A Feminist Blog

“At first my workmates considered me weird. However, since they knew me as someone who usually have weird hobbies, they no longer gave a damn on my biking to work.”
This was what Pak Wargo—one pioneer of bike to work in Semarang—said. He further said that he started biking to work in 2005, the same year when ‘bike to work’ community was first established in Jakarta. The basic reason why he biked to work at the very beginning was because he loved traveling. Another reason was to do exercise to keep healthy since he didn’t have spare time to do that. By going to work by bike, he did not need to spend special time to go to a gym, let’s say, or a swimming pool. He just had to wake up earlier, to go to the office earlier than when he went to work by car. He considered 35 kilometer distance from his house in Klipang—one eastern part of Semarang to his workplace in Mangkang—the most western part of Semarang as a challenge. Practically he biked around 70 kilometers away almost everyday. He explained that he usually went to his office on Monday morning by car, his bike was at the office. He went home by bike, leaving the car at the office. He biked to work from Tuesday until Saturday. On Saturday afternoon, he went home by car.
He usually needed one hour fifteen minutes to cover the 35-kilometer distance, by avoiding ‘hilly’ areas, such as in Kedungmundu. Instead, he chose to pass Majapahit street and directly went straight to the west, till his office located somewhere in Mangkang.
Doing exercise is indeed one most favorite reason for bike to workers in Semarang. Doctors’ claim that the safest exercise done by those who are more than forty years old are swimming, jogging, and biking is often cited. Some bike to workers said that they could not swim. Biking was a better choice than jogging because by biking people could reach further distance, meaning that they could enjoy more beautiful views, than just jogging. Moreover for people who weigh more than 90 kilograms, they say it is much heavier for their legs to support their bodies in jogging than they bike.
People’s complaint about the soaring price of gasoline can be decreased by biking to work too. They can save their money since they do not need gasoline at all when biking. Pak Wargo claimed that he needed around Rp. 300.000,00 per week to buy gasoline before he biked to work. You can imagine how much money he can save since then.
As we all know the fact that gasoline’s price soared did not only happen in Indonesia. One national newspaper stated that nowadays even in the super power country—America—more people are seen biking on the street than before the soaring price of gasoline.
The last but the most important reason for biking to work is absolutely to help reduce the air pollution as well as the negative impacts of global warming. Bicycles obviously do not produce emission gas that pollutes the air we breathe. It even makes the cyclists healthier.
So, what are you waiting for? Join Pak Wargo and the other bike to workers to save our earth while saving your money and making your bodies healthy.
It is expected that in the future, people will bike not only to go to the office, but also to go anywhere they need to do activities.
PT56 22.24 110808

A coin has two sides.
Just like a movie has many interpretations, not only two.
I plan to watch JUNO with my students this Monday. I have watched this movie with another class before, around a month ago, and I think this movie is quite ‘safe’ to be watched by teenagers: there is no vulgar scene, although the story is about a sixteen-year old teenager who gets pregnant outside the wedlock. I opine that the script writer as well as the producer of this movie wanted to give an alternative to teenagers how to face unwanted pregnancy; and to parents a kind of suggestion how about to stand together with the pregnant kid, to be supportive with the kid’s choice, instead of just blaming her without showing any comforting response, without realizing that sometimes female teenagers get pregnant not merely due to their own mistakes—such as accusation to have low moral because having sex out of a wedlock—but can also be engendered by the parents who don’t give enough attention, or too much controlling.

Saved!, Juno, Gilmore Girls

In this article, I want to compare three movies that have similar cases: SAVED!, JUNO, and one serial GILMORE GIRLS. They all have the similar topic: a sixteen-year-old girl who got pregnant outside the wedlock. Nevertheless, the cause of the pregnancy is different. The way to handle the case is different too.
SAVED! was produced in 2003/2004. This movie has very strong Christian teachings as the background. Mary, the leading character, got pregnant because she wanted to “save” his boyfriend who admitted that he was a gay in a telling-secret-under-the-water game. Feeling shocked, and with her head crashed something hard when she was about to go out of the pool, Mary saw a vision of Jesus coming to her, telling her that she was chosen to ‘save’ Dean (from being sinfully homosexual). Being able to make Dean enjoy their lovemaking, Mary thought she was successful to “cure” his ‘psychological/mental disease’. Therefore, she was very disappointed when knowing that Dean’s parents still sent him to Mercy House, a kind of rehabilitation to ‘solve’ any kinds of problems; such as addiction to drugs, homosexuality, until girls getting pregnant outside the wedlock. She felt cheated by Jesus’ vision coming to her.
JUNO was produced in 2007. The cause of Juno to get pregnant was merely she was curious to know what sex was like. ‘Playing’ something she didn’t know with one good friend, Paulie Bleeker rewarded her unwanted pregnancy.
GILMORE GIRLS was produced in 2004/2005. Lorelai Gilmore got pregnant when she was 16 years old merely because she wanted to rebel her controlling parents, especially her mother, who never gave her freedom to be herself. She always felt strangled in her parents’ luxurious house. Meanwhile, her teenage boyfriend, Chris, did that to get rid of his parents’ obligation to continue his study at Yale because he didn’t feel sure to be able to do that.
The solution to face the unwanted pregnancy is different. Mary, at SAVED! kept it secret, trying to hide her pregnancy She even did not tell Dean about it, not to her mother either. With help of her two schoolmates, Cassandra and Roland, she tried her best to hide her swollen belly under some special clothes. In another word, it can be concluded that Mary decided to keep her baby, although at the very beginning she was thinking of abortion.
At Gilmore Girls—as people can easily guess, because this serial focuses on the very intimate, best-friend-like relation between the mother and daughter—Lorelai decided to keep her baby too, but by leaving her parents’ home and doing her best to survive, as well as raising her daughter. She refused Chris’ offer to marry him because she thought both of them were not ready yet to live together in a marriage, moreover she knew very well that Chris was not psychologically and financially mature yet. This would just make the marriage not work well that possibly would just ruin the relationship of three of them—Lorelai, Chris, and Rory, their daughter, especially Rory’s mental development.
At JUNO, a bit similar to SAVED!, Juno was thinking of terminating her pregnancy too. However, then, she got a very brilliant idea, to find a couple of husband and wife who wanted to have a baby very much. She got one. The difference from SAVED was that Juno didn’t try to hide her pregnancy from her parents as well as her schoolmates. Bleeker, the father of the baby-to-be knew too the result of their ‘playing game’.
None of the three movies gave solution to marry the sixteen-year-old girl with the boy with whom they had sex, or with any other guy who was willing to “save” the good name of the family, a typical solution that usually happens in Indonesia.

Solution in Saved!, Juno, Gilmore Girls

SAVED! The failure of Mary to ‘cure’ Dean to me means that the producer as well as the script writer wants to tell the viewers that some people indeed were born to be homosexual, not because of the influence of wrong socialization. Before Dean told Mary about his secret—being a gay—he was involved in a Christian community, dedicated his life following Jesus’ steps. Any celestial religion will consider homosexuals sinful therefore they must be ‘saved’. In fact, Dean eventually had to give in his innate call.
Mary—who was involved in the same Christian community as Dean—was excited to be ‘chosen’ to help cure her boyfriend with the Jesus vision inside the pool. However, after she ‘sacrificed’ by having sex with Dean, Dean was still a gay. Furthermore, she seemed to be ‘punished’ by God to have sex outside the wedlock with the unwanted pregnancy. This ‘accident’ made her lose her strong belief that people would always find solution in religious teachings blindly, without using their common sense. Eventually, her mother accepted the fact that Mary got a baby; she did not need to send Mary to Mercy House because Mary was not a problematic teenager only because she was pregnant outside the wedlock. Mary needed the support of her mother to live her life much more strongly than to be sent to that kind of rehabilitation center which in fact did not really help the ‘victims’.
JUNO. Juno had decided to give away her baby to a couple when she told her parents about her pregnancy. Feeling shocked, but trying to hide it, the parents showed a strong support to Juno’s decision. The father—worried if Juno would be cheated because she was just a kid—accompanied Juno when meeting the couple who would adopt her baby. The mother protected Juno’s mental condition when people accused her a problematic teenager with her unwanted pregnancy. Juno expected that she would continue her life ‘normally’ (read  just like any other teenagers who didn’t get similar accidents) after she delivered her baby.
GILMORE GIRLS. Lorelai decided to run away from home, to deliver her baby, and to raise her using her own way—having intimate relationship with the baby, open communication, without ‘you’ve-got-to-listen-to-me-coz-I’m-your-mother’ trait toward Rory, a way to raise up a baby Lorelai believed would work much better than just controlling. By doing so, she believed that Rory would not end up getting unwanted pregnancy at a very young age.

Multi-interpretations

Especially the two movies above—Saved! and Juno—some people around me opined that the movies even encouraged teenagers to ‘play’ with sex because when they accidentally got pregnant, their parents would even support them and didn’t punish them anything, not even to scold them. (This reminded me of one article in a local newspaper stating that in the movie of BERBAGI SUAMI—LOVE FOR SHARE in English—Nia Dinata wanted to encourage men to be polygamous.)
I have never invited my students to watch SAVED! so that I don’t get any input yet from my teenage students. However, in JUNO, my teenage students could see the complicated things Juno had to undergo, the insecurity a teenage girl had to face in their daily life when getting unwanted pregnancy. This obviously will NOT encourage them to get similar problem, moreover if their parents punish them for embarrassing their ‘good name’ by getting pregnant outside the wedlock.

Conclusion

A movie indeed can be interpreted from different points of views. When showing a movie about teenagers’ life, we as parents/teachers are supposed to accompany the teenagers and then have a live and open discussion to come up to a beneficial interpretation for both sides.
PT56 11.54 140908

“God never made mistakes in creating human beings!”

The statement above was said by one student of mine several months ago when I asked the class to discuss homosexuality/transgender/transsexual. I cited a statement of one transsexual I found in a book entitled Transekssualisme: “I was trapped in a wrong body.” And then I asked the class consisting of college students to discuss in small groups. The background of the discussion was the ‘gossip’ of one celebrity in Indonesia, Krisna Mukti. (Absolutely I am not a fan of infotainment program. However, I was interested in discussing this gossip in my class since the movement of feminism is indispensable from the movement of LGBT—lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. And I am an open claimed feminist as you can find in my blogs.)
In responding my student’s opinion (I directly realized that I was facing a group of students who would probably oppose my way of thinking that is pro to freedom of choosing sexual orientation), I had to do it very carefully and wisely.
Obviously I also do believe that God never made mistakes in creating anything; name it human beings, animals, plants, this universe. Human beings made mistakes though. In this case, including to limit human beings only into two kinds—female and male, and then decide that the ‘normal’ one is when female is attracted to male and on the way around, especially romantically, sexually, and sensually. Outside that, there must be something wrong. Strongly opining that “No one is supposed to think that he/she is trapped in the wrong body” is indeed narrow-minded because we view things only from one perspective, ignoring that there is another—even some other perspectives.
Based on researches done, anthropologists have classified human beings into at least four categories, in terms of sexuality:

• Male that is sexually attracted to female

• Female that is sexually attracted to male

• Male that that is sexually attracted to male

• Female that is sexually attracted to female

The strong influence of celestial religions (read: Jewish, Christianity, Islam) narrowed the four categories into only two during the Victorian era, the first and the second categories, leaving the third and the fourth become unknown, and eventually they were labeled abnormal or against natural law.
The Dutch colonial government brought this influence to Indonesia; making some communities that used to give respected position to homosexuals (such as bissu community in Makassar, warok gemblak in Ponorogo, dalaq in Madura, shaman in Dayak Ngaju, etc) cornered and gradually disappear. Besides, the strong influence of two main celestial religions (Christianity and Islam) brought to Indonesia made the homosexual communities come to an end. While before, those communities were viewed normal, even respected.
Isn’t it time to start viewing things from other perspectives, to understand the way others think and feel, to be empathetic.
Irshad Manji (a feminist Muslim that claims herself as a lesbian) said, “Bukankah Tuhan sangat bisa dengan keMahaKuasaan-Nya menjadikanku untuk tidak menjadi seorang lesbian?” -- God absolutely has the most powerful ability to make me not as a lebian (Jurnal Perempuan number 58) and still she is a lesbian. There was God’s interference behind it.
PT56 20.20 261008

This movie is based on Jon Krakauer’s book that tells us about the true story of Christopher Johnson MacCandless who was born on February 12, 1968 and died on August 18, 1992. Getting very disappointed by his own parents, Chris (Emile Hirsch) left them and his younger sister, Carine, (Jena Malone) as well after graduating from Emory College, where he studied only to make his parents happy, and not to pursue his own ideal. The disappointment to his parents was supported by his sickness to hypocrite society. This made him leave the crowd of people and go INTO THE WILD.
Some favorite scenes and conversations of mine in the movie are:

“Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly to the empty space trying to close the gaps with the past.”

Apparently Chris talked about himself; he left his family since his parents’ problematic marriage and their trying to cover it from public as well as from the children made him label the parents big hypocrites. By saying the aforementioned statement, he realized that his parents loved him. However, his deep disappointment toward them made him feel he did not deserve the love. Therefore, he disappeared quietly from his parents’ life. He was pursuing his own happiness in the wild. He did not use the name his parents gave, and named himself as Alexander Supertramp; he even simply told some people he met during his journey that he did not have family.
Hypocrisy in society has been one mainstream topic in my blog. Examples: people who let themselves trapped in a loveless marriage only because they live in marriage-oriented society; many in that kind of marriage, women become the main victims (just like what is illustrated in this movie), then the children. People (mainly women) who think that they are luckier since they find men who are willing to marry them and feel sorry for single (moreover old maids) women, while in fact deep down in their hearts they envy those free women. People who have children not because they love having offspring but only for their own pride and selfishness.

“… get rid of this sick society. Why people, every fucking person is so bad to other people, so fucking awful. It doesn’t make sense to me; judgment, control, all that whole spectrum…”

What happened to Chris’ parents—to be hypocrites, Chris said—was also for the sake of judgment from society—to be considered happy and romantic family while in fact inside, Billie, the mother was bruised. (Why do women always become victims?)
Some people feel like they have full rights to make judgment to other people, to say what is good what is bad using their own eyes, without trying to view things from different point of view.
PT5623.05 021108