Gender bender: Those womenly matters

I have been reading about violence against women, and wondering if the issue is not linked to other wider, prevalent issues in society.

Several years ago I attended a conference in an Indonesian city, and stayed in an hotel on my own. I seldom left the room without tidying it up to a degree, to the extent that what the cleaners would see was not much more than a pair of shorts and a T-shirt on an unmade bed.

The third day I was still in the room working on my laptop when a cleaner came in. He apologized and was going to leave again, when I invited him to go ahead making up my room. He entered tentatively, looking somewhat discreetly around.

As I continued working, I ignored his occasional gazes. Finally I was too intrigued to keep working, so I turned around. He quickly turned and become busy puffing up the pillows on the bed.

"Are you the only one working on this floor?" I started the conversation.

He said yes. As he had been cleaning this room for the last three days, I wondered why this was significant.

"Did you just move in?" he asked, his curiosity finally getting the better of him.

I told him I had been in residence for three days, watching his reaction.

"Oh, I thought the occupant was a man," he said.

Now I was alarmed. Did he see a man coming out of my room?

"No," he hastily replied, "but everything in the room pointed to a male occupant".

I pressed him on, brimming with curiosity myself.

Then he explained. There was no women's underwear or cosmetics (all these having been scrupulously put away before I left the room), "And all the reading materials are a man's. Tempo, The Jakarta Post and other newspapers. And the foreign magazines are also news magazines."

I was almost speechless. "No women read those?" I finally found my voice.

He laughed nervously. "No," he said with some confidence, "women would read women's magazines. They're not interested in politics".

I asked, hiding my irritations, "How do you know there's no politics in women's magazines? Do you read them?"

"No, of course not," he looked offended, "but I know".

I dislike receiving an unsolicited lecture, so I did not give one then. But the attitude undoubtedly annoyed me, and I could not help noting since that it was fairly common in southeast Asian region.

Then last week, I realized that southeast Asia did not have a monopoly on this unadorned patronizing attitude toward women.

I was browsing at a Sunday market in a Melbourne suburb when I came across a splendid book at a second-hand book stall. The thought of the possibility of owning a copy of the book excited me, since the original price would have been beyond my reading budget.

I stood opening the book at random pages and reading them. Then I looked around. A man who had seen me picking up the book and had continued chatting with a fellow stall-holder, did not appear in a hurry to approach, so I asked him if he knew who owned the stall. He said he did.

I asked him what he wanted for the book I was holding.

"Fifteen dollars," he said.

He misinterpreted my look of surprise. "It is a heavy book," he said, taking it out of my hand, then pointing to other "less heavy" ones on the other side of the stall.

I took it back from him. He obviously did not want to offend me, so he said, "It was my father's. You know, the original price was an awful lot higher than that. Sorry, maybe you want to have a look at ..."

Digging my purse out of my handbag, I said, "No, please. I want this one. I know the original price. You see, I'm also a writer. It broke my heart to hear it being offered for fifteen dollars."

I gave the money to him quickly, then, looking straight into his eyes, I added, "It's a crying shame".

He was still standing on that spot, mouth gaping, as I turned a corner into another part of the market.

-- Dewi Anggraeni