by Donna Leon
More preoccupying for anyone who lives here is the content of the articles and what they show about the way people think, or at least write, concerning the role of the sexes. The March 6 Espresso, which I didn’t get to until today, has an article about the Pentagon’s recent need to consider repeated and frequent cases of the sexual abuse of female soldiers by their male superiors.
The journalist (a woman, please remember this) writes that, in the face of the carnal violence to which some female members of the U.S. military have been subjected, the scandal of Tailhook is a “trivialissimo gioco erotico” during which female recruits were forced to run naked between two rows of male cadets with “gli attributi in erezione.”
Funny old me, I’d always thought games were played between two people, and it was a game because they were equal players. Sports game, erotic game—doesn’t make any difference; you’ve got to have two players, and the players have got to have an equal chance at victory or fun or else it isn’t a game. In this case, I fail to understand any of the words, for it is not trivial, it’s not a game, and it certainly wasn’t erotic, not at least to the women involved.
And that’s what is so unusual about living here, for we women live within a universe that is almost entirely male in terms of what it sees and buys and, more important, in terms of how it thinks about these things.
In the same article, the journalist writes that the various actions performed by the male superior officers, including rape, sodomy, and defecating upon a woman tied up in a bathroom, are “assai poco da gentiluomini.” Well, thanks for that illumination, but I probably could have figured out on my own that it was ungentlemanly. The mind boggles at the thought of what one would have to do before this woman would define it as bad behavior. She concludes the article by stating that the Pentagon has set up a toll-free number to be used by women who have been subjected to acts of sexual violence, where they can register their “lamentele,” a word used to describe the sort of moan a person might make after buying a lightbulb that doesn’t work.
Italians often say, “I’ll take care of my enemies, God protect me from my friends,” and that is my response to an article as squalid as this, and one—sweet Jesus—written by a woman, which treats sexual violence as just one more of those good time tricks the boys will get up to if we don’t keep a close eye on them. Nothing in it, really, girls, just a trivial sexual game.
The few times I’ve voiced these objections to the permissive attitude toward sexual violence I observe here, my Italian friends have attacked me for being una puritana, a response that at first shocked but now angers me. It would seem I am meant to believe that any sexual attention from a man—desired, undesired, induced, provoked, or carrying a knife—is to be treated as the highest compliment toward which womanhood can aspire. Further, to question this is to reveal some sort of deep sexual trauma or to question the established order of things. No wonder so many men want to believe women have rape fantasies.
And maybe that’s what makes me so uncomfortable after an article like this, reading paragraph after paragraph of the patronizing tone that so casually dismisses the sexual equality of women—this is the established order. People don’t start with actions, they start with words, words like these. And words start in response to prevailing attitudes. If you can call him a nigger, it’s far easier to lynch him. And if you can call it a trivialissimo gioco erotica, then you can rape her. This article was published in one of the most important sources of information in this country, and I am sure it will pass entirely unnoticed and unremarked. That frightens me.
I Want a Few Good Men
Like the U.S. Marines, I want a few good men. And, like the marines, I want them tough and young and mean as snakes, and I want them to go into a foreign country and kill, kill, kill. Unlike the marines, I am not interested in politics or the furthering of American policy by force of arms. Nope. My goals are far narrower; one might even say they are biblical, for all I want is vengeance, and I want it now.
A recent issue of an Italian women’s magazine contained an article entitled “In Bangladesh, Dove le Donne Bruciano,” and it recounted the story of a new crime that seems to be all the rage in Bangladesh this season: the hurling of sulfuric acid into the faces of women who refuse the attentions of men. The article was accompanied by heart-wrenchingly horrible photos of some of the young women to whom this has been done. They looked at the camera, these young women, and from out of flesh turned into lava, almond-shaped eyes spoke of the haunting beauty that must once have been there. (I shall not expand on the fact that all of the women photographed had once been beautiful, but it did occur to me to wonder why there were no photos of plain or unattractive women to whom this had been done.)
The article goes on to explain that the crime began to be reported in the eighties and since then has caught on among Bangladeshi men to such a point that, in 1997, there were 177 cases reported to the police; it is assumed that just as many, if not more, went unreported. (Pause for a moment and consider a society in which such a thing can go unreported.)
In 1995 a law was passed that sentences men to life imprisonment, even to death, if convicted of this crime. Ready for the big surprise? So far, no one has been sentenced, though a number of acid throwers have been identified and accused. “They pay, they corrupt the judges and the police,” one of the victims explains. Three who have been apprehended have appealed to the supreme court, and their victims are sure they’ll be released.
And that’s why I want a few good men. Marines. Ready to go in there and shoot those fuckers or, more deliciously, toss a bit of acid in their faces. Don’t bother to tell me this is an irrational response and that no good at all will come of it. I know this. Don’t trouble yourself by trying to reason with me by telling me that violence is not the solution to violence. I know that too. I’ve given up on sweet reason, and I’ve given up on the law, especially in places where the law seems to belong to the highest bidder.
The laws aren’t likely to change and, even if they do change, they aren’t going to be enforced. The victims are only women, you see, so it is unlikely that young men are going to be sent to the slammer, or the hangman, only because they’ve robbed these girls of their human appearance, their future, all hope of human happiness, indeed, of normal life. Sending in my marines or perhaps doing some local hiring and paying thugs to engage in a bit of aggro isn’t really going to change anything or help anyone. But think about it for a while. It certainly would feel right, wouldn’t it?
The Developer
You just never know where it’s going to happen, do you? Last week, it happened at breakfast. I was invited to the home of respectable German friends, there to meet some of their other friends. One of the guests was a middle-aged Swiss man who worked in Asia, in places such as Laos, Thailand, Myanmar. Hearing this, I was both interested and curious and asked what he did. “I’m in development,” came his reply.
Since that doesn’t mean anything to me, I asked for an explanation. It turns out that he is attempting to help Thailand increase its income from tourism while, at the same time, decrease the number of people who flood into the country. Could someone who lives in Venice hear anything sweeter than a desire to lower the number of tourists? This, decidedly, was my sort of guy.
He asked if I’d been to Thailand, and I said I had been there three times, then added, in what I suppose was meant to be a joke, that the last time I went through customs at the Bangkok airport, I seemed to be the only person who was not a sex tourist, as three planes filled with what looked like Japanese construction workers had landed at the same time mine did.
“Terrible, terrible,” he muttered, his face filled with disgust. “That’s the worst sort of sex tourist.”
Not aware that there were different grades of sex tourists, I remarked, “Seems simple enough to me. You spend a thousand dollars for your ticket. Or you spend three hundred. You’re still going the
re to have sex with ten-year-old girls.”
Once again, his disgust was manifest. “No, kiddie sex is terrible, awful, horrible. We want nothing to do with it. And we don’t want all those planeloads of poor men coming in.”
“What do you want, then?” I asked, forgetting to sip at my coffee.
“We’re building luxury hotels in the north so that a better [for which read, I think, “richer”] sort of tourist can come to Thailand. That’s much better for the country, for the ecology.”
I looked around to see if anyone else was following this conversation, but everyone was busy talking of music. As he continued, telling me of his great plans for new and more exclusive hotels, I realized that I had only two choices: either get up and refill my coffee cup or drive my fork into his left eye. This was someone else’s table, which meant the rules of politeness pertained, so I excused myself and went to get more coffee and, when I came back, added my stupidities to the talk of music. I remained calm, resisting the urge to ask him if, given the financial difficulties of the music festival we were all attending, the female soloists should be made to prostitute themselves for the financial good of the festival. Or perhaps, in order to reduce tourism, we make use of the choir boys, instead, and just charge more? He chattered on amiably until it was time to leave, I all the while aware that he was incapable of understanding how horrible I found his Jesuitical rationalization. In a way, his moral autism was worse than what he was doing, though that was disgusting enough on its own. He told me of his concern for the ecology of Thailand and how his love for that country had driven him to spend an entire weekend cleaning up the beaches of one of the smaller islands. What better proof could a person give of his love for a country not his own, a country filled with small, dark-skinned people?
I’m sure he sees himself as an ecologist, and I’m equally certain he believes he is a friend of Thailand. Well, I’m an American, and we tend to use more direct language, so we don’t call men like this developers. We call them pimps.
Saudi Arabia
It’s been twenty-five years since I worked there, but I still am not to be trusted on the subject of Saudi Arabia. The mere mention of the name of the place brings out the worst elements in my character and I become vengeful, spiteful, and violent. During the First Gulf War I found myself saying that I wished the navigators on the U.S. bombers would get their flight path wrong by a few miserable degrees and end up laying a line of big ones straight up the main highway, right into the living room of the Royal Palace in Riyadh. Whenever I hear about violence in Saudi Arabia, whether it’s cops shooting bad guys or bad guys shooting cops, it’s a win-win situation for me. And those scenes of mass panic, crowding, and crushing that take place during the yearly hajj in Mecca, well, you really don’t want to hear what I have to say about those.
It took less than nine months in what I cannot endure to hear be called “the Kingdom” to do this: to turn a generally well-disposed and easygoing woman into a vengeful harpy. Because so much time has passed since I was there, I can no longer distinguish between what is exaggerated talk and what is real, lingering rancor, though I do know that the time I spent in Saudi Arabia, teaching at King Saud University, in Riyadh, was the worst time in my life. I went for greed, lured by the promise of lots of money. I went because I’d just spent a year in China, where my conviction that a Westerner had no right to take money from the country forced me to spend my every paycheck on dinners for my friends, endless meters of silk sent to friends in Italy, not so much because I wanted these things but rather to leave all of my money there. Broke, I left China and realized I needed a job.
When I saw the ad for a teaching job at the University in Riyadh, I knew I shouldn’t even apply. Some of my friends had worked there, or had friends who did, so I had heard enough stories about the place to warn me off. But in need of work and allowing myself to be lulled by my memories of four pleasant years in Iran, I applied for the job, did a quick interview, and was hired to teach English and English literature. How different, my willed ignorance asked me, could one Muslim country be from another?
I flew, if memory serves, from Paris, where I got on the plane along with a large number of jean-clad women, most of whom seemed to be wearing stage makeup and to have bought their sweaters and blouses one size too small. Perhaps they were confused by the European numbering system?
In Riyadh, when we landed, all of those women had disappeared, replaced by vertical black clouds above little feet. This was a Muslim country, so it was not the rapture—it’s the Christians that happens to, isn’t it? They’d merely been transformed, turned into thin black-draped and veiled shapes. Gone were the flowing red hair, the bright RED lipstick, the too-tight jeans and sweaters, replaced by interchangeable black forms.
Customs, passport inspection—which included the confiscation of my passport—and then a car ride to the housing area of the university, where I was let into a four-room apartment, my home for the academic year.
Nothing is to be gained by recounting the first week of introduction to the routine of the university, the apportioning of work and the assignment of teaching schedules, which was all pretty standard. But my passport? It was being held for “processing.”
It was during that first week that I had my first exposure to the Saudi male, and this happened when I went with a colleague (we had been warned never to go anywhere in the city alone) to buy food in the local market. At first I thought these were very clumsy chaps. Surely they must have seen us, but then why did they keep bumping into us? I wore, as my contract stipulated, a floor-length skirt and sleeves that came down to my wrists, and so I was slow to view my much-muffled appearance as erotically stimulating, though the continued clumsiness of passing males soon began to suggest that it was.
As the weeks passed, there was an escalation in their aggression: if you can see it on my body, it’s been touched, or spat on, or run at with a motor scooter, or struck with an open palm . . . am I forgetting anything? Ah, yes, masturbation.
Now, why is it that nothing I’ve ever read about Saudi Arabia discusses this? I doubt that it has stopped, for every Western woman I worked with at the university had it done to her, so frequently that we ended up greeting news that it had happened to someone else with tired sighs. The most common place was the public buses. The back section, built over the motor (this in a country where the summer temperatures are well above 100 degrees), is reserved for the women and has its own entrance. There are two rows of seats, facing forward, but to keep the sexes from the contamination of seeing each other, a plasterboard partition separated us from the rest of the bus. Because one needs, if one is going to get off the bus at the right place, to be able to see where the bus is going, a small vertical crack, about half a centimeter wide, was left between the two pieces of plasterboard. We were expected to push our faces close enough to the crack to enable us to see where the bus was, which would allow us to pull the cord before our station and have the bus stop.
In the ordinary course of events, all of the seats in the male part of the bus (bigger, air-conditioned, not on top of the motor) would face forward, right? Nope. The penultimate row faced the back of the bus, allowing those who chose to sit there a vision of the half centimeter of open space between them and the women. I would like to say that it happened every time I rode the bus that a man would take his place in that row of seats, shove his hands into the pockets of his djellaba, and have at himself, but this is an exaggeration. What I will say, in truth, is that it happened so often that first I stopped counting and then I stopped taking the bus. Every woman I worked with, well, every Western woman, said that the same thing had happened to her and happened repeatedly. Lovely beaches, and the local people are so friendly.
It’s not that the taxis were much safer, though only one of my colleagues had any trouble, when she was driven out of the town and left at the side of the road. There was apparently no attempt to hurt her, mer
ely to inconvenience her and show her her proper place. I never had trouble, but then I never rode in a taxi alone, did I?
None of my colleagues ever suffered physical aggression in the form of attack or rape; that was left to third world women to suffer. I was told—and I want to emphasize that this was only rumor, though constant rumor—that rape was very common among servants, especially Filipina women. The police? Darlings, surely you’re joking. We Western women were shielded by our passports, and just where had mine gotten to? Still being processed?
While I was there, a colleague had a former student return to visit. The girl, about twenty-two, was then in her second year of medical school. She came to the school, asked if she could speak to her former teacher alone, and closed the door of her office.
When they were seated, the girl asked Evelyn how it was that Westerners got pregnant. Since the girl was in her second year of medical school, the question raised some doubt as to the quality of instruction at that institution.
“The same way people here do,” my friend explained. “You have been told about that, haven’t you?” One never knows the limits of censorship, after all.
“Of course, I know about that. The penis and the vagina,” the girl said dismissively. “But what do Westerners do that makes them pregnant?”