic party, and over the years the party has implemented many strict rules. This is an interesting correlation -- the objectification of women is highest and the lascivious gaze most intense, where the maximum efforts have been made to eradicate "immorality". Which way does the arrow of causation point? Do maximal efforts at erasure provoke increased objectification? Or does a prior maximal objectification lead the government to attempt harder to suppress it? If the latter, what led to the high objectification of women in the first place? As I have argued above, I think it is the
highly genderised social model, with unequal sexes, that lies at the root.
So rather than expending energy fighting porn and demanding that women
cover up, it should be more effective doing something about women's
equality. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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Something else we're not going to find in
our shops as the year-end season approaches are nude calendars. They're
big sellers elsewhere, but the guardians of our morals think that
Singaporeans shouldn't be exposed to such filth lest we go totally
berserk. On the right is one of the pictures from the French national rugby team's
calendar.
