"you make me feel like a natural man"

banyak mitos dalam budaya patriarkal kita yg telah mengakar begitu kuat hingga telah menjadi "norma." salah satu dr mitos2 tersebut adalah bahwa pasangan yg ideal terdiri dr pria yg lebih tua dr wanita, atau bhw seorang istri selayaknya lebih muda dr suaminya. alasan yg sering dikemukakan adalah karena dalam menjalankan peran sbg kepala rumah tangga, laki2 sepatutnya memiliki kadar kedewasaan yg cukup. maksudnya, utk menjadi panutan bagi keluarga, sudah selayaknya jika sang suami berusia lebih tua dr istrinya.

tapi jika kita melihat budaya lain, tampak bhw kedua claim ini -- yaitu peran laki2 sebagai kepala rumah tangga dan panutan -- bukanlah sesuatu yg inherent, alami, atau yg telah ditetapkan dr sononya. pada budaya2 lain yg lebih maju dlm hal ekonomi, teknologi dan mungkin juga intelektual, tidak ada retorika yg mengatakan bhw seorang suami adalah kepala rumah tangga sekaligus panutan. suami-istri merupakan pasangan yg saling mengisi, jika tidak saling menyaingi. oleh krn itu, tdk penting bhw seorang laki2 harus lebih tua dr istrinya.

jadi, mitos bhw pria harus lebih tua dr pasangan wanitanya telah dibangun di atas mitos2 lain yg dalam keseluruhannya membentuk struktur/sistem patriarki.

satu lagi alasan "ajaib" yg sering dikemukakan utk memberi alasan kenapa seorang suami harus lebih tua dr istrinya. my mom will say, "karena perempuan lebih cepat tua daripada laki-laki." this is simply the biggest bullshit the patriarchal order ever produced. ibunda, seperti juga perempuan2 lain yg merupakan produk dari budaya ini, percaya bhw mereka bakal lebih cepat tua dr suaminya, krn itu sudah selayaknya jika mereka menikah dengan pria yg lebih tua.

dan memang perempuan2 seperti mereka menjadi lebih cepat tua dr sang suami. it's amazing what the power of belief can engender! bagaimana tidak, hidup dlm kukungan dapur dan sumur telah menciptakan makhluk2 berbau asap, minyak tanah, keringat, dan senantiasa berbalut daster. tanpa usaha utk tampil cantik ataupun merawat diri, tanpa latihan utk membangun rasa percaya diri, tidaklah heran jika ibu2 spt ini menjadi lebih cepat tua dr suami2 mereka. komentar teman2 mereka bhw perbedaan usia 10 tahun antara orangtuaku sama sekali tidak tampak, selalu ditanggapi nyokap dengan senyum. seolah-oleh konfirmasi atas keyakinannya bakal menjadi lebih cepat tua dr bokap.

on the other hand, i have another theory mengapa sistem patriarki mengidealkan suami yg lebih tua utk seorang istri.

hari minggu yg lalu, musim panas seolah hendak unjuk gigi. weather forecast memperkirakan suhu 33 derajat celcius pd siang hari, tapi aku tau temperatur hari itu gak kurang dr 35 derajat. udara panas sedang menggantung di atas kepulauan jepang beberapa minggu terakhir ini dan telah meminta korban seperti yg terjadi di california dan eropa bulan lalu. ketika gelombang panas menyapu, yg banyak menjadi korban adalah orang2 lanjut usia. seperti pada hari minggu kemarin, keluhan "atsui, atsui" (panas) banyak terlontar dr orang2 tua saat menunggu kereta di platform.

begitu kereta datang, aku yg antri paling depan beruntung bisa dapat tempat duduk. langsung kukeluarkan buku naming the witch utk kubaca selama 45 menit perjalanan kereta. kereta tak begitu sesak hari itu, tapi tetap saja banyak yg harus berdiri bergelantungan.

di beberapa perhentian berikutnya, penumpang yg duduk di sebelahku bangkit berdiri utk turun. begitu dia beranjak dr tempat duduknya, seseorang yg berdiri dekat situ langsung menyelakan kakinya utk mengklaim tempat duduk tsb. kaki yg dijejakkan di hadapan tempat duduk kosong merupakan signal bhw si empunya kaki berkehendak utk mengambil tempat duduk tsb.

tapi begitu aku mengangkat kepala utk melihat si empunya kaki, seorang ibu tua berpenampilan cantik seperti hendak ke pesta, tampak ibu itu malah sedang menarik seseorang utk didudukan di kursi yg telah diklaimnya. rupanya suaminya sejak tadi ikut bergelantungan krn tak kebagian tempat duduk. sang suami tampak kepayahan. keringat membasahi muka, leher dan setelannya yg bagus. cepat2 aku bangkit berdiri dan memberi signal pada ibu tsb utk mengambil tempat dudukku di sebelah suaminya. tapi dengan nada ramah dan lincah dia menolak. "tidak apa2, sungguh tidak usah," katanya. ibu yg masih tampak cantik dan sigap itu kemudian sibuk mengipasi dan menyeka keringat suaminya. aku hanya mengangguk dan duduk lagi meneruskan bacaanku sampai kereta berhenti di stasiun yotsuya tempat gerejaku berada.

saat pulang dr gereja, sekali lagi aku menyaksikan pemandangan yg mirip. saat berjalan kaki dr stasiun menuju rumah, di perempatan jalan terlihat sepasang orang tua sedang bergandengan. menunjukkan physical affection bukanlah budaya jepang, apalagi di antara generasi tua. tapi sesudah aku tiba di dekat mereka dan turut menunggu lampu hijau, kusadari bhw mereka bukan sedang bergandengan -- si ibu sedang memapah suaminya. sang suami seperti hampir semaput krn temperatur yg panas sekali sore itu. saat menunggu lampu hijau, dia bersandar pada railings yg membatasi pedestrian dan jalan. ketika lampu merah berganti, dia berjalan tertatih-tatih dengan dipapah sang istri.

lewat beberapa langkah, aku telah mendahului. tapi pikiranku tertahan pd mereka. somehow, pemandangan tersebut sangat familiar, deja vu. but where did i see it? sesudah sibuk mengaduk memory chip di kepala, baru aku sadar bhw pemandangan itu mirip dengan tahun2 yg kulalui saat kuliah ketika nyokap merawat bokap yg chronically ill dan harus bolak-balik masuk rumah sakit. suatu pemandangan biasa yg sebenarnya sangat omnipresent. saking biasanya, kita tdk pernah tergugah utk bertanya: lantas siapa yg merawat ketika sang istri menjadi tua, lemah atau sakit?

pikiran tsb menghantuiku sepanjang perjalanan pulang. budaya patriarki yg mengidealkan laki2 yg lebih tua utk setiap perempuan telah menciptakan keadaan di mana saat sang suami menjadi tua, lemah dan sakit2an, dia punya sang istri utk merawat dan mendampinginya. ini yg terjadi pada orang tuaku, juga pada mertua laki2ku yg dirawat oleh istrinya sampai dia meninggal di usia 85 thn. tapi ketika tiba waktunya ibu2 ini menjadi tua dan sakit2an, pd waktu itu para suami telah lama pergi.

i can't help but feeling how unfair the way we are taught to mate! rasanya seperti satu konspirasi besar dalam sistem patriarki yg mengidealkan suami yg lebih tua.

di atas semua keuntungan biologis tersebut, seorang istri yg lebih muda dan penurut juga kondusif untuk pemeliharaan ego seorang laki2. sebab kebalikannya, pasangan wanita yg lebih tua, lebih tau, apalagi yg lebih tinggi dalam status sosial akan mengancam ego-nya, membuat si laki-laki merasa tidak jantan, bahkan merasa bukan "laki-laki." so fragile and artificial is the concept of manhood! sebab bukankah "laki-laki" tidak lebih dari sebuah metafora?

By BOB HERBERT
The New York Times, Oct. 3, 2009

Berkeley, Calif. -- While the U.S. has struggled with enormous problems over the past several years, there has been at least one consistent bright spot. Its system of higher education has remained the finest in the world.

Now there are ominous cracks appearing in that cornerstone of American civilization. Exhibit A is the University of California, Berkeley, the finest public university in the world and undoubtedly one of the two or three best universities in the United States, public or private.

More of Berkeley’s undergraduates go on to get Ph.D.’s than those at any other university in the country. The school is among the nation’s leaders in producing winners of the Nobel Prize. An extraordinary amount of cutting-edge research in a wide variety of critically important fields, including energy and the biological sciences, is taking place here.

While I was roaming the campus, talking to students, professors and administrators, word came that scientists had put together a full analysis and a fairly complete fossilized skeleton of Ardi, who is known to her closest living associates as Ardipithecus ramidus. At 4.4 million years of age, this four-foot tall, tree-climbing wonder is now the oldest known human ancestor.

Give Berkeley credit. The school’s Tim White, a paleoanthropologist, led the international team that worked for years on this project, an invaluable advance in human knowledge and understanding.

So it’s dismaying to realize that the grandeur of Berkeley (and the remarkable success of the University of California system, of which Berkeley is the flagship) is being jeopardized by shortsighted politicians and California’s colossally dysfunctional budget processes.

Berkeley is caught in a full-blown budget crisis with nothing much in the way of upside in sight. The school is trying to cope with what the chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, described as a “severe and rapid loss in funding” from the state, which has shortchanged Berkeley’s budget nearly $150 million this year, and cut more than $800 million from the higher education system as a whole.

This is like waving goodbye to the futures of untold numbers of students. Chancellor Birgeneau denounced the state’s action as “a completely irresponsible disinvestment in the future of its public universities.”

(The chancellor was being kind. Anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes watching the chaos of California politicians trying to deal with fiscal and budgetary matters would consider “completely irresponsible” to be the mildest of possible characterizations.)

Berkeley is laying off staffers, reducing faculty through attrition and cutting pay. Student fees will no doubt have to be raised, and the fear is that if the financial crisis continues unabated it will be difficult to retain and recruit the world-class scholars who do so much to make the school so special.

Chancellor Birgeneau said he is optimistic that Berkeley will be able to maintain its greatness and continue to thrive, but he told me candidly in an interview, “It’s hard to see when we are going to get back to a situation where we can start rewarding people properly.”

We should all care about this because Berkeley is an enormous and enormously unique national asset. As a public university it offers large numbers of outstanding students from economically difficult backgrounds the same exceptionally high-quality education that is available at the finest private universities.

Something wonderful is going on when a school that is ranked among those at the very top in the nation and the world is also a school in which more than a third of the 25,000 undergraduates qualify for federal Pell grants, which means their family incomes are less than $45,000 a year. More than 4,000 students at Berkeley are from families where the annual income is $20,000 or less.

More than a third are the first in their families to attend a four-year college.

Berkeley is aggressively pursuing alternative funding sources. The danger is that as public support for the school declines, it will lose more and more of its public character. Substantially higher fees for incoming students would be the norm, and more and more students from out of state and out of the country (who can afford to pay the full freight of their education) would be recruited.

This would most likely hurt students from middle-class families more than poorer ones. Those kids are caught between the less well-off, who are helped by a variety of financial aid programs, and the wealthy students, whose families have no problem paying for a first-class college education.

The problems at Berkeley are particularly acute because of the state’s drastic reduction of support. But colleges and universities across the country — public and private — are struggling because of the prolonged economic crisis and the pressure on state budgets. It will say a great deal about what kind of nation we’ve become if we let these most valuable assets slip into a period of decline.

On Democrats:
"The old union guys who built the Democratic Party enjoyed public face-offs and knew how to deal with hecklers -- you get up close to them and snap their underwear -- but the party's been taken over by academics who come from a medieval world where your insignia grants you a worshipful hearing." (From "All the Rage," 09/22/2009)

On Republicans:
"When an entire major party has excused itself from meaningful debate and a thoughtful U.S. senator like Orrin Hatch no longer finds it important to make sense and an up-and-comer like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty attacks the president for giving a speech telling schoolchildren to work hard in school and get good grades, one starts to wonder if the country wouldn't be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer." (From "Stuck in the Shallows," 09/29/2009)

You used to be my party doll
But now you say the party's over
You used to love to honky tonk
But now the honky tonking's over

Now life is a bitter thing, my sweet
Now life is a mystery to me
Love's pain, I ain't buying
Love's strange, I keep trying, trying, trying

You used to be my party doll
But now you want to live in clover
You used to be my number one
But now those salad days are over

Times change but the fascination stays
Love wins but the passion just fades
I'll drink to the dancing days
I'll drink to your crazy ways
Through the whiskey haze

Face the music, face the truth
Chase that fleet sweet bird of youth
Grow up sweetly, grow up strong
Hear the heartbeat, in my song

You used to be my party doll
But now you say the party's over
You used to love to honky tonk
But now those dancing days are over
You used to be my number one
But now you vanished in the ozone

"All Midwesterners adore San Francisco, the city of Sam Spade and the waterfront, the basso complaints of the big ships, the trolleys rumbling along Market Street, the Mediterranean colors of buildings, the river of fog in the Golden Gate, and the beautiful hybrid faces of young people.

Back where I come from, we mostly look like we walked out of a 1958 Sears catalog, but here, everyone is in a minority, and sitting outside a coffee shop, I’m struck by the handsomeness of this passing girl with Asian eyes, Hispanic cheekbones, Creole skin. An old bum stops at my table and I give him two bucks. He may be the reincarnation of a Gold Rush tycoon, one of the many who rose suddenly to vast wealth, built a fabulous mansion on Nob Hill, and died young of something we now have a pill for. He moves along and a man in a suit and a tall dark-haired woman in Italian sunglasses pass each other, and he stops and turns, stunned by her beauty as she strides across Irving Street, gone from his life forever. You shouldn’t come to San Francisco unless you’re prepared to have your heart broken."

--Garrison Keillor in "The Art of Travel"

"perhaps you're familiar with the phrase 'i'll let (my gun) do the talking'. my second amendment thing has its own first amendment to it."
-- david cross (sarcastically)

in response to a democratic senator's remarks that diabetes makes one a better judge of character and more fair, jon stewart said, "it appears [that] sherrod brown just made a case not that sotomayor would be a good justice, but that all judges should have diabetes. because then there's a far greater chance that over time justice would indeed be blind."

here's a very good article that should make opponents of gay marriage think hard. as soon as we consign gender to the realm of law -- assorting what is legal or illegal for a person to do because of her/his gender -- we must be able to delineate the person's gender legally. but how, jennifer finney boylan asks, "do we define legal gender? by chromosomes? by genitalia? by spirit? by whether one asks directions when lost?"

i went to see milk yesterday and came out wishing that everyone on the planet had seen it as well. sean penn was convincing and worthy of oscar. milk makes me want to be a gay rights activist and believe that despite its sometimes problematic application, the idea of human rights has done more good than bad for humanity.

i also bought a campaign button that says "NO on 8." i hope the proceed will go to support for the gay right to marry in california. it'll look great on my canvas tote :)