Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Concept Note
Gender Studies in India has largely been a women’s domain. The corpus of feminist literature in the
region has few male contributors. In recent years, however, there has been a growing visibility of
men who have engaged with feminist thought and praxis. This conference aims to bring into
conversation men who have used feminist epistemologies and methods in their academic and activist
work. It invites men who identify as ‘feminist’ to reflect on what it means to be a man and do
feminism in India. This conference will attempt to understand in what ways men doing feminism
can add to the development of Gender/Sexuality/Masculinity Studies in the region.
Can Men Study Women?
The production of social scientific knowledge has mostly neglected women’s lives. Where women
have been written about by male writers, they have mostly been rendered in ways that are
incongruous with feminist goals. A major concern of feminism, therefore, has been to think about
how feminist knowledge can be produced. Beginning with the category of ‘women’s experiences’, to
the debates on standpoint theories, feminist epistemologies continue to grapple with the politics,
ethics and methodologies of knowledge production. What then are the political, ethical, and
epistemological stakes involved in men studying women?
Can Men Contribute to Feminist Thinking?
Feminist theory is produced from the vantage point of women. In what ways, if at all, can men play
a part in this process of knowledge production? Can feminist knowledge be produced from men’s
experiences of patriarchal cultures? How do male feminist researchers avoid a return to
androcentricism?
Male Feminists and Everyday Struggles
Men who come out in support of feminism continue to be regarded with suspicion, if not outright
hostility. LGBTHIQ interactions with women’s movements in India also throw up ample instances
of the fraught relations between men and feminism. Since men are always-already privileged, non-
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
normative men, even as they participate in feminist efforts, have to constantly negotiate the social
benefits which accrue to men generally in patriarchal societies. ‘Heterosexual’ men who do not
conform to hegemonic scripts of masculinity are compelled to defend their allegiance to feminism.
How do self-identified feminist men struggle with both normative feminism and dominant social
expectations of gender?
Men, Feminism, Activism
There has been a growing visibility of violence against women in India. The four decades of the
contemporary women’s movement has not seen a sustained involvement of men in activism. Since
the 1990’s, however, non–heterosexual and non–gender normative ‘men’, as part of the LGBTHIQ
movement, have drawn from feminist thinking and modes of activism. This period has also
witnessed a pro-feminist response from some ‘straight’ men. What role can men play in feminist
activism?
Men and Feminist Futures
More often than not, certain strands in feminist philosophy imagine utopias which preclude men.
What are the relations between male practitioners of feminism and the contours of a post-feminist
world? How do male feminists envision liberty, justice, and equality in an ideal feminist world?
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Program Schedule
16 December 2014 (Tuesday)
9:30 – 10:00
Registration
10:00 – 10:15
Welcome Address
Tapati Guha Thakurta ḻ Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
10:15 – 10:45
Introductory Remarks
Zaid Al Baset ḻ St Xavier’s College, Kolkata
Romit Chowdhury ḻ National University of Singapore
10:45 – 11:00
Tea
11:00 – 13:30
Panel 1: Feminism, Men, and Masculinity Studies
Discussant
Srimati Basu ḻ Kentucky University
Speakers
Sanjay Srivastava
Thinking Masculinity, Re-thinking Sociology
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Mangesh Kulkarni
Pro-feminist Masculinity Studies:
Savitribai Phule Pune University
Travelogue of an Unfinished Journey
Pramod K. Nayar
Feminist Fat Studies: Abject Adipose,
Hyderabad Central University
Corporeal Capital and Masculine Materiality
13:30 – 15:00
Lunch
15:00 – 17:30
Panel 2: Sites of Engagement: Classroom, Field, and Law
Discussant
Trina Nileena Banerjee ḻ Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Speakers
Oishik Sircar
The Conduct of Critique: Jurisdictional
Melbourne University
Reflections on Living with Masculinity
Niladri R. Chatterjee
‘Why Do We Need to Know All This?’: ‘New
Kalyani University
Gender Studies’ in a Postgraduate Class
Pushpesh Kumar
Disrupting Coherence: Self-reflection of a Male
Hyderabad Central University
Ethnographer
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
17 December 2014 (Wednesday)
09:30 – 12:00
Panel 3: Theorizing Men Doing Feminism
Discussant
TBC
Speakers
Anirban Das
Standpoint Epistemologies and the Question of
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Man: Negotiating the (Im)Possible
Calcutta
Sourav Kargupta
Feminism and the Truth of the Woman: Whose
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Responsibility?
Calcutta
Anup Dhar
Men in Feminism or Men in Feminism:
Ambedkar University
Sexuation, the Four Discourses and askesis
11:00 – 11:30
Tea
11:30 – 13:00
Panel 3: Contd.
Speaker:00
Kiran Keshavamurthy
Can Men Contribute to Feminist Thinking?
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Calcutta
13:00 – 14:00
Lunch
14:00 – 15:45
Panel 4: Men in Feminist Social Movements
Discussant
Rukmini Sen ḻ Ambedkar University
Speakers
Pratiksha Baxi
What Hurts Us? Men, Feminism and Sexual
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Violence in the Aftermath of the Delhi Protests
J. Devika
The Gate Bigger than the House? Malayali
Centre for Development Studies
Women, Men, and Feminism in the late 1980searly 1990s.
15:45 – 17:30
Panel 5: Men, Development, Research
Discussant
Samita Sen ḻ Diamond Harbor Women’s University
Speakers
Mohan Rao
Do I Do Feminist Research?
Jawaharlal Nehru University
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Ravi Verma
My Journey Working on Feminist Issues:
International Centre for Research on
Exploring Multiple Frameworks
Women
17:30 – 17.45
Vote of thanks
Zaid Al Baset ḻ St Xavier’s College, Kolkata
17:45 – 18:00
Tea
•
Each discussant will speak for 20-30 minutes followed by an open discussion of 30
minutes at the end of each panel.
•
Official lunch is restricted for participants, faculty members and invited guests.
General participants, who would register in the morning, will be also provided with
lunch coupons on each day.
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India
In introducing the conference theme, we review extant literature on male practioners of feminist
research in western contexts, highlighting the key conceptual concerns that have animated these
discussions. The key ideas that we elaborate on are: What are the implications of men doing feminist
social research? What is the relevance and modalities for men contributing to the production of
feminist knowledge? What intellectual and political stakes are involved when men claim authorial
roles in feminist theory? Further, what repercussion does this involvement have for the autonomy of
feminist theory from masculinist appropriation?
Romit Chowdhury (Ph.D. Student, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore)
Zaid Al Baset (Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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The Conduct of Critique: Jurisdictional Reflections on Living with Masculinity
If I embody and perform masculinity as a consequence of being born and having lived the life of a
biological, gendered, elite, upper-class and married man who practices heterosexuality, what would it
take for me to be a feminist? How do I bring together my ideological training in feminist critiques of
intersectional privilege, and my experiential conduct of living with masculinity and its vicissitudes? In
this paper I wish to reflect on these two questions from the locational imperative of being
professionally trained as a feminist lawyer -- an almost irreconcilable position, where feminism offers
critiques of power, and law is the speech through which power conducts itself. How do I live with a
feminist masculinity? Drawing on traditions of jurisdictional thinking in Critical Legal Studies, and
reflections on masculinity in Queer Theory, I aim to develop a provisional thesis about how feminist
critiques are not antithetical to the conduct of masculinities. Such a thesis, as I would argue, requires
an acknowledgement of the contradictions of feminism and its complicities with power, and the
emancipatory possibilities that open up when we take account of the violent legacies and privileges
that our (masculine) identities embody. To do this, I will draw on self-reflexive instances from my
experiences of having conducted feminist critique as a man, inside the space of the legal academy.
Oishik Sircar (Ph.D. Researcher, Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne
Law School, Melbourne)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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‘Why do we need to know all this?’: ‘New Gender Studies’ in a Postgraduate Class
In 2008 when the University of Kalyani switched to the semester system, we were asked to offer lots
of ‘Optional Papers’. Since patriarchy loves a good binary, since gender is unproblematically
associated with women, since the word ‘gender’ has, for the last few decades, been a term
completely acceptable to patriarchy, I decided to offer a course and call it ‘New Gender Studies’. My
suggestion was treated as perfectly safe, because it was tacitly understood that ‘new’ would not really
be new. It was assumed that I would be doing a reassuring rehash of a simplified ‘men bad/women
sad’ feminism in my classes. Only one colleague smelled a post-structuralist rat and warned me that
none of the students would sign up for it. When in July 2009, a week after the historic Delhi High
Court verdict reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, I walked into my first NGS class,
it did not look like an Optional Paper class, but a Compulsory one: 64 students had signed up!
Getting students to sign up, however, was the easy part. Once the classes began, students started
reacting in a variety of ways. Some were delighted with what was being discussed. Encouraged by
the turn our classroom discussions were taking, they brought out their personal narratives, their
fears, doubts, genuine interest to the table. Others declared that they had never thought about “these
things” but were eager to learn. There were those who simply took this as any other course and
would sit in the class listening listlessly to me. But, much more interesting for me were a few who
reacted with ill-concealed hostility: “Why do we need to know all this?”
This paper attempts to trace the contours of the debate that I have been re-visiting in the classroom
since 2009: a debate that draws into its vortex questions of identity, pedagogy, the implicit patriarchy
of the education system and of the student-teacher relationship. The paper expresses the anxiety that
while ostensibly alerting our students to the evils of hegemony we, the teachers, should not covertly
consolidate our own hegemony. While overtly denouncing patriarchy we should not become
covertly patriarchal ourselves.
Niladri R. Chatterjee (Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Kalyani)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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Do I Do Feminist Research?
We live today in post-feminist times; it is now no longer fashionable to admit to being a feminist.
And certainly not too many men would admit to being feminist. But going beyond definitional
dances, I would argue that any quest for justice, especially for gender justice, would come under the
umbrella of a feminist cause. This paper looks at my involvement in activism over health and
population policy over the last two or more decades and tries to understand if my commitment to
justice, spilling over into my academic work constitutes feminist research.
This paper is based largely on personal reflections on campaigns against quinacrine sterilisation and
coercive population policy.
Mohan Rao (Professor, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru
University)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Disrupting Coherence: Self-reflection of a Male Ethnographer
The popularly held notion that male ethnographers cannot understand and engage with women’s
worlds also found an easy acceptance in feminist scholarship, with the latter even claiming that
women’s world is a ‘closed book’ for men. This perception, which reaffirms an academic division of
labour, has strongly motivated male ethnographers to ignore gendered power and practices in field
situations; it has also probably de-motivated feminists to demand their male colleagues to engage
with issues related to gender. Ironically, this has happened amidst feminists’ assertion that their work
is ignored by the male counterparts. Are male ethnographers really disabled to observe and
empathize with women’s worlds, or is it a mythical construction of their self; does it constitute a
performance towards maintaining their masculine identity? Does the feminist claim that women’s
worlds are a ‘closed book’ for men essentialise masculinity and uncritically uphold the standpoint
perspective? Are there dangers inherent in such an approach? There have been pro-feminist men in
the west as well as in non-western worlds writing, reflecting and organizing against patriarchy. Are
women willing to share their stories with male researchers? If female ethnographers are more
accessible to women, is it because of the sex of the ethnographer or due to the given social context?
The present paper presents a self-reflective account of my ethnographic fieldwork among a tribal
community with its major focus on kinship, gender and sexuality. I talk about my close associations
with Rukma Bai, a middle-aged woman and my key informant: Through this, I delineate the
suffering and dependency of selves, the intersubjective bondage, the overcoming of gendered
boundaries, the liminal moments and intermittent overthrowing of hierarchies. I also reflect upon
public performance of coherent selves realized through mother-son affiliations and privatized
moments where certain un-namable and incoherent ties were formed, throwing into disarray most of
the structured and popular constructs of gender. Do such processes allow a gender sensitive
ethnography to emerge and culminate?
Pushpesh Kumar (Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Hyderabad Central University)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Thinking Masculinity, Re-thinking Sociology
One of the most significant contemporary relations in the social sciences is that between feministinspired masculinity studies and sociological analysis. So, while women’s studies helped us
understand various aspects of power between genders, masculinity studies has foregrounded an
equally significant aspect, that is, the ways in which gendered power operates through the
relationship between men, as well as men and non-normative sexual identities. That is to say,
masculinity studies provides a nuanced understanding of the different ways in which masculinities
and sexualities unfold across different registers – work, leisure, property, kinship, religion and
politics – in turn, defining and consolidating specific ways of being, doing and having. This paper
will take up three specific areas – religion, urban life and sexuality – in order to specify contributions
of critical masculinity studies to a feminist understanding of gender as a relationship. It will also
suggest that masculinity studies is crucial to a broadening of the sociological imagination.
Sanjay Srivastava (Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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Pursuing Masculinity Studies in a Pro-feminist Perspective:
Travelogue of an Unfinished Journey
My continuing engagement with the study of men and masculinities began nearly twenty years ago.
In the paper to be presented at the first-ever conference on ‘Men Doing Feminism in India’, I wish
to recount and reflect on the origin, travails and joys of this unfinished intellectual journey that has
traversed academic and activist domains.
The paper seeks to raise questions such as the following:
• In what ways do feminism and women’s studies enable masculinity studies (MS)?
• What are the key objects and tools of investigation appropriate to MS?
• How does this relatively new area of transdisciplinary inquiry interrogate and enrich existing
disciplines?
• Which sites in academia and elsewhere have been congenial to its development?
• Where should it go from here?
A key concern underlying the paper pertains to the practical political thrust of the pro-feminist
preoccupation with MS. Several crucial conundrums emerge in this context:
• How are masculinities imbricated with various subjectivities formed at the intersection of caste,
class, sexuality and gender?
• Which epistemological framework is most compatible with the cognitive and transformative intent
of MS?
• What are the programmatic implications of the intellectual endeavour?
• Where does one look for organizational formats and modalities best suited to advance the
emancipatory objectives of MS?
An attempt will be made to grapple with some of these questions and conundrums by drawing on
both theory and experience.
Mangesh Kulkarni (Associate Professor, Department of Politics & Public Administration,
Savitribai Phule Pune University)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Men as Feminists in Contemporary Social Movements
This presentation does not ask whether “men” can or should be feminists— they are, and they
should. It asks instead: does and should the understanding and practice of feminism be different for
“men”? If so, how and why? Drawing upon a personal history of involvement in both womens’ and
queer movements in Delhi, I argue against the privileging of a difference in sex (as opposed to caste,
religion or class, for example) as a diving line between what is and is not feminism. I argue instead
that feminism must indeed account for difference in identity but it must do so inter-sectionally. It
must not be reduced to a narrow reading of identity politics that binds the possibilities of more
dynamic, inter-connected and inter-sectional feminist politics.
Gautam Bhan (Senior Consultant, Indian Institute of Human Settlements)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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The Gate Bigger than the House?
Malayali Women, Men, and Feminism in the late 1980s- early 1990s.
This paper reflects critically on the role of radical men in shaping feminism in Kerala in the 1980s as
a political-intellectual position. Malayalee feminism has never been singular in any simple sense, not
even during its early days in the mid-late 1980s. Roughly, two strands were already obvious: one
which interpreted feminism as an assault on patriarchy as a form of power that lay spread over all
three domains of state, civil society, and market, encouraged distance from and skepticism about the
state’s developmental and legal interventions, and stressed strengthening regional-national
connections as a way of politicizing the general perception of the region. The other strand may be
called ‘Developmentalist feminism’, which was characterised by (and differed from ‘political’
feminism in) its thrust on civility, willingness to be proximate to the state, evocation of regional
difference, and stress on pedagogic relations and reformist orientation in anti-patriarchal struggle.
Both strands were significantly shaped by male intellectuals; this gave rise to interesting tensions
between women and men in each, with enduring consequences. For example, the tensions between
‘male (or masculinist) theoreticians’ and ‘female activists’ have proved quite costly for Malayali
feminism in both avatars, even as feminism did manage to infiltrate public discourse quite
significantly in the later decades.
I make use of major debates and publications of the late 1980s which sought to introduce feminist
politics and ideas in Malayalam, largely authored by men, but in which women were active
participants. Also, I draw upon my own memories and experiences as someone shaped closely by
these times and debates – and hope to evoke ‘reflective’ rather than ‘restorative nostalgia’ in the
entire exercise – a very useful distinction that Svetlana Boym (2001) makes.
J Devika (Associate Professor, Centre for Development Studies)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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What Hurts Us? Men, Feminism and Sexual Violence in the Aftermath of the Delhi Protests
The Delhi protests in 2012-2013 addressed different kinds of publics—retributive, reformative,
pornographic. Equally it made visible different kinds of male bodies—rapacious, castrating, raped,
castrated. For the first time, many progressive male friends talked about how hurt they were by what
had happened. They marched against sexual violence, wrote about affect and biography, and spoke
publically about what it may mean to embrace feminist inheritances. Eavesdropping on such
conversations, it was hard to understand why did the Delhi protests hurt us so? And why did
inheritance of the Mathura Open Letter that had also hurt two heterosexual male law professors in
the 1980s not become a common inheritance for heterosexual men who abhor sexual violence much
earlier? Especially since this inherited learning of the broken promise of law signified by the Open
Letter was traced by queer rights activists in anguish after the devastating overturning of Naz by the
Supreme Court. Further, what kinds of conversations between men about sexual violence have
sustained thereafter? Do we now witness heartbreaking work by men with men as survivors,
collaborators, perpetrators, and witnesses of violence? And if we do, must we signify the work of
feminist men as heroic when this is what feminists do as heartbreaking routine, without applause or
pause?
Pratiksha Baxi (Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal
Nehru University)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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Can Men Contribute to Feminist Thinking?
As a male researcher who has worked on gender and sexuality in the domain of literature, I have had
to confront certain ethical issues that are at odds with much feminist scholarship. As is true of any
intellectual movement that addresses marginality, the feminist imperative of addressing female
disempowerment has been premised on certain binaries. Depending on the nature of the subject of
feminism, the other of this subject has been male, capitalist, heterosexual, Caucasian and so on.
These oppositions much as they are necessary for the strategic imperatives of feminism, have to be
constantly reconfigured in order to enable the articulation of other excluded positionalities. This
becomes pertinent even when it comes to sensitive cultural representations of gender and its
intersections with other vectors of power and oppression, which may complicate the ethical and
political binaries that constitute a coherent idea of feminism. I am particularly interested in looking
at how literature can offer a more nuanced and expansive understanding of both feminism and
patriarchy whose dividends are enjoyed in different capacities by both men and women. For the
purposes of this paper, I wish to explore my own position as a male literary scholar and the
possibilities that literature opens up of both critiquing patriarchal mediations of femininity and
articulating collaborative notions of masculinity that are neither misogynistic nor homophobic.
Kiran Keshavamurthy (Assistant Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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Men in Feminism or Men in Feminism: Sexuation, the Four Discourses and askesis
This paper argues that the question of ‘men in feminism’ can be understood in at least two ways:
one, men in feminism, and two, men in feminism. The first is the question of the inclusion of men
in feminist political space. The second is the question of how men, or perhaps ‘man’ and
masculinity, feature in feminism. The first is about the actual inclusion of men; the first in turn
inaugurates the question: what if men are always already included? Included: as interlocutors, as
interpellating agents, as objects of critique, and as subjects of violence. The question in the first is
then not about the what of inclusion, but the who of inclusion. The second is about how feminism
looks at men, man and masculinity; it is also about how men, man and masculinity offer form and
content to feminism. This would in turn take us to the question: which feminism? Would there be a
difference between the question of men in liberal feminism, and men in radical feminism, or for that
matter French feminism?
How would the question feature in Asian or Indian feminism? Would the question of men in Indian
feminism be different from men in feminisms born out of, what Lacquer calls the ‘two-sex model’,
where men and women are seen as the opposite sex? What character would this question take if one
is considering the question of men in feminism in a post-identitarian frame; when “the Subject is
finally in question”, once questions like ‘what is woman’ has been asked. Would we not have to ask
‘what is man’? Would we not have to see ‘man’ as deconstructed, yet hegemonic in terms of
sexuated subject positions? Can we re-conceptualize the deconstructed ‘man’, man under erasure, as
‘masculinity without men’, as ‘phallocracy without phalluses’?
Taking off from the perspective of ‘masculinity without men’ the paper moves to a reflection on
four “scattered speculations” by Irigaray on the question of (the inclusion of) men in feminism: As
soon as something valuable appears to be coming from the side of women, men want to become
women. (Le Corps-a-corps avec la mere, 1981:61) There’s nothing new about man wanting to be
both man and woman … in this desire to master the whole ... (Ethique de la difference sexuelle,
1984:94) [A] person who is in a position of mastery does not let go of it easily, does not even
imagine any other position, which would already amount to ‘getting out of it’. In other words, the
‘masculine’ is not prepared to share the initiative of discourse. It prefers to experiment with
speaking, writing, enjoying ‘woman’ rather than leaving to that other any right to intervene, to ‘act’
in her own interests. (The Sex Which Is Not One, 1985: 157) … when male theoreticians today
employ women’s discourses instead of using male discourse, that seems to me a very phallocratic
gesture. It means: ‘we will become and we will speak a feminine discourse in order to remain the
master of discourse.’ (interview in Women Writers Talking, ed. Janet Todd, 1983: 243).
The four scattered speculations give way to Lacan’s “Four Discourses” in Seminar XVII. The paper
tries to make sense of the question of man in terms of the four discourses. It asks: is the ‘function of
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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hegemonic man’ analogous to the master’s discourse and the university discourse? Is the ‘function of
the feminist man’ analogous to the hysteric’s discourse and the analyst’s discourse?
In “Athira” (from the margins, 1999), I had however tried to explore the question of men in
feminism, a little differently, in terms of a trialogue among an imagined ‘I’, ‘Me’ and ‘Mine’. At that
time, I felt the question of men in feminism could only be raised in terms of men's self-exploration,
self-reflection and self-reflexivity, with respect to feminist epistemo-ontology and ethico-politics; it
looked like one needed some work on oneself before one joined the feminist political space; one
needed a kind of working through one’s own aggressivity as also one’s own disavowed feminine
before one joined the women's movement; one also needed some de-naturalization of ‘man’ as a
secret/neuter/unmarked universal; one also needed to make men – and not just ‘man’ but men – i.e.
ourselves – the specific objects of self-study. In other words, I had tried to arrive, albeit
unsuccessfully, at an understanding of what could be provisionally called ‘men without masculinity’.
The questions before me were of the form: how to understand men’s sexual socialization, encore,
yet again, where manhood or masculinity looks to be historically tied to aggressivity, domination and
(sexual) abuse. How could I not keep feeling somehow tarnished myself, by my association with
men? How could I escape guilt and shame: ‘could I do that?’, ‘am I one of those (abusers)?’? How to
write from a gendered position without perpetuating stereotypes? How to write as a man about
sexual difference; that is, to find a way of writing from the subjective position of masculinity and yet
emerge into a space which unsettles that position and its assumed complementarity with femininity?
Will the presence of men in feminism redefine the question of sexual difference? Or will the
redefinition of the question of sexual difference, through long term asketic processes (‘praxis of the
self’ by Foucault in the Hermeneutics of the Subject), make space for the ethical presence of men in
feminism?
Does the figure and supplement of David Lurie in Disgrace – as he follows a non-normative path –
as he slips time and again towards the conservative pole of sexual difference – as he follows Lucy,
his daughter, in her ethico-political exegesis – offer us a sustained metaphor of the complex
interrelationship between ‘non-normative men in feminism’, ‘men in feminism (of sexual
difference)’, ‘(hegemonic) masculinity without men’, and ascetic exercises for the emergence of ‘men
without (hegemonic) masculinity’?
Anup Dhar (Associate Professor, Ambedkar University)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
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My journey working on feminist issues: exploring multiple frameworks
I have long years of work --- for over 30 years as a social scientist and development practitioner
‘consistently’ working in the area of gender – knowing this term by different names --- but never
realizing till very recently that I could also be a feminist. I began my journey as a student of
psychology with simple-minded idea to explore what are ‘sex-role stereotypes’, where do they come
from and what can be done to change them. I learnt that independence training promotes
achievement motivation and boys are given greater independence by mothers than the girls because
that is what the stereotype is. That is the reason why boys tend to do more, aspire more and achieve
more, measured in terms of school grades, than the girls. What boys tend to gain and what girls
stand to miss out as result of this skewed socialization is not merely school grades but much more
and serious became evident to me when I began working on issues of family planning and HIV. In
my efforts to understand what role(s) men can play to alleviate the overbearing family planning
responsibilities that women have to bear, I began to question the ‘independence training’ framework
and began to deconstruct the meaning of entitlement, power (largely for men) and meaning of
sexuality embedded in patriarchy and masculinity frameworks. More recent engagement with
primary violence prevention against women and girls further reinforced the need to break away from
the binary framework. In this presentation, I present building blocks of my personal evolution as a
development practitioner variously defining feminist issues within the limitations of frameworks and
methodologies and my dilemma of calling myself a feminist.
Ravi Verma (Director, International Centre for Research on Women)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Standpoint Epistemologies and the Question of Man: Negotiating the (Im)Possible
Can men do feminisms? The question, obviously, is not articulated well. In certain senses, men are
seen to do feminisms empirically, rendering invalid the problem at a commonsensical level. A better
way of asking is, in what sense can men do feminisms. The problem here is posed evidently at a
structural level. Even if real men are seen to do feminism of a certain sort, the question does not
limit itself to the complicated stories of that endeavour. The raising of the problem at a more
abstract level is assumed to be legitimate. It becomes necessary, then, to begin by thinking what
makes this task (of doing feminism) difficult for men at that register. One needs to address the
question of experience lived through struggles in gender politics without reducing the politics to the
experience. The debates around the standpoint epistemologies become important at this juncture.
In a well known enunciation of the predicament of feminist epistemologies, Elisabeth Grosz had
spoken of the tensions implicit in the dual imperative of “being feminist” and “being theory”. The
explicit political ‘bias’ of the former has a fraught relationship with the ‘neutral’ universality of the
latter. Is it possible to be biased and neutral at the same moment? One well-known response, whose
genealogy can easily be traced to Marxian scholarship, is to assert that the only possible neutral
gesture in a world biased for the dominant is to be biased – for the subjugated – against this bias.
This imaginary rejoinder keeps unanswered the question of the need for the neutral. Is this need still
there? Is the bias that is aimed at in the service of neutrality? Who can decide if this is so? How can
one take this decision?
Any ‘modern’ form of knowledge has to negotiate between the universal aspiration of its substantive
claims and the very situated particularities which define the boundaries of these claims. As in any
other modern form of knowledge, the universal aspirations of feminist theory cannot remain blind
to the particular enunciations which tend to fragment those objectives. Feminist epistemologies
respond to these problems in multiple ways. In many of the contemporary discussions, the operative
term through which this question has been addressed is ‘contingency’. The necessity of
remembering the contingent character of social identity has been underlined. Social theory, in trying
to address the contingency of the ‘social’, has to work beyond the known boundaries of sociological
and philosophical knowledge: this has been the implicit claim in the argument.
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
In my paper, I try to complicate the situation. What is it to think and work with the contingency of
the social? To think of contingency, does one have to forego the universal? If not, and that again has
been implicit in a nuanced form of argument, how does one account for that logically. One response
has been to talk of the workability of knowledge, of context-sensitive theories of action. One cannot
work with, cannot think, solely in terms of the contingent, the proposition runs. But that remains a
pragmatic defense, not a logical response, I argue. I deal with attempts to address the problem of the
contingency of workable yet generalizable knowledge. These are important because these address the
problem at the epistemic level, not because they provide ready solutions. Practically, I deal with the
limits and possibilities of these attempts and try to come up with a different response to the
problem. For social theories, the import of my attempt is again in the need to address the impasse at
the epistemic register. Not that this addressal is enough to solve the problem. Epistemic solution is
not the bottom-line. As a point of fact, my own argument will try to bring in the co-implications of
ontology with ethics and the questions around being and doing. The epistemic dimension is a
necessary and not a sufficient condition of looking at the problem. This fact is something one often
tends to forget in the rush to find easy pragmatic solutions. In what ways do the ontology of ‘man’
negotiate the politics of feminism, is the question I thus try to address.
Anirban Das (Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,
Calcutta)
21
Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Feminism and the Truth of the Woman: Whose Responsibility?
Can men have access to the feminist critique, or does the very constitution of such a ‘work’ (of the
critique) exclude the ‘man’ from being its subject? This problem is usually addressed in two broad
trajectories. One might argue that however difficult, any critique follows a sequence which is
organizable under a ‘discipline,’ a logical and coherent series of analyses that can be reproduced as a
‘method’ and therefore remains open to anyone willing to study it or deploy the same form in a
different context. This argument, therefore, considers feminism as a rigorous scientific ‘form’ that
fits the pedagogic demand of formal reproducibility, and its claim of existing as a discipline within
the ‘university’ as key to its validity as a system of ‘knowledge.’ According to this line of argument,
feminist knowledge would be open to anyone willing to learn and re-work it.
If the above position can be (somewhat loosely) called ‘epistemological,’ then the other approach
which understands feminist knowledge around a space of exclusive difference, as an experiential
domain accessible essentially only to the ‘woman-subject,’ can be named ‘ontological.’ This position
is ontological, since it presumes a radically different determination of knowledge grounded in a
differently embodied subject of experience. These two positions however are not mutually exclusive.
The former cannot simply forsake the feminist articulations weaved around the notion of radical
gendered difference (in the process restricting access to ‘feminist knowledge’), and the latter also
retains some claim to the universality of the experiential domain (even at the risk of opening up to a
gender-indifferent notion of knowledge), and therefore a claim of formal reproducibility.
The proposed paper stages a theoretical confrontation between these two overlapping yet
contending arguments, as well as between their self-contradictory desires. Refraining from
suggesting prescriptive proposals, the paper albeit puts forth a few ‘theses’ in delineating a ‘feminist
work’ which tries to remain sensitive to a critique of any subject predication, in other words, a
‘feminism’ that affirms a deconstruction of any ‘naming,’ even of the name ‘woman.’ The paper
therefore, within its limits, tries to think the legitimacies and illegitimacies of ‘men doing feminism’
in a postcolonial world where difference is both a fact and an indispensible tool of ethical
imaginations.
Sourav Kargupta (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta)
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Loyal Interlopers? Men Doing Feminism in India (16-17 December 2014)
Organized by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
__________________________________________________________________
Discussants
Samita Sen, Professor of History and Vice-Chancellor, Diamond Harbour Women’s University
Srimati Basu, Associate Professor, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Kentucky
University
Trina Nileena Banerjee, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies, Centre for Studies in Social
Sciences, Calcutta
Rukmini Sen, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University
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