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STICKING TOGETHER Bonding speaks an inclusive language

That’s what history tells us happened with feminism’s notion of sisters-in-arms – it had to give up its grand all-embracing ideal of ‘global’ sisterhood and attempt to answer questions like, “Must I call every woman sister?”.

Most of us don’t have the grit or the saintliness for that, but in smaller groups, sisterhood continues to be purposeful, strong and able to change and take on new shapes. We’ve moved far away from sistering as an alternative to the impossibility of bonding with the mother, who is the ‘wife of the patriarch’ and thus incriminated in his tyranny while also being a helpless victim of it.

Moulted structures of domesticity, work and social engagement have given sisterhood several intriguing skins, under which of course the old strengths and weaknesses are at work. Like Iris Gaming Network, a ‘sisterhood’ of women gamers, started by several women gamers, including Robyn Fleming, Editor of Cerise, the Gaming Magazine for Women. It came after intense hard work and collaboration among a group of women who believe that “In the end, what women-oriented communities have to give is the power of sisterhood.”

For the women in Iris Gaming Network, their website is a significant alternative to “mainstream” gaming sites and publications and “girl/women” gaming options (where women can share their opinions and experiences openly, but are too small and isolated to impact the general gaming culture and industry).

While it is impossible to write away the oppression and limited choices that a significant proportion of women still have to live with, it’s undeniable that women are doing more things on their own now. And new sisterhoods are born from these activities.

Says Prasanna Chandrashekharan, a 46-year-old lecturer of English, “I think women are doing more things together because there’s so much that we are able to do now. And things are looking up, it’s getting better. For me, sisterhood is about sharing things: going to favourite restaurants, buying things together, sharing books, sharing good lines, sharing bad times, all of that.”

Odelia is an active member of a yahoo group called “shghs78” (Sacred Hearts Girls’ High School, batch of 1978) and believes that their group “is a new-age expression of sisterhood,” without which it would have been impossible to try and keep in touch from different parts of the world.

Twenty-nine years after high school, sharing “our news, ideas, laughter, recipes and experiences, celebrating each other’s successes, offering support and encouragement in adversity”.

Then women travel together, they go to the market together, they share antidotes for runny tummies, colds and period pain, they exercise together, they take their children on picnics and spend weekends and phone time together in a sisterhood that recognises their difference from men but does not assume a sameness among themselves.

As Aakanksha put it, “The difference between girls and boys in groups is that girls understand each other, whatever we may say to each other, we stick together.”

This perhaps is the same lesson that feminism and the women’s movement have learnt: to recognise that difference is valid and to participate in groups in which these differences are not obstacles, but points of view.

In the words of feminist economist Devaki Jain, who has been part of the most thrilling campaigns, theory and practice years of feminism: “Coming home from the first World Conference in Mexico in 1975, it seemed as if the world’s women were one, and hence one could say that a kind of sisterhood was present, but this term has never sat comfortably with many of us. We came into Nairobi in 1985 and by that time the dividing lines amongst women, the diversity, based on location and politics emerged clearly.”

Like life, sisterhood too is contoured with obstacle courses and negotiating these is hard work, but as Jhuma Basak, practicing psychoanalyst and dancer says, “Sisterhood is about bonding, which speaks an inclusive language of disharmonies, jealousies and grievances. What is crucial is to be able to reach another’s heart.”

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