The Sabotage Of Indonesian Women
It was 2022
and the first year of high school, in about the end tail of a heat wave. Our
classrooms had no Air Conditioner, a working fan was scarce, a rarity. The only
ventilation provided was four windows and a horizontal ventilation covered by
1800’s dutch colonizers dust. It was not much, but we did as much as we could
for what’s provided.
I remember
vividly a history teacher of mine who taught for 10 plus years, who also served
as the right-hand to the faculty. She refers to her position in the school as
God’s will, and that was before accompanied by her duties of bearing a son.
Coming from a family whose culture considers the birth of a son as the blessing
a daughter could never achieve, she prides herself for achieving such with one
try.
During one
of her impromptu quizzes we were busy doing work, when out of the blue she
‘advises’ the girls to keep to ourselves. I ran my eyes to my chairmate who
declared the same confusion as I am, “What do you mean Ma’am?” said another
girl. “You don’t want the boys looking at your chest while bending down and
tying your shoe,” referring to our seven-button decorated shirts with two of
them unbuttoned. We were just sitting, doing our work, and with such
exclamation of a sentence we were appalled, “why do we need to be responsible
for another one’s eyes?” And with no hurry and a calm demeanor she states,
“Then you were asking for it.”
Have you
ever wondered how easy and validating it was to hate a ‘Her.’
Growing up
on the internet has taught Gen Z that the opinions are limited to; the most
liked comment, the most viewed short form video, the most watched Twitch stream,
or the most retweeted. Agreeing upon things on the surface level is known to be
common practice online.
It is easy to hate a ‘her’ from the
surface level because you don’t actually hate ‘her’ you hate a different her,
it could be the one who is everything you’re not; it could be the one who did a
lot better in school; it could be the one who establish ‘your’ (their)
dreams way faster than you; it could be a parental figure who excels nothing
but for themselves; or it could be the one who called you names in front of the
class, gets nothing back while everyone laughs around with her. Why does it
feel so validating to hate her?
This
revolves around the idea that ‘Her’ is a one-dimensional character; what
she represents in someone's life cannot be more than what she involved
herself in previously, even if she is of a different ‘character’ and was
not accountable to such actions etc.
For one I
wasn’t asking for it, neither was my friend. It was a hot summer day, even if
most of the boys were doing the same identical act, they got less of a warning
than we do. It’s easy to gloss over the event that our female educator did as
somewhat a ‘heads up’. But the air as to the pronunciation and rather rough
perception of her ‘cutting’ approach of ‘asking for it’, which had gotten me to
question as to why the Women of Indonesia with the perception that anything a
woman does is an ‘eye candy’ for the male gender. How we speak, dress, move,
stare, laugh, walk, run is a crisis to the female bond and somehow the whole
world; while brothers will get less of a side eye to the same exact outcome or
other crimes; and on it goes the cycle again and again. Above all a third
participant sat quietly tying the whole thing together; enter The Audience.
Early this
December the Indonesian FYP’s were graced by a rather common scandalous
‘incident’ that happens repeatedly every full moon on the web. A Tiktok user by
the username @Azkiave or known as Azkia Vidiana Putri posted on December 30th,
a short form video detailing her recent wedding to a bachelor of 10 years her
senior. The Tiktok video garnered over 6.8 million viewers and was flooded with
criticism towards her life choices and lifestyles. Azkia being shy at just 19
years old is a business owner and had the ‘privilege’ of quitting school at 15.
Though there is not much further information as to Azkia’s parents comment on
the matrimony–It has already raised some question as to why quitting school was
above all else a valid path to choose and declare proudly. Meanwhile Indonesia is in the middle of a
quiet –decade long war in the education sector, from educators rights to the ongoing
economic disputes that students face on a day to day basis.
Not only it
enrages many users on all platforms from TikTok to X and Instagram, the actions
of the creator is nonetheless a privilege, co-signed with tone deafness and
ambiguity. The measures in which Miss Putri had taken could do much more harm
than good, where girls with less benefits than her could commonly get into
harm's way in the wrong hands. After all, it pushes the victim narrative much
further, as those girls who had to give up their education in search of love
could be tricked into loveless marriage; or worse, an illusion of a good one.
The
narrative of a good marriage preserved with ‘princess treatment’ will one day
boil down to infantilization of a woman's life. She will be spoiled
rotten, but in the near future she will be burdened with guilt, a guilt that
forces her to serve, to submit. The guilt will engulf her, and now she must
perform. Further on she will view her husband not as a companion, but her
owner. Soon she will notice that her body was not her own, her autonomy now
exploited.
But they
knew about this; Grandmothers, Mothers, Aunts, the women before her knew
about this; so did Miss Putri. That after all its glitz and glamour, it was all
a show. It was all just a transaction of her autonomy and self. The show had
stopped there. The audience filled the room with applause; all the cafes and
get-togethers, non-existing family-owned businesses, the beautiful decorations;
is now gone, 'cause some of it never existed to her, ‘cause when the lights
were turned off by then Miss Putri had taken the place of the audience.
Because when the lights turned off the girl is
left alone on the stage with her husband, her parents watching her from the
audience with a smirk of success; because is there anything much fitter for
their daughter than a life she yet learns to understand? There she stood in
front of everyone. A life with no promise or security she could guarantee for
herself, with a husband a decade older than her, who “promises” above all. With
no education or privilege, she stood but the show was over. It waited for its
next performer; for her to perform, and the audience soon
will receive a new seat; on it goes to the next performer.
According to
Victim Services of SDGA explains there are three stages of victimization; Impact,
the act stress that involves events such as shock; Recoil, cognitive
attempts to deal with the event, blaming others [then] self blaming; and
finally Reorganization, which the victim finally reach out for help.
These three stages would eventually come to the last stage, that is
reorganization, if the victims were subjected to individuals who did
not minimize or disparage the experience and feelings of the victim.
Differently, the victim will enter what it calls for secondary
victimizations. The
victim suffers further harm not as a direct result of the [criminal] ‘act’ but
due to the manner in which institutions and other individuals deal with the
victim. For instance the repeated exposure of the victim to the
perpetrator, repeated interrogation about the same facts could be the cause of
secondary victimization.
As my
colleague with a medical background, Dara puts it;
“Traumatic experience can change the
way a person feels, thinks, and reacts because it affects the brain and nervous
system directly. In medicine, trauma is not only a psychological issue but also
a neurobiological one. When someone experiences severe stress, the body
activates the stress response system, including the sympathetic nervous system
and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. Stress hormones like
cortisol and adrenaline increase to help the person survive.”
She
continues to explain further; the Amygdala (parts of the brain) becomes more
sensitive and easily activated. This area detects danger, so after trauma it
may send alarm signals even when there is no real threat. At the same time, the
Prefrontal cortex, which helps with decision-making and impulse control, may
have reduced activity during stress. This imbalance makes emotional reactions
faster and stronger than logical thinking. That is why a person may interpret
neutral situations as threatening or overreact to small triggers. However,
having a trauma-related condition does not remove responsibility.
In
psychiatry, professionals manage to differentiate between understanding the
cause of behavior and excusing harmful actions. Thus treatments such as
trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy exist to treat patients, helping
patients regulate the stress response and improve emotional control.
Now but what
if a person with unregulated feelings and undigested trauma came to power,
would that affect a thing?
“When
a person with unprocessed trauma gains power or authority, the clinical picture
can become more complex. Power may reduce external feedback and accountability.
If the individual already has hypervigilance or fear of losing control,
authority can become a coping mechanism to avoid feeling helpless again. This
may appear as controlling behavior, intolerance of criticism, or aggressive
reactions. Neurologically, their stress response is still overactive, but now their
decisions affect many others.
Trauma
can alter brain function and stress regulation, but with proper medical and
psychological intervention, these changes are treatable. (but) Healing
requires both biological regulation and conscious behavioral change.”
If people
around us notice this problem and decide not to act on it, we have become
the audience, the enablers; enter, the mother and the father,
the teacher and the male students, and the viewers alike. And
women are stuck in this perception of performing over and over again with no avail.
Suffice to
say I do not blame mothers, aunts, grandmothers, teachers; or even Miss Putri.
Their indirect silence is to blame, not their situation. But it takes one to
change one, if we are taught responsibility in the accounts of our own body why
not overall our mentality as well? Glossing over one problem could cause
mountains of difficulties. If women and men are equally taught about their
feelings and how to regulate, would it change the course of authority?
If girls are
resented for ‘asking for it’, then why are we not angry with enablers who
raised animals instead of sons. Why do we let the cycle of victim to
perpetrator happen again and again. And what do our generation do to care to
stop it? Will we ever recognise the pattern that we could once be the audience
and at the same time the performer just the same?
Maybe it
wasn't the lack of unbuttoned uniforms, maybe it was the lack of provided care
to school in need, or to people above all.
Special
Thanks to: Cover Art by Chen
Medical Standpoints by Andaramurti A
Written by Elle Yasmin
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