Short Takes: What Women Write - Writing from the Shadows

This is a post of the talk given the students who participated in the event Short Takes: What Women Write held at Women's Christian College on 1st December 2018 as part of the 2018 Prajnya 16 days Campaign against Gender Violence. Read about the event here:

Two speakers spoke as a pair on the topic of Writing from the Shadows. The first speaker threw light on gay literature through the ages and the second speaker focused on the LGBTQ literary panorama in India.

1.

Writing from the Shadows: Writing that brings other Gender and Sexuality Perspectives to Life

Gay literature Throughout The Ages

Gay literature is a collective term for literature produced by or for LGBTQ community which involves characters, plot lines, or themes portraying all modes of variants from society’s normative model of sexual identity, orientation and activities.  Representation of lgbtq+ individuals in literature is important because they often turn to literature for the solace of being validated and understood. Literature not only helps in expressing the depth and beauty of queer relationships but also documents the psychological stresses and alienation suffered by these people.

Many mythologies and religious narratives have stories of gay relationships and portray different genders. Greek gods and heroes like Zeus, Apollo and Heracles validate pederasty. A gay relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is subtextually expressed in Homer’s ‘Illiad’. Latin work, ‘Satyricon’ by Petronius and Japanese work, ‘The Tale of Genji’ by Murasaki Shikibu is examples of some other early works.

In the 18th and 19th century authors included allusions to these mythological characters to express their sympathy with gay readers and gay themes, these references might be overlooked by the straight readers. Authors used such clandestine ways to express such themes to avoid facing legal action or public condemnation or even prosecution in some countries. Many early Gothic fiction writers like Mathew Lewis, William Beckford, Francis Lathom were homosexuals and used gothic and horror fiction to express gay themes. Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ invented the lesbian vampire story and even inspired Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ which has its own homoerotic aspects. The first American gay novel was ‘Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania’ by Bayard Taylor. The protagonist in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ is one of the first characters who secured a terrible fate for his or her homoerotic tendencies. The ‘atmosphere of frankness’ created Enlightenment gave way for a lot more works.

A lot of novels with explicit gay themes and characters came in the 20th century. An assumption which existed then was that gay characters in literature must come to a tragic end but later many works came up defying this notion. Edward Prime Stevenson’s ‘Imre: A Memorandum’ was the first in which the homosexual couple were happy and united in the end. Forster’s ‘Maurice’, Forman Brown’s ‘Better Angel’, Gore Vidal’s ‘The City and The Pillar’ are examples of some notable works of that period.

In the 21st century, much of LGBTQ+ literary works have earned mainstream acclaim. Notable authors include Sarah Waters, Jamie O’ Neill, Michael Cunningham, Pablo Frost. LGBTQ+ themes have also become more visible in a growing body of young adult literature. Speculative fiction especially gives authors and readers the freedom to imagine societies that are different from real-life cultures, therefore readers can be given an opportunity to examine sexual bias by making them reconsider his or her cultural assumptions.

- Rhema Sara Varkey, IInd year B.A in English, Women's Christian College

2.

WRITING FROM THE SHADOWS: WRITING THAT BRINGS OTHER GENDER AND SEXUALITY PERSPECTIVES TO LIFE

It may seem strange to recognize an LGBTQIA literary panorama in India. Yet, this topic takes root in the literary tradition and Indian philosophy: the Indian traditional literature is so ripe with sexually ambiguous characters and gender variance that this could suggest the existence of a third gender and the co-existence of many sexual identities.

In the context of reworking the national identity that was forming within the post-Independence India, literature was subject to severe censorship by the supporters of nationalist movements. Therefore, in the process of collecting literary works and constituting an “Indian literature”, many texts were despised and censored.

Regarding Gay Literature in India, many works prospered in states like Maharashtra. In 1957, “Ek Sarak Sattavan Galiyam” by Kamlesvar, a bisexual truck driver divides his erotic-love living between a traditional Indian dancer and the young truck cleaning man.

It is easy to imagine that most of the stories that dealt with lesbianism were censored. Only one famous Urdu tale, “Lihaaf” (“The blanket”) by Ismat Chughtai, set in a traditional Muslim house, survived the censorship. “My Story” by Kamala Das was another piece of literature that took the publishing industry by storm. She not only wrote novels that had lesbian plot lines but unabashedly shared her desires for women- her same-sex desires that she witnessed during her days in boarding school and the attraction she felt towards her female teachers and one of her doctors.

In 2010, one of the first publishing houses for LGBTQ literature, Queer Ink, was established in India, giving this community an exclusive space for writing.

Around the world, there is an increasing popularity of introducing LGBTQ writers and diversifying this genre of literature. Transgender teenage girl Jazz Jennings co-authored a 2014 children's book called I Am Jazz about her experience discovering her identity. The popular Japanese manga tradition has included genres of girls' comics that have featured homosexual relationships since the 1970s. The most famous book released this year concerning Gay literature was released by TV host John Oliver, titled “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo,” a satire aimed at the Vice President of USA Mike Pence, one of the many homophobic politicians in the Trump administration, and had written a children’s book based on his bunny named Marlon Bundo.  Oliver’s parody has topped the Amazon best-seller list. Finally, with the advent of recognition of such diverse communities existing in our world, acceptance is a long and tedious process. Only by understanding their perspective will it lose its strangeness; it will just be another way of living. Gay books will just be books, gay movies just movies.

- H.Varsha, IInd year B.A in English, Women's Christian College.

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Short Takes: What Women Write - Truth or Dare: Gender-Based Violence defines women's possibilities; Does it have to feature in literature in order to authenticate a woman's voice?

This is a post of the talk given the students who participated in the event Short Takes: What Women Write held at Women's Christian College on 1st December 2018 as part of the 2018 Prajnya 16 days Campaign against Gender Violence. Read about the event here:

Truth or Dare: Gender-based violence defines women's possibilities; Does it have to feature in literature in order to authenticate a woman's voice?  - Two speakers spoke on this topic as a pair. The first speaker handled the question of women's possibilities being defined by the violence she faces, while the second speaker discussed the need for gender-based violence to be featured in literature.

1.

The term "Gender" is often misunderstood and misinterpreted. The dictionary defines "Gender" as "The state of being male or female. ( Typically with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.)" So "Gender-based Violence"  is nothing but violence directed against a person because of their gender. People of every gender go through this type of violence, but the majority of the victims are women and girls. The very fact that a person takes advantage of another and tries to assert their superiority over them just because they belong to a certain "gender" is rather disturbing but very prevalent in today's society.

To answer the question of whether or not Gender-based Violence defines a woman's possibilities, it is important to understand what a woman goes through after the traumatic experience. Violence to a woman can cause a variety of long-term and short-term physical and mental issues, the most fatal of which is death where the woman is either killed by the perpetrator or in the long run, she turns suicidal. But this is not the only effect on a woman, she is physically injured and mentally traumatised, as a result of which, she is rendered incapable of performing her everyday tasks. When it comes to work, the woman is either thrown out of her workplace or she herself quits her job in fear and shame because the humiliation and judgements thrown at her by the society are far worse than the actual violence. This is also the reason why girls don't talk to their parents about what they've been through, because often times, the actions taken by the parents are extreme: the girls are made to terminate their education and are never let outside their houses, or they are thrown out of their houses because they've brought "shame" to the family. Many girls and young women grow up to be uneducated and unemployed, and statistics prove that nearly 67% of unemployed women are victims of domestic abuse.


If a woman rises to the top or at least tries to make a name for herself even after enduring all the above-mentioned struggles, she is always seen with an invisible tag around her neck, which reads "abuse victim", and that is somehow enough for people around her to dismiss her and never take her seriously; and so a women victim is denied many opportunities in life and many of her dreams and goals remain unfulfilled. Therefore it is true that Gender-based violence defines a woman's possibilities.

- D. Angeline Nikita, II year B.A in English, Women's Christian College

2.

Does gender-based violence have to feature in literature in order to authenticate a woman's voice?

It is rather disturbing that this question even arises as it only seems to prove that women are more readily dismissed than heard and helped in our society.

Women are ambitious, inspiring, hilarious, and much more. Their worth is defined by so much more than their victimhood or the violence perpetrated against them. While the fact that a woman's voice needs “authentication” itself is saddening, it does not have to be done only through the presence of gender-based violence in literature. Social media, television and the internet have emerged as promising platforms for women to voice out themselves to the world and gain solidarity and support.

Traditionally, some authors refer to gender-based violence with misnomers such as “normalized violence” which is violence against women that is naturalized by particularly gendered constructs of heroism, nationalism or domestic space and therefore ignored as a normal part of life. In literature, female characters are most commonly made to meet with any one of the following familiar tropes after she is a victim of a violent crime:  She either becomes an unbalanced person, losing her sense of self and identity, or, she gets rescued by someone else, who is usually a male character. Or, she turns into a revenge-seeking vigilante, working outside the bounds of law in order to obtain justice.

What is interesting to observe in this pattern is how shallow the female's character is painted to be before the occurrence of the violence. She is usually described to be a naive, sweet, romantic and submissive character suddenly changing to become a completely different, more logical and more rational being, all because of the violence committed against her.

Yes, it is true that women are often victims of violence but must that be the only reason for their voices to be heard?

In conclusion, while the presence of gender-based violence in literature may catalyze raising awareness and educating readers of the violence acted against women, it shouldn't be limited to be the only channel through which women's voices are authenticated.

- Betsy Jenifer, II year B.A in English, Women's Christian College

Day 7: Short Takes: What Women Write at Women's Christian College

As part of the 2018 Prajnya 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence in partnership with the English Department of the Women's Christian College we organised a special edition of 'Short Takes'. Short Takes is a short event with 4-6 TED-Style talks of 10 minutes each, on different aspects of a subject. The talks would be followed by a Q & A with the audience. 

For this edition, we decided to speak on women and literature. The question was, what do women write? 

The speakers were invited to speak on one of the following topics:

1. The Novelist and the Novel: Writers of fiction, especially of the novel which was identified with women writers. 

2. Writer as Heroine: Memoirs, autobiographies, letters and journals. 

3. The Witness and the Chronicle: Women writing non-fiction, such as biographies, histories, essays on politics and other real world subjects. 

4. Truth or Dare: Gender-based violence defines women's possibilities; does it have to feature in literature in order to authenticate a woman's voice?

5. The Seduction of Patriarchy: Romance novels and family sagas as 'chicklit,' written (mostly) by women for women. 

6. Writing from the Shadows: Writing that brings other gender and sexuality perspectives to life.

From the department, three pairs of speakers and two individual speakers had signed up for this event. The first pair spoke about the seduction of patriarchy, especially in chicklit written by women for women. Contemporary examples of Twilight, Hunger Games etc., were given to emphasise their point of how chicklit stereotypes women. Popular tropes in romance novels were discussed to state how women are described in these novels and how contrasting it is to reality. 

The second pair of speakers spoke on gender-based violence featuring in literature and its need to authenticate a woman's voice. One of the speakers of this pair had placed this question to the audience which elicited interesting responses. Majority of the responses seemed to lean towards the need to feature gender-based violence incidences in literature at least to raise awareness about violence against women. 

The third pair of speakers spoke about writing from the shadows, especially LGBTQ representation in literature both in terms of writers and protagonists, with a focus on Indian literature. The two independent speakers spoke about the topics of women in chicklit literature, and violence against women depicted in novels. Their talks were combined with the first two pairs of speakers respectively due to the relevance of the topic. 

The Q & A at the end of each session and the broader discussion at the end of the event brought forward realisations how patriarchal stereotypes define women and minorities in literature and most importantly our easy acceptance of it. 

Women's Christian College English department students will be adding a summarised report of the event to this post. 

What's the story?

That's what we wanted to know. All of us at Prajnya love to read and between us, there's probably no genre of fiction that remains explored although of course, each one has their favourites. None of us reads to make a point about ourselves, and we love talking about books.

When you think about it, it's quite surprising that we hadn't organised a discussion about gender violence in fiction all these years. We've done other literary things--creative writing and poetry readings galore--but nothing with fiction.

Once the idea occurred to us, the format and the structure were both no-brainers. We wanted discussion leaders to start off the conversation but in an almost-off-the-cuff way and briefly. We knew what we wanted them to ruminate over. What is it that is so seductive about patriarchy that we continue to read fiction that starts and ends with patriarchal assumptions--for instance, romance novels? What do we make of fiction where the 'hero' is a 'heroine'--or to put it in more inclusive terms, where the protagonist is not a man? If those books are to be classified as 'literature', do they have to have violence? Is violence the hallmark of realism and realism the prerequisite of something being called 'literature'? And what about consent? What is the place of consent in fiction?

Of course, the four avid readers we invited to lead the discussion used our questions as a point of departure for their own explorations, rather than exam question papers!

Lavanya Gopinath spoke about Regency Romances and raised questions about contemporary romantic fiction that she invited the audience to answer. Archanaa Seker systematically reviewed several kinds of popular fiction in search of the protagonist who is not a man. Samyuktha PC contempated the ubiquitous violence in young adult fiction, concluding provocatively that it was perhaps essential! Archana Venkatesh discussed consent in a few different books including Perumal Murugan's One Part Woman--incidentally this was perhaps the only South Asian work that was discussed that day!

The discussion that followed was spirited as people spoke in defence of literature they loved as well as with outrage about the things that infuriated them. Clearly there is a place in this town for regular book discussions and there is no shortage of passionate readers!

Crossword generously partnered with us to provide the venue for this event. We look forward to working with them in the future.