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me confronting her traumas and issues about the institution of marriage ruminations and research that eventually became committed committed is a feminist memoir make no mistake about it it is an empowering thought provoking read that i would recommend to anyone who 1 wants to marry 2 doesn t want to marry 3 is concerned about civil rights and international affairs in all senses of the term it s important that the events it describes happened prior to eat pray love s insane success not unlike the happy coincidence of having met her new love at the end of her first book s journey everything that happens therein was also spontaneous gilbert leaves little doubt that nowhere during her ten months of bad traffic and matrimonial panic wandering around vietnam laos and cambodia could it have occurred to her that she might exploit this bout of hard luck she went through the experience with no guarantee of a platform to discuss let alone capitalise on it because of this it is all the more relevant this isn t a celebrity memoir but an ordinary couple s absolutely commonplace struggle in a world that loves and enforces its borders even as it claims to have none now this sort of gets back to the problem with eat pray love which was not strictly speaking a real problem with eat pray love itself but with exactly how the memoir got co opted into the chick lit category not chick lit as in light and fun but chick lit as in delusional inducing prince awaiting hearts a breaking and that problem was that many many many many of us are where gilbert was at the start of that book lying on the bathroom floor bawling and in the course of a few hundred pages in about a year she was both literally and figuratively somewhere else altogether and the book was so engaging that it made it look easy the problem essentially was the expectation created i encountered this personally in my own life and practically every woman friend who has read it has admitted to the same rues some of them had become especially resentful toward gilbert this was not a phenomenon restricted to my circles a real backlash against eat pray love and its author occurred among its disenchanted readership its most common contentions as discussed on comment forums all over the internet were that gilbert was selfish and as a white american with some wealth she was operating from a place of privilege and entitlement not all of us can give up our lives and jetset for a year was a common refrain as though if only we could we would also land ourselves true love and astronomical book sales a phrase gilbert s own sister married with children and obligations of her own sarcastically echoes in one email exchange in the book but here s the thing i don t think especially having noticed committed s incredible redemptive powers that gilbert meant for her memoir to have anything to do with typically misguiding light literature aimed at women on its own steam committed is an important book completely relevant to our world today and the choices we are faced with as thinking women who sometimes have no alternative but to acquiesce to a fundamentally patriarchal institution even if we believe we want it with eyes open or closed but it s also a most marvellous redemption for eat pray love s unintended consequences and there were some as she points out almost guilelessly in the introduction prior to eat pray love gilbert was mostly known for writing about men her three prior books stern men pilgrims and the last american man were explorations of masculine life fiction and nonfiction about supermacho characters cowboys lobster fishermen hunters trucksters teamsters woodmen as a journalist gilbert had even gone as far as dressing in drag for a week complete with a birdseed filled condom stuffed in her pants she doesn t mention this in this book but it occurred to me that even before eat pray love it is ironic that the most lucrative of her projects was probably when a magazine article she wrote about her bartending experiences became the basis for the decidedly fluffy rom com coyote ugly sadly between that and eat pray love her broader scope of work was overshadowed call it gilbert s chick lit curse and committed quite decisively breaks it the truth is i am still bawling on my floor and i do wish i hadn t ever heard the word of mouth that hyped eat pray love as some sort of semi prophetic text because it did result in a few regrettable actions for me at the time oh hey a few good anecdotes too but committed s redemptive powers are such that not only does it completely absolve gilbert of any hand played in the prolonged miseries of some of her readers but it also elevates her in a way that eat pray love couldn t possibly to the role already assigned to her by the same masses of sad readers that of the high priestess the knowing one a solomon like figure who could provide a solution marriage whether we like it or not is a necessary decision for many of us whether the larger bodies we aim to please are governments families societies or own guilt tripping demons it can be an inevitability committed does two things and does them beautifully it strips the institution of its veneer of romance and then it reinstates it at a far more meaningful level committed will probably help many more women s hearts and choices than eat pray love did because there is absolutely nothing here but gritty realism the facts of the world and its requirements and how a relationship must necessarily be an accord of solidarity in negotiating these facts and requirements it will also hopefully further the cause of same sex marriage as gilbert most unselfishly points out in the book she and felipe are fortunate to even have this choice across the world most lovers of the same gender do not and when it comes to the paperwork immigration insurance death and taxes they suffer in ways that heterosexuals can take for granted that they won t have to endure and eat pray love that old bugaboo let s just say i am really looking forward to the film aren t you filed under books institutions love marriage popular culture relationships women s lives tagged books choices committed divorce eat pray love elizabeth gilbert feminism institutions marriage relationships leave a comment each others worst enemies female rivalry at the heart of disempowerment posted on march 10 2010 by sharanya manivannan the text of a speech delivered as the chief guest at the international women s day celebrations at the hyundai plant in sriperumbudur tamil nadu on march 8 2010 international women s day is many things a cause for celebration a reason to pause and re evaluate a remembrance an inspiration a time to honour loved and admired ones and in several countries including china armenia russia azerbaijan belarus bulgaria kazakhstan macedonia madagascar mongolia tajikistan ukraine uzbekistan and vietnam but clearly not india a public holiday so i d like to extend first of all a note of thanks to all of you for taking time out of your work schedules to come here as well as to hyundai for inviting me to speak on this day all over the world we consider both the steps forward toward better lives for women that have been taken in recent times as well as the progress still required necessarily we name our enemies patriarchal structures perhaps or more specifically legislative and political decisions corporate entities criminal menaces culture based ignorance and economic disenfranchisement they are all significant things and i am not suggesting that they are not but i have felt for a long time now that something else is at the heart of female disempowerment something that isn t as easy to deconstruct or dismantle something that is difficult to even name and at times feels bewilderingly counter intuitive what to me is at the heart of female disempowerment is the profoundly painful fact of how women can be each others worst enemies one of the most famous things that former american secretary of state madeleine albright has gone on record to say is i think there is a special place in hell for women who don t help other women a special place in hell can you imagine what torment that would be and how deeply wounded a person has to feel to condemn someone that way when you think of what she said that such a special place is reserved for women who don t help other women what associations come to mind i don t know about you but my heart burns to remember the countless times i have been betrayed and even sabotaged by women i loved or looked up to teachers relatives peers friends and colleagues haven t men done the same of course they have but somehow it stings worse coming from another woman because of how deeply counter intuitive it feels this is the sort of heartburn that makes me think yes albright was right there is a place in hell for women who don t help who hurt other women there has to be even if there is no hell how could there not be such a place how could such treachery be left without retribution there are big ways and little ways to this treachery the little ways i hardly need to enumerate because the best examples of these are empirical ones and you know them in your own life the big ways tend to be a matter of collusion for instance it may have been men who created archaic and repressive social codes but is it not women who pass them on who ensure that their families function within and continue to carry forward the same logic to choose to not break a chain is to choose to propagate it we can begin by taking a look at the very fact of us all being in this room today how did we get here each of us have overcome difficulties in our own lives each of us has dared to dream and fortunately has been born in a time where we were able to pursue some if not all of these dreams we have had access to resources and options which were denied to women of just a few generations ago resources and options which are even denied to other women today in this country and elsewhere some of us have endured bad luck made bad decisions or failed at things we tried our hands at but we haven t been ruined by these misfortunes we have alternatives we have second third and ninety third chances we have more autonomy than our foremothers may have been able to imagine in short we are all so lucky and this is only because of the brave women and men who fought for certain rights and equality who went against the tide of what was acceptable who challenged the status quo who refused to take as an answer that that s just how things are we are here because they did not think of themselves alone they did not relegate their abilities to simply securing a better life for themselves but put the vision of a better world above their own personal journeys and in doing so secured a better life for millions i am asking you today if we too can demand a better explanation than that s just how things are i believe that as women we are conditioned on a deeply embedded level to be wary of or threatened by and consequently cruel toward one another perhaps there are biological or evolutionary reasons for this but i refuse to accept that we cannot evolve female rivalry out of our systems larger systems of power yes but more importantly smaller microcosms of the same in our own lives can we get over our mistrust of other women can we leave cliques and factions behind in our school years and embrace a greater loyalty can we see that another woman s success need not necessarily mean our own failure can we cease to be judgmental or jealous can we cease to be threatened by other women for reasons of our own insecurities and can we stop acting out of that sense of fear just as our palette of big life choices continues to expand the more society develops i would like to think that in our day to day interactions we should also become more mindful of how we choose to treat one another can we make choices that deprogramme the way we have learnt to feel about other women learnt from all the ways we ourselves have been hurt and choose to say this stops with me what has been done to me by girls i went to school with women in my extended family superiors i worked under or any other situation incident or environment that fostered in me a sense of female rivalry or mistrust will no longer control the way in which i respond to individuals now will we choose to undermine other women in ways big and small or will we choose to embrace a less cynical view can we work together to create new environments in which all of us can feel free to meet our highest potential without being hindered by unhealthy competition you may be wondering why i have taken a less festive approach to international women s day and am asking these potentially uncomfortable questions i promise you i didn t start out this cynical in fact i started out quite the opposite if i could have had feminist slogans on my diapers i would have throughout my teenage years i volunteered with women s ngos and continue to do so in some capacity today i was one of those girls who would rather have a tee shirt that said the revolution is my boyfriend than have an actual human one i think i limited my own literary forays for some years by refusing to read anything by authors i derogatorily labeled dead white men i was proudly radically obviously and i must admit perhaps a little obnoxiously feminist and then the disillusionment set in at some point in my life as a young activist i began to see that polemics and politics only go so far how far does philosophy translate accurately into one s practical realities one s fundamental humanity and compassion are all that really matter it is of no consequence if this can be backed up by proselytizing or theory you know how this works i am almost certain that there is no one here today who would not name her grandmother mother aunt or sister as her personal inspiration a woman who did not necessarily know of or say that she subscribed to theoretical ideals but nonetheless manifested the best of them in her life and across the lives of all she touched today my feminism is nuanced by the understanding that as with all great adversaries the most significant challenge to female empowerment comes from within from within our ranks from within our own hearts from within our own inability to look beyond a reactionary and defensive stance but there is something else that also comes from within and that is strength women have always regarded as being strong and we are but in modern times we are also powerful i think of power as originating from an external source from the validation of being in a certain position of influence but strength has a far more esoteric source it manipulates less and moves more there is a difference between strength and power which do you operate from and i ask these uncomfortable questions not because i am above reproach but because i also deal with them in my day to day life and work sometimes i frown on the actions of teenag...