Misogynist or Misogamist?

By now after all the blog entries I had written, people may begin to wonder if I am any of the above. Maybe you are right. I am both or either.

If the labels must stick, then they must be seen in the context of what I experienced with this handful of people. It was a small but representative sample, a cluster of people who made me think deep and hard.

Unfortunately they tilt towards one gender and this gender was once the downtrodden and belittled. I had thought that with all the fight for equality in occupation and status that they will turn out to be better leaders and advocate for good values.

Instead they were as strident and combative in their quest for power, greed, materialism and money at the expense of love, compassion, universality and understanding.No better than the gender they had fought against.

They did not exactly strike me as enlightened or progressive despite our First World status.

Most of them impressed me as people living in their own worlds of fear, repression, prejudices, beliefs, values , hate and suspicion. Something which is shaped by our environmental culture of materialism, possession and obsession. Which in turn is shaped by our national psyche and governance, Asian roots, school system, corporatism, public and civil contact, family , globalisation and even religious tenets.

I am too of course the product of the same influences albeit having my own unique experiences within the context of my own selective pressures of family, religion, Chineseness, education, personal encounters with people, public and civil contact and sexual identity.

But the recurring trait is really one of a kind. It shatters myths of being nurturing and exuding maternalism when I have a boss, a mother herself, explicate that since the charges are not her own flesh and blood, she is not so directly responsible for their well-being.

These are charges young enough to be hers, on their own here alone far away from their homes.

Imagine someone said the same of hers when they are abroad! How would you feel if you leave your very own in the hands of someone who has no feelings for a fellow human being? Be it yours or not. Do we all not share a commonality as a human? Or is she differentiating along the lines of yours or mine, master or servant and rich or poor.

Which really brings me to the question of why in damnation is she ever in the knowledge economy? Isn't her vocation to open up minds, new vistas, share love, compassion and teach universality and help? Or is it she to breed hatred, turn one against another, instigate and malign? Look for grades, top brains and technical expertise. But surely for someone who is a specialist in one trade can only be an idiot of sort who cannot see a holistic view or understand the human condition.

So what makes Imelda Marcos of the Phillipines, Empress Cixi of the Qin dynasty, Empress Wu of the Tang dynasty, Cleopatra of the Ptolemy dynasty or Nerfiti, Queen of Egypt or Qiang Qing of China any different from Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong or Idi Amin of Africa?

So did a different gender do any better than what they fought against?

Are we just merely putting a gender on the pedestal of power just to show that we have progressed? Or should the people on the pedestal be solely based on what they can do and out of true conviction for beliefs and value system?

So a woman minister will then symbolise progress and equality of the sexes and not because she has true convictions to do her work based on her true calling and value system? So numbers in the cabinet will count as progress of the sexes and filling quotas and not be based on true calling and true worth to do good work?

Example : I want to start a curriculum. I will examine the subjects to teach based on what I think will be worth teaching (the interconnectivity , multi-dimensional and thus unifying theme ) and not because I want to call it a Liberal Arts College. I start out with that premise first and not the other way around.

At the end of the day, it is surely not the gender but the value system and convictions articulated by the leader that will win the followers and the respect. Coercion, threat and intimidation can only work so well.