Filmikudhi alerted me to a new Ranbir interview which, like all Ranbir interviews, makes be squeaky with raaaaaaaaaaaaaaage. And at the same time, there’s other stuff that also makes me squeaky with raaaaaaaaaaaage!

Ranbir quote on marriage, courtesy of Filmikudhi:

“Especially when you’re in a marriage, you have to let go of your personality. She’s also letting go of her personality. We’re adjusting to each other to make it liveable for each other. Any marriage is doing that. You have to let go, you have to adjust, you have to sacrifice facets of it. It’s impossible for two people to like each other the way they are.”

Filmikudhi and I exchanged some angry messages over this, and you know what I landed on? It’s that he’s talking about the essential person, not the things they do, but the actual PERSON. I agree that it’s impossible for two people to like EVERYTHING about each other. There’s always going to be that weird way your husband sneezes, or your wife’s habit of cutting her toe nails in the living room. But that doesn’t mean you don’t like the PERSON. You may ask them to stop doing the one thing, or just learn to adjust to your own irritation, or spend 60 years bickering with each other about it, but you aren’t sitting there thinking “I don’t like you any more”. Or worse, “I never liked you but if you change yourself, maybe I will”.

And at the same time as this Ranbir quote, I’m listening to a podcast about the grown children who were raised in a repressive Christian church/cult situation. So many many things about the structure of it are the same as the Patriarchy in India. Father’s have to give permission for their daughters to date, to marry, to do anything at all. Couples are rigorously watched to make sure they aren’t crossing lines before marriage. The sexes are totally segregated because any courtship without permission is a sin.

Two things I find interesting about this community/family versus what I know of traditional Indian families First, this is still a subset far outside the norm of general society. They may be raised respecting these rules, but they know just outside the door is a whole different way of doing things. This level of patriarchal control is the exception, not the rule. Which brings with it a different set of struggles for them. Trying to explain to your boss “I have to quit my job because my father told me to” in America is really difficult. Or going to high school and college without ever being alone with someone of the opposite sex in any context. Maybe it would have been easier in another society? Where they didn’t have to obey the rules, AND have the label of being “strange” attached to them? Or maybe it’s better because at least they could see other ways of being? Or maybe it balances out to the same?

And the second thing is that even within the Christian purity traditional culture in America, the behavior they described was extreme. But harder to see as extreme, harder to call out, because it was camouflaged by the rest of it. One of the people interviewed, who married into the church/family talked about how the church set up a dangerous structure of power for men. But if you were a good man who loved his family, you didn’t abuse that power, you stepped away from it. On the other hand, if you were a bad man, it was really REALLY easy to exploit it, the tools were already handed to you and you just had to use them. This feels VERY familiar to me from what I know of Patriarchy in India.

Society makes Ranbir the spokesperson for himself and his wife. Society has handed him power and opportunity and all kinds of things. That’s on society, that structure was already in place. But it is up to Ranbir to say “I will give interviews saying that couples need to adjust and sacrifice and not like each other after marriage”. To avoid public opportunities to support his wife’s career, to not participate as much as his partner in raising their children, etc. etc. Society has also made Shahrukh the spokesperson for his family. And has trained him in a certain kind of protective paternalism. But he uses that platform to encourage his daughter to work and to date, to speak proudly of his wife’s professional accomplishments, etc. etc. You can’t change a whole society, but you can choose how you use your unlimited power within that society.

Going back to the podcast I was listening to, it’s the norm in that subset of society that you have to ask permission from her father before starting to date someone, even if everyone involved is fully adult and supposedly “independent”. But that permission can be a formality, a matter of “of course, whatever makes you happy” or “yeah, I already knew that was happening”. Or it can be a rod held over the couple constantly ready to come down and punish them. The first time the father in this family stepped out of line in terms of forbidding his daughter to date and then marry the man of her choice, the other men in the community judged him, cast him out, it was technically allowed but certainly not expected. But his own family supported him because it was “technically” allowed by the rules they believed in. And that kept happening again and again, he took the same rules and practices that loads of other people were using, and used them to excuse any hurtful selfish act he chose to do.

You know how when you are watching a movie and the plot is that the parents forbid the children to be married? Sometimes it can be like Socha Na Tha where there is this elaborate backstory to explain it and how it kind of makes sense for them to feel that way. And sometimes it’s just “nope, the Patriarchy decided they wanted to do it like this”. What bothers me about the second kind of plot is the normalization aspect. This isn’t normal! This is something society should be calling out as an abuse of power, both within and without the film.

And I think, maybe, the line between the social structures and the individual abusers needs to be more clearly defined? Too often it feels like someone might say “what’s the harm in this practice? I’d never abuse it”. And true, you very well may never abuse it. It may be totally fine for you, in particular, to require your children to ask permission for this or that. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other people in the world who WILL abuse it. And we have to remove the tool from everyone’s hands, in order to make sure it is removed from the hands of the people who will use it as a weapon.

Anyway, Gun Control of the Patriarchy is what I’m saying. Before you are issued your penis powers, you have to have a background check and a waiting period and a training class. And if that still doesn’t make the world safe, we will just outlaw penis powers altogether.

(did I mention I’m having a bad day? And my boss happens to be a man?)