#suttee

[nobrashfestivity]

Unknown, Suttee. Gouache painting by a painter of Thanjavur (Tanjore), ca. 1800. Gouache Wife burning with her dead husband; Lettering in pencil strengthened in ink;

[haggishlyhagging]

I

In the Sado-Ritual we find, first, an obsession with purity. This obsession legitimates the fact that the women who are the primary victims of the original rites are erased physically as well as spiritually. These primary victims are often killed, as in the case of the rite of suttee. In other cases, such as Chinese footbinding, as we shall see later, they are physically and psychically maimed. This original erasure obviously keeps the primary victims from being witnesses. In the name of "purity," they are effectively silenced. Thus the widows' sexual purity is "safeguarded" by ritual murder. In preparation for this ultimate purification they are ceremoniously bathed, and care is taken to kill them at a "pure" time, that is, when they are not menstruating or pregnant. Thus "society" is purified of these "wicked" widows and also of all traces of female re-belliousness, for the women and girl-children who witness these events or hear of them must be perfectly brainwashed with terror of the same fate.

II

Second, there is total erasure of responsibility for the atrocities performed through such rituals. Those doing the destruction commonly have recourse to the idea that they are acting "under orders," or following tradition (serving a Higher Order). This allows the self as role-carrier to commit acts which the personal/private self would find frightening or evil.

III

Third, gynocidal ritual practices have an inherent tendency to "catch on" and spread, since they appeal to imaginations conditioned by the omnipresent ideology of male domination. Moreover, since the patriarchal imagination is hierarchical, there is a proliferation of atrocities from an elite to the upwardly aspiring lower echelons of society.

IV

Fourth, women are used as scapegoats and token torturers (for example, by the "setting up" of mothers-in-law as to blame for the widows' doom). This masks the male-centeredness of the ritualized atrocity and turns women against each other.

V

Fifth, we find compulsive orderliness, obsessive repetitiveness, and fixation upon minute details, which divert attention from the horror. In short, attention is focused upon what is proper and ceremonial, rather than upon the woman's horrible suffering and death.

VI

Sixth, behavior which at other times and places is unacceptable becomes acceptable and even normative as a consequence of conditioning through the ritual atrocity. Such value judgments are easily interchangeable in the swinging-pendulum society characterized by consciousness split into false opposites. Thus it is not surprising that the practice is desired and sometimes continued even after it has officially/legally been terminated, as in the recurring instances of "practical suttee."

VII

Seventh, there is legitimation of the ritual by the rituals of "objective" scholarship—despite appearances of disapproval. The basic cultural assumptions which make the atrocious ritual possible and plausible remain unquestioned, and the practice itself is misnamed and isolated from other parallel symptoms of the planetary patriarchal practice of female maiming and massacre. Jan Raymond has suggested that such scholarship could be called meta-ritual. The name is accurate, for this kind of writing not only "records" (erases) the original rituals but also provides "explanations" and legitimations for them, purporting to see beyond their materiality into their "soul" or meaning. This legitimation by the Rites of Re-search is an extension of the primordial gynocidal acts. The practitioners of these Last Rites re-enact the original rites by erasing their meaning and by effacing those Searchers who did weave their way through the mazes of re-search with integrity, dis-covering the forbidden fruit of their labors, that is, the facts.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

[anitanh]

India's Cries to British Humanity (1830). Found in the Internet Archive by AnitaNH

[haggishlyhagging]

The evaluation of Mayo's work [Mother India] and its impact has been left to such scholars as the authors of Marriage: East and West, who write:

The dust finally settled. It was conceded that Katherine Mayo's facts, as facts, were substantially accurate. It was recognized that she had taken up a serious issue and drawn attention to it, which had helped in some measure to hasten much-needed reforms. But at the same time her book had done a grave injustice to India, in presenting a one-sided and distorted picture of an aspect of Indian life that could only be properly understood within the context of the entire culture [emphases mine].

Thus Mayo is put in her place. We find here the familiar use of the passive voice, which leaves unstated just who conceded, who recognized. We find also the familiar balancing act of scholars, which gives a show of "justice" to their treatment of the attacked author. The qualifying expression, "as facts," added to "facts," has the effect of managing to minimize the factual. Women who counter the patriarchal reality are often accused of "merely imagining," or being on the level of "mere polemic." Here we have "mere" facts. Then the authors graciously concede that Mayo hastened "much-needed reforms," which gives the impression that everything has now been taken care of, that the messy details have been tidied up. Then comes the peculiarly deceptive and unjust expression "grave injustice to India." Mayo was concerned about grave injustice to living beings, women. Injustice is done to individual living beings. One must ask how it is possible to do injustice to a social construct, for example, India, by exposing its atrocities. We might ask such re-searchers whether they would be inclined to accuse critics of the Nazi death camps of "injustice" to Germany, or whether they would describe writers exposing the history of slavery and racism in America as guilty of "injustice" to the United States. The Maces go on to accuse Mayo of distorting "an aspect of Indian life." But what is "Indian life"? Mayo is concerned not with defending this vague abstraction (presumably meaning customs, beliefs, social arrangements, et cetera), but with the lives of millions of women who happened to live in that part of patriarchy called "India."

The final absurdity in this scholarly obituary is the expression "properly understood within the context of the entire culture." It is Katherine Mayo who demonstrates an understanding of the cultural context, that is, the entire culture, refusing to reduce women to "an aspect." Her critics, twenty years after her death, attempted to absorb the realities she exposed into a "broad vision," which turns out to be a meaningless abstraction.

Feminist Searchers should be aware of this device, commonly repeated in the re-searchers' rituals. It involves intimidation by accusations of "one-sidedness," so that others will not listen to the discredited Searcher-Scholar who refused to follow the "right" rites. The device relies upon fears of criticizing "another culture," so that the feminist is open to accusations of imperialism, nationalism, racism, capitalism, or any other "-ism" that can pose as broader and more important than gynocidal patriarchy. Thus the just accuser becomes unjustly sentenced to erasure. Her life's meaning, as expressed in her life's work, is belittled, reversed, wiped out.

Feminist Seekers/Spinsters should search out and claim such sisters as Katherine Mayo. Her books are already rare and difficult to find. It is important that they do not become extinct. Spinsters must unsnarl phallocratic "scholarship" and also find our sister weavers/dis-coverers whose work is being maligned, belittled, erased, deliberately forgotten. We must learn to name our true sisters, and to save their work so that it may be continued rather than re-covered, re-searched, and re-done on the endless wheel of re-acting to the Atrocious Lie which is phallocracy. In this dis-covering and spinning we expand the dimensions of feminist time/space.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

[anitanh]

Found in the Internet Archive by AnitaNH

[anitanh]

Found in the Internet Archive by AnitaNH

[anitanh]

Found in the Internet Archive by AnitaNH

[anitanh]

Found in the Internet Archive by AnitaNH