Many men don’t like it when women disagree with them, they (the men) often get very angry when disagreements don’t end with them ‘winning’. But let’s put that statement to one side for a moment to discuss structures – micro-structures of race, gender and sexuality that create gradations of asymmetry in dyadic (heterosexual) intimate relationships. Putting also to one side ‘personal’ preferences and individual (counter) experiences, we turn our attention to the way people relate to others as containers for ‘race’, ‘gender’, and ‘sexuality’ instead of complex, flesh and blood individuals. A thing that many women are coming to realise is that men don’t see women as people but as inter-changeable containers with functions that work or ‘don’t work’.
Some years ago I reviewed the Handbook of Gender in Asia (2021) edited by Shirlena Huang and Kanchana Ruwanpura. One of the sections from the volume that I would cite quite often is the contribution from Paul Statham’s research on rural Thai women’s marriage to older white western men, an illuminating study that goes beyond the stereotypical image of Asian fetish in the region. Statham looks at these relationships over the course of many years from the moment of marriage, all of which takes place in Thailand where both husband and wife reside. From the outset, we are familiar with the set-up; white western men, now called ‘passport bros’, who seek Thai women as wives out of a preference for ‘submissive’, ‘traditional’ ‘feminine’ qualities. From the perspective of Thai women (and their families), marriage with these men is an economic boon.
What typically begins with a racial, gendered, and material asymmetry evolves into an arrangement that puts these men in a more vulnerable position than from where he started out. These marriages began with an age gap, the men significantly older, the women younger. After many years, the ageing and enfeebled men expect their younger wives to perform the necessary care work with love and gratitude. Overlooked is the knowledge that governs their marital circumstances – linguistic, cultural, and financial – these women gained after years of marriage. The women’s language skills in their husband’s native language improve after many years; they can understand the language, talk back, negotiate, and disagree on their material situation. A recalibration of power takes place.
An important lesson from Statham’s work is not so much what we already know i.e. that parts of Southeast Asia is notorious for these kinds of relationships. Rather, these arrangements are replicated anywhere not just the Global South, so long as there is a power differential that gives men the upper hand in material and immaterial domains – mainly money and sex. From the perspective of many men, it doesn’t really matter who or what the woman he’s ‘chosen’ to marry or pursue romantically is, she is an inter-changeable container performing functions that validates his carapace of masculinity. Maybe it doesn’t really matter if she’s very educated and earns well, or doesn’t share his ideology or worldview, she has to be a container that performs a function for him.
I recently finished reading over my summer break Peter French’s authorised biography of VS Naipaul (2008). An enemy of Edward Said, Naipaul was famous for his anti-Islamic polemic. After decades of abusing two white women – his wife Patricia Hale and mistress Margaret Gooding – who shrank their life opportunities to nothing to support his work, he married the Pakistani Muslim journalist Nadira Alvi, twenty years his junior, at the height of his stature as a writer, rich and freshly ennobled by a knighthood and countless prizes, eventually the Nobel prize in 2001.
He proposed to Nadira, his second (and last) wife, as Patricia lay dying from cancer. During the same period, he quickly dumped Margaret, whom he saw as ‘becoming an old lady’ (she was younger than him). Nadira moved into his home the day after Patricia was buried, and they were married two months later. Aside from the compounding layers of betrayal, there were also questions from observers about Naipaul contradicting his own views about Islam; if he had such low opinions about the religion, how and why did he fall so instantly for Nadira, whom he met in Pakistan while researching for a book? Peter French didn’t need to spell it out so explicitly in his biography but alludes throughout the book that women intimately connected to Naipaul merely performed a function. Patricia his secretary at home, maid, housekeeper. Margaret his secretary during his overseas travels, personal prostitute, and human punching bag. Once thoroughly used, they can be discarded without much thought or ceremony. Despite his wealth, Patricia was given a cheap funeral, attended by a handful of people. Naipaul didn’t see it necessary to invite many to her funeral, an occasion to celebrate her life. What for, she was no longer alive to perform her function for him.
Women are now being warned not to support and build their husband’s careers because the outcomes can be dire, as the case of VS Naipaul, a writer of great prose, wealth, reputation, and fame, can attest. Perhaps you, a het woman, might disagree, because you are going to be different, you believe the man you’re with is never going to do that. Well, who really knows, though sociological and historical data is not really on your side.
As a person with opinions and unafraid to express them, I find it interesting to start from a place of disagreement. See how long it can carry on without antagonism. Disagreement can be a filtering mechanism, to maintain distance, move away, or weed out entirely unwanted interactions. It might render a container useless.
Alicia Izharuddin 