Misogyny and Patriarchy in my Daily Life...

Please note: this was originally posted on my other blog at http://lulu-ahimsa.zaadz.com in july of 2006...check it out!!!!

I have come to understand more about myself by being in a place where all of the things we normally use to define ourselves have been stripped away. I realize that I don't want to “blend” in with the local culture, as I thought I did when I was younger, reading adventure stories about young English men (it was always English men. You would think they were the only people who ever left home!!) moving throughout various cultures, learning the language, eating the food, loosing their “otherness” in local custom. I love to learn about other cultures, study languages, but I realize that since I truly love who I am, trying to lose that in an attempt to blend in is ridiculous, especially since I am not Asian nor Slavic, and nothing I do here is going to change my bone structure, the color of my hair, the shape of my eyes. Therefore, it stands to reason that I should just stay who I am, and learn what I can from that place.
It is because I love myself that I refuse to accept the absolute patriarchy and misogyny that characterize the social and cultural life here. I remember reading the Paulo Coehlo book, “Zahara”, and his wife came to Kazakhstan, and she was saying how in this culture, the “woman is the boss”, and sited some horse riding/flirting thing that proved this, and I was thinking, “Did he actually come to Kazakhstan? Was he here, because nothing I have seen in the 16 months I have been here reflects this in any way. There is a Kazakh expression, “the woman is the neck”, implying that she “holds up the head”, and in this analogy, the head is the man. I refuse to accept my second class status in this country as a woman. I know that I am looking at this from a Western perspective, but when a man comes into a room and shakes the hands of all the other men, I stick my hand out there to be grasped as well. They are often confused and look at my hand, but they rarely refuse to shake it. I guess it is acceptable because I am foreign. Being foreign, I have found, will explain away a lot of things. I have been told that I am stupid, or more stupid, because I am a woman, I have been told that i have no logic, because I am a woman, that I am weaker, less able to create things, (hello! what about life? that's creating something, isn't it??) I have been completely disregarded when I have asked a question, I have had strangers tell me what I should do with my life (you should marry my cousin and have babies soon…you are getting old). I had a 16 year old boy, with the expression of a martyr on his face, tell me, “Ok, Lulu, I will marry you if you want since you are 32 and not married, but can you cook?” He pitied me because of my age and lack of a husband, and thought he would make the ultimate sacrifice for me, but only if I could cook! (I do not walk around this country telling people that I am queer, especially after I was told by someone who knew I was queer that if he had a gun he would shoot all gay people, because they deserve to die. He told me this, by the way, in my own house, after eating my food, and then as he left said, “Oh, did I offend you?”)
It gets difficult to be reminded, day in and day out, that I am “less than” simply because I am not a man. Especially because I am used to demanding and getting respect as a human being and a woman, and to being taken seriously when I say something, not to be disregarded. I do my best to question these ideas, and I do my best to question these ideas gently, wtih an open mind and with a compassionate heart. But sometimes I get weary and angry. It makes me respect all the more the women who came before and fought so hard so that I could be “used to” things that they only dreamed of. Will the women here demand change? The majority of women I have talked to here say they have equality. There is nothing more they want. But I meet women every day who have Master's degrees working as secretaries for men who didn't graduate High School. The women who don't think that there is equality here end up leaving. Since I have come here, several of my friends have found international work in the Western world. So there is a kind of “feminist drain” here.
I am told that I need to stop looking at this culture through the lens of my own cultural upbringing. To an extent, I know this is true. But the fact is, International Organizations, the UN for example, have clearly researched the link between gender inequality and poverty. We will not be able to erradicate poverty as long as women do not have equal participation in all aspects of life, economic, social, cultural and political. And culture is not static, it constantly changes. I point this out to people, especially men, when they defend their absolute right to domination based on cultural history. I point out that their cultural history also includes living in a yurt and riding horses, which is not exactly the same as that BMW parked over there, is it? Using culture to justify oppression is like using religion to do the same, or the Constitution of the US, which has often been used as a tool of oppression (for example, for those people who were not originally included in the “all men are created equal” aspect of things….) The point of this rambling diatribe is, I guess, that when any of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed. That includes women, religious minorities, people of color, transgendered people, sexual minorities, those living in poverty, sex workers, illegal immigrants, etc. How can we seek freedom individually through meditation, religion or yoga, and then walk out the door and uphold institutions that continue to oppress people?
I choose to live my life in the belief that change is constant and it doesn't take much to get it rolling. I want to BE THE CHANGE I WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD. I IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE LIVING LIFE IN PEACE. I beleive in the power of compassion to transform. I belive that peace is a verb, not a noun. It is not a state of being only, but also a way of living. It is active. It is not only NOT doing harm, but also stopping harm when you see it happening, or helping to create conditions where harm does not occur. It is not only quiet, but also fierce. I want to be fierce in my compassion, and strong in my peace. I want to be a voice in the chaos, the calm in the struggle.
We must not only pray to “achieve enlightment for the benefit of all sentient beings”, but also pray that through our actions, other people may have the space, the strength, the food, the lack of violence, the health, the clean water, the self-love, the hope, to be able to dream of their own enlightenment, and even further, want to reach out beyond the apathy of the struggle to help someone else in their struggle.
***(sorry for any type-o's or incorrectly spelled words…)