In The News
This piece was originally published in the Sun on 13 June 2007.
Insights of a feminist male
Shanon Shah
As an artist and an activist, I still get asked, "But how come you, as a man, are so passionate about feminism? What is it that sensitised you to gender issues?"
If I were to be completely honest, there was a time when I held several sexist beliefs. And if I am to continue being honest, there was also a time when I held racist beliefs, homophobic beliefs, classist beliefs, beliefs that ridicule overweight people and so on. The thing is, I shed many of these beliefs a long time ago so it's hard for me to remember all the turning points that made me abandon them.
But I do know that until very recently, I was also insensitive towards disabled people. It took a person very dear to me to point out that every time I made an insensitive comment about disabled people, I was actually hurting her and her disabled niece. To me, whenever I had said anything before, I thought it didn't mean anything or that I was just being funny - but the knowledge that I had hurt two innocent and wonderful human beings kept me up for nights.
A few days ago, I made an insensitive remark about people with mental illnesses. And I made it in front of someone whom I admire and deeply respect, someone who has written a landmark work on mental illness. I'd read his work - it really touched me and enlightened me. Or so I thought, until my tongue slipped and incriminated my subconscious.
So all day, all night and in my sleep after that, my mind became a Cher song, singing "If I could turn back time É " I mean, it seemed as though I had no control over the words coming out of my mouth at that particular moment. We were only at a kopitiam, and yet I already felt like the whole world had witnessed me being an idiot of the highest order.
I walked away from there thinking that I should have apologised immediately, that I should remember this feeling of guilt and remorse forever so that I would never again make fun of mental illness. "Where can I put my face, especially after saying it in front of him?" I thought.
How does this relate to me being a pro-feminist man? Well, to answer this I'd like to juxtapose this display of my insensitivity with the recent issue of our sexist parliamentarians. Yes, they were extremely insensitive in Parliament when they made those sexist remarks about the Opposition MP, Fong Po Kuan.
My purpose for bringing this up is not to say, "They bad, I good." Rather, the reason why I'm comparing these two incidents is that I think it's only human to be insensitive sometimes, and God only knows how insensitive I myself can be. The thing is: what do you do when you realise you've been insensitive? Or when someone points it out to you?
Though I am passionately Muslim, it is the words of the former Archbishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, that help me navigate these unsettling moments of realisation:
"We can all testify to moments of conversion, moments when the scales fell from our eyes and we saw, for the first time, how racist or sexist or homophobic we had been. We did not really admit it to ourselves, of course, but it showed itself in all sorts of ways, usually by our use of language, by the throw-away remark that's meant to be funny but betrays deep prejudice or fear."
This, Richard Holloway suggests, is when some of us often seek repentance from God, asking God to cleanse us of our capacity for hurting others. And if you're like me, you sometimes wonder if God wants to listen to your prayers, and you wonder if you've inadvertently kicked down the ladder that connects your repentance to God's forgiveness.
But as Richard Holloway says, "Just when we think all the ladders between heaven and earth have fallen down we discover that our own heart, all along, has been the source of our greatest insights."
It is this, I suppose, that captures the essence of what made me stop being sexist, and continues to make me realise and abandon my other moments of bigotry (always hoping that each recent moment is the last). And this essence is in my own heart, the source of my greatest insight.
Shanon Shah will be speaking at the upcoming Fiesta Feminista, which welcomes everyone interested in feminism and activism to Kuala Lumpur from June 15-17. For more info, please email info@fiestafeminista-malaysia.org or call 7784 4977 .
