Deconstructing Liberal Dogmas - 2

It is a fair enough assumption that in most societies, a large fraction of the people who identify themselves as political liberals and swear by that society's set of prevailing liberal dogmas, do it mostly for the sake of following an intellectually fashionable trend. In a postcolonial country like India, where being "liberal" has strong associations with westernization and therefore social class and education levels, and in the absence of an organized conservative intellectual  counterweight, the intellectual space tends to get hijacked very easily by these "liberal" poseurs. Fairly recently a tweet by Rajdeep Sardesai, an Indian media personality, has been creating waves in the blogosphere. He describes the assassinated Pakistani politician Salman Taseer as a "true liberal, who enjoyed his scotch, and loved his women", which appeared to many to be a simplistic conflation of a "liberal" with love for "wine and women". While most liberal commentators would be more subtle (and thankfully more intelligent) than Sardesai, there appears to be nonetheless a very certain assumption of sexual emancipation being the panacea to many, if not most, of society's problems, among the liberal classes. In this, the second part of my rant against lip service liberalism (the first can be found here), I choose to analyze the liberal dogma that  Sexual Repression breeds Violence.

If this is a new one you are hearing, it's worth going through this very interesting article in the Guardian  (by David Baruma whose claim to fame is a book about the assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim fundamentalist) makes a strong case for the supposed link between sexual deprivation and violence by men. More specifically, it suggests that Islamic terrorism can be attributed in part to the gender apartheid practised in the Arab/Muslim world, and also possibly the possible sexual deprivation faced by underprivileged men because of the prevalence of religion-sanctioned polygyny. The association of a  sexual motivation with Islamic terrorism shows up most dramatically in the supposed belief of suicide bombers in 72 virgins awaiting them in paradise (I wonder what the women suicide bombers, who are a sizeable minority, are promised) . The thesis that a Muslim man, who is socially trained to consider women outside the family out of bounds not merely in terms of contact but even sight, will envy the sexual freedoms afforded to people in the West, has no doubt an element of truth in it. But it might be stretching it a bit too far to suggest that this has a direct causal relationship with terrorism, or even other forms of violence.

For one, critics of Baruma's contention have pointed out, that the incidence of non-politics-related violent crime is actually lower in the Middle East as compared to the West. While it is possible that the harsh forms of punishment prescribed by states practising the Sharia (a traditional Islamic legal system) serves as an effective deterrent, and also that crimes like rape might go unreported in such cultures for fear of the stigma, it is impossible to sweep under the carpet the common prevalence of violence, including sexual violence, in Western societies, especially the US which has a thriving gun culture despite being a stable democracy.  Also this sort of gender apartheid and sexual conservatism is by no means confined to North Africa or the Middle East.  Majority non-Muslim societies in South Asia and possibly other Asian cultures are traditionally, to a great extent, conservative in matters of sex ( i.e. premarital sex is a taboo, the genders are not allowed to freely mingle, and parents decide the partners for their children, etc.)  without experiencing the same levels of terrorism that are associated with the Muslim world.

In South Asia, the region with which I am obviously the most familiar, religion-inspired civil wars are often fought over the bodies of women.  There is no denying that the deeply entrenched patriarchal nature of this society, where women are relegated to being repositories of family "honor" and virtue, and control over them a socially approved macho trait, raping the women of the enemy is an even more effective strategy in humiliating and demoralizing them. There is however little to suggest that these riots are inspired to begin with by a quest for women. Also the idea of women as spoils of war, is as old as war itself, and one gets to see it in different other theaters of war, in Europe (the Balkans) or Africa (Congo, Darfur) regions which are not usually associated with a culture of sexual repression.  A culture of violence degrades men and brings out the worst in them, which expresses itself through sexual violence among other things - and has little to do with how much sex he has got to have before that. You only have to look at the numerous incidents of rape reported against army men (including American soldiers, who come from a more sexually permissive culture than your average Arab, in Vietnam or Okinawa)  or other forms of sexual abuse committed against prisoners of war (by the Japanese or the Nazis in WW2 and  in an arguably smaller scale in Gitmo or Abu Ghraib, to take a more recent example) to be convinced of that. I would argue that violence begets sexual perversion, not vise versa.

The main problem with societies where women are granted a decidedly inferior role, and consequently deprived of sexual choice, is according to me a culture of machismo. This takes the form most commonly of harassment of women in public places. But these attitudes are not limited to the Arab world or South Asia (where promiscuity is severely frowned upon) and are commonly encountered in Latin countries too (where promiscuity is more of a norm).

A politically liberal culture by no means precludes the "objectification" of women. Liberal societies often permit prostitution or exploitation of women in other forms. In fact, it is a somewhat perverse irony, that sexually permissive cultures are often havens for the sort of men who see the excitement of a hunt in the pursuit of women - and promotes a culture of "competition for sex", which can some times have dangerous consequences.  It is just as possible to argue that the troubled Americans who take recourse to public shootouts to vent their rage are motivated by sexual frustration (not getting as much as their peers) as that  Muslim terrorists are driven by pent-up sexual frustration. Probably even more so, as the former variety often lack any political motive whatsoever.

Sexual repression is by no means a healthy trend, and begets a host of problems, including lots of hypocrisy.  But to establish a direct causal connection of that with violence, including terrorism, while ignoring the complicated interplay of social and political factors (and also individual psychological ones) at work behind such actions, is a bit too simplistic, and also symptomatic of a misunderstanding of the Other's culture (in this case insulting the intellect of Arab men in general).  The real liberal attitude to sexuality, or my understanding of it, is to leave it up to the choices of the concerned consenting adults , with no political repercussions beyond the confines of the bedroom.  I can be a liberal and extremely nonviolent without being promiscuous, thank you, (Gandhi practised both nonviolence and celibacy for most of his life), and "love of women" does not immediately qualify someone as "liberal".