Who are all these men?

When I look at the television images of the protesters in Tahrir Square, and now in Tehran and in other countries, all I see is testosterone.

And this bothers me: it bothers me that there are few, if any, women in these protests, and it also bothers me (that is, makes me embarrassed) that I am bringing such a Western-feminist perspective to those images. After all, according to an NBC news report this evening, the major organizer for the Egyptian protests was a woman. She coordinated the online and texting campaign, albeit inside, not outside.

I know that women in societies throughout the Middle East and South Asia, and no doubt other parts of the world, are the family members who stay home. It's cultural, perhaps religious, often socio-economic, and happens in the US in some communities as well. I also know that many of these same women are highly educated and bring their own contributions to the cause: if they weren't at home taking care of the children, preparing meals, sending their kids to school, their husbands couldn't be on the streets protesting. Maybe there’s a whole network of women texting and calling, to get their men to the right places. I suspect there is some complexity behind the scenes that I can’t see.

But at a gut level I am bothered by those images. Maybe they remind me of the discomfort I felt during the three years I was in India, the annoyance, the vague sense not so much of fear but of foreignness, of difference, of being (figuratively) overpowered by crowds of men everywhere. Men wearing white or light-green shirts and dark pants, all looking roughly the same age, would race their motorbikes or bicycles in a swarm through any intersection in Pune as the light went from red to green. I felt trapped, in a completely irrational way (these men weren't after me at all) by those hordes of men, often young men, whether they were on motorbikes or walking down the streets or staring at me as if they'd never seen a woman before. Often, I was numbed by the thought of how many thousands of miles I would have to travel in order not to experience crowds of staring men everywhere.

And they often seemed not to be " doing" anything. This, of course, is a Western or even American perspective: that we always have to be doing something; that it's not okay to hang around outside for hours, or visit the shop your friend owns and talk to him all afternoon while he’s working. What I wondered and still wonder as I watch these protests is: how do these thousands of men have time to spend two or three or ten or eighteen days, or however long it takes, in the streets protesting? And who are they? Are they all unemployed? If they work, will they have a job to return to? And if there are mainly men in the streets, is the revolution only about men’s problems?

It’s entirely possible that I haven’t watched the right news sources to answer these questions, but I have not heard answers. On the one hand, I’m amazed, happy, dumbfounded at the success of Egypt’s revolution: can we Americans imagine that happening in the States? On the Mall in Washington, mass protests even at their most earnest never last more than a day (not in my memory, anyway). Who would stay in the streets for eighteen days in this country?

On the other hand, I find the gender element of the Egypt story, and all the Middle-East revolution stories, missing.

What do you think?

This blog will open on Sunday, Feb 13th, 2011. Stay tuned.

I've been called "Amy-ji," "Guru-ma," "Miss Amy," "Ma'am," "Amy Madam," and "Madame Garrou." These names represent cultures blending, unabashed gestures of affection blended with respect, even at their most formal. I like them all, and I would never have heard them without all of you from Nepal, Tibet, India, France, and the American South.

What's it like, coming home to your country after being away? This is a topic so many of us have experienced, whether on a week's short trip outside the US, or from living outside our countries for years. I open this blog to explore the notion of leaving, and coming home; of being a foreigner and a native, or something in between. I don't have the answers, but I'll post some musings, articles, pictures, and questions, and I'd like to hear yours.