To The Wicked

The Main Hall of the Library at this university of mine is a creepy place. As you enters the area, the first thing that you are bound to notice is a number of large paintings of the 'famous' fathers of the University; you know, men who did something at some point in time which happened to earn the University a new building or a new faculty or what-not. These paintings are pretty large and they cover the walls on three sides. They cannot be missed.

The thing is, when I walked into this hallway and saw these paintings of great men, I was surprised to note that instead of being impressed or awed, I was a little bit appalled and disgusted. My honest reaction that was.

These were pictures of elderly, scholarly looking white men, who I am sure did something really good for the university or perhaps their faculties. For some reason I could not see them as symbols of achievement, success and prestige. I knew that it was unfair and that I knew nothing about what these men might have done, yet I could not shake off the feelings I had.

The thing is, I knew the reason as to why I was feeling the way I did. It had little to do with the individuals themselves. To really get the meaning out of this, I probably need to take a totally different approach and start from a different point.

I love women. I cannot deny that. Not every single female member of the species that walks in front of me, but the idea. I have a tendency to idealize women, which often sets me up for a car-crash, but that is the truth of it. Having spent most of my life with women of great charisma, fortitude and strength, I know better than to ever consider them as inferior. They are as enigmatic as they are impervious.

On a daily basis, I get to see women who are forced to overcome double or triple the obstacles that any men has to overcome just to get to the same level or destination. A man who seeks to get to the top simply has to climb the ladder already in place, while a woman who desires the same thing would have to build the ladder, run circles around it and climb it backwards. That is the sad reality of the world we live in, where there is only an illusion of equality to those who choose to see it that way.

However, as hard as this seems, it has never stopped women from struggling and persisting. It is extremely difficult to earn respect from a world that continuously sees you as an object and nothing more, even when you have done so much more than your peers to prove that you are so much more. Even when you are forced to bear the stigma of something completely ridiculous and irrational as gender. That is a battle that has no place in a supposedly civilized society but continues to exist.

I can easily make the claim that as a member of a minority, I have felt the brunt of oppression and discrimination as much as anybody, but the truth is far from it. Whatever discrimination I might have encountered, or any other male for that matter, does not even come close to those suffered by our female counter-parts. There will always be oppression in our lives, as long as power is seen as a resource and division is seen among humanity. Gender happens to be the greatest divide, and power as a gender-based resource is therefore a very strong temptation. Discrimination and oppression is magnified several times for women, which is why they always seem to have to try SO much harder at everything, for they are not working against so much more than men ever have to.

Hundreds of under-aged girls in many parts of Asia are taken away from their homes everyday to be forced into prostitution run by syndicates and traffickers. Girls from China are dragged to countries such as Malaysia and Thailand with the promise of jobs and education only to end up being abandoned in the hands of brothels. These girls end up working in the worst conditions imaginable; they have very little choice and almost zero avenues to escape due to poor policies and laws that punish them (the VICTIMS) instead of the real criminals.

I have seen women in these situations, have met them, spoken to them and heard their stories. Many end up having to work relentlessly just to survive, and more often than not, they have other mouths to feed; children, parents, family. They hide behind smiles and looks of blank ignorance for fear of courting too much attention. We look at them as cowards, criminals, scum, but the truth is so much more interesting. Stripped of choice, with no education in most cases, no way of seeking a way out, the fact that they still manage to make a life for themselves and their families, that they are still able to hold on to a shred of dignity and face the day with a smile... that speaks of a very real strength, something most of us will probably never understand. The human spirit can be found in the most bizarre places sometimes, but this, more than anything else, makes perfect sense.

Which is probably why, upon walking into that hall at the library, I felt revolted at the paintings that had been hung. My thoughts had drifted to this idea of what greatness and strength really means. I did not see a bunch of elderly white men as having any right to claim glory or greatness, for I doubt they had ever had to face any obstacle even remotely as difficult or impossible as I am sure the women of their time had to face. These were not great men who made something out of nothing and should serve as symbols of inspiration; these are the symbols of so much that is wrong with this society we live in; in their faces I see generations of privilege, discrimination, bias and exploitation. I see opportunities unfairly given, unfairly taken away. These men never had anything more than a bunch of entrance examinations to worry about, they never had their integrities questioned because of their gender, they never had to suffer from lack of attention from teachers and mentors, they probably got the best benefits and advantages from being the male heirs of their families. The hardest obstacle they probably ever had to face was leaving their homes to go study at a university. How could this even remotely be considered as great achievements. I am certain that whatever they did for the university itself, whatever invention or discovery they made, serve some truly significant purpose, but one should NEVER forget the true cost paid in blood, dignity, and injustice to put these men upon the pedestals upon which they stand. We all know too well who had to pay that price.

This has not been the most clear of writings, and it seems a little disjointed, but the reason for this is that this is not an issue that can be talked about with any kind of clear precision in anything short of a full-blown epic documentary; there is simply too much to talk about and discuss, and we have hardly even touched the surface of such issues. Two questions are in my mind, thinking about this:

What is it this idea of greatness that we hold in our thoughts?
Who really deserves to be given that place in our hearts?