Nobel laureate, Sir V. S. Naipul, made news last week when he unabashedly opined that no female author was equal to him, and that female writers, collectively, wrote badly. “Women writers are different,” he claimed, because of their “sentimentality, the narrow view of the world.”
I envisioned, the moment I read this, indignation—palpable and manic like a hemmed in frog—bouncing off countless women’s skins. I saw these women pounding their keyboards, writing irascible comments on blogs, web sites, twitter, facebook, or anywhere else they could spew their outrage against the revolting statements made by this “abominable” man.
Indeed, nearly every online newspaper that covered this story was inundated with furious, passionate comments, mostly from women. To these women, it didn’t matter that they themselves weren’t writers; they felt personally insulted, regardless. And added to the pain of the insult itself was the anger that the criticism was unjustified. One only had to read the work of Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, Deborah Eisenberg, Alice Munro or Margaret Atwood (to name just a smattering of modern day female fiction writers) to know how absurdly baseless Naipul’s remarks are.
For me, it was easy to recognize the passion that drove these hundreds of women to rant online. As a Hasidic woman, I feel this same compulsion, this need to “defend the honor,” each time I read a misinformed, erroneous article about Hasidism. I seethe, begin writing out blustering paragraphs full of adjectives, usually grinding my teeth as I write, sometimes yelling out the words I’m typing. Occasionally, the words actually develop into a coherent piece that I post on my own or a friend’s blog. Mostly, though, I lose steam somewhere along the middle—typically after I’ve vented to fellow Hasidim on the phone—and the piece remains, orphaned and truncated, among my other unfinished essays or stories.
Why do I feel this urgency, I sometimes wonder, to “enlighten” the world, to correct their misconceptions? Fact: People stereotype. Fact: People criticize. Fact: People lie. These facts are especially true when making statements about minorities or any group that is different from the norm. Why, then, do I feel it is my singular responsibility to educate the world about Hasidism? It isn’t. Just as it isn’t any single African American’s responsibility to speak up every time an ignoramus makes a misleading statement about Blacks. Or a woman’s responsibility to speak up when someone as conspicuously misogynistic as Naipul makes an inane declaration that all women write badly.
Still, when our personal sensibilities are offended, it’s hard (impossible, even) to remain silent. And how can we not be offended when told, boldly and definitively, that a statement is truth when we know with absolute certainty that it isn’t?
There will always be people who will believe and speak lies and stupidity. My puny efforts at remedying this—in regards to Hasidism—will not alter this reality. But when enough people speak up to counter specious stereotypes, eventually, society listens. The fact that Naipul’s comments made news testifies to that. Five hundred years ago, when Martin Luther said, “Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house and bear children,” his words were quoted with admiration. But when Naipul says (among his other denigrating comments about women writers), “inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house,” every mainstream news outlet picks it up.
Apparently, the efforts of the women and men who have railed and ranted and protested and fought and hammered on keyboards, have yielded results. Not perfect results (too many Naipuls still out in the world), but results, nonetheless. And so, I’ll keep pummeling away.
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