As the title suggests, I wrote this piece on 4-20 this year. I didn't really feel like posting it on sajha until a couple people emailed me asking why I hadn't written anything recently. Since I haven't had the time to write anything new, I added a couple paragraphs to the piece and decided to post it. Thanks for reading! (Author's note : My obsession with jezebel is apparent in this post, and I might have  gotten a couple lines from several articles there. Also, there are a couple instances of the use of the  F word -and no, I'm not talking about feminism.)  _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ I took my first hit of a joint when I was 15. I was bowled over when my ever-so-protective brothers let me into their smoking-pot-in-a-dimly-lit-room-as-thedoors-play-in-the-background squad, but I was ecstatic to be initiated that day. Although many of you could probably identify with an account of the supernatural images I envisaged and three packets of cheese balls I masticated shortly after, I am not here to natter about that. What follows is my take on pot-culture as a woman - a Nepali woman, to be precise. Word of advice - if you are a dogged conservative who has already made an assessment along the lines of “keti manche bhayera…”, I recommend you don’t read any further; you aren’t going to enjoy this one bit. I am not a pothead per se; I smoke once a year these days. Do I enjoy the act? Very much so. Do I condone it? Ermm..yes. A little bit of grass on Hitler’s birthday never killed anyone. Well, Bruce Lee’s personal physician would beg to differ I guess – he claims that cannabis should have been named as the presumptive cause of Lee’s death. I didn’t fully conceive the social implications of smoking until my date with Girish a couple years later. We were recounting drunken stories, and I casually mentioned a close call when my mom almost discovered a pack of Shikhars in my brother’s jeans on laundry day. Girish looked dismayed and it took him about five minutes and another Surya to absorb the fact completely. Needless to say, that love(?)- tale met its end rather quickly. If he were a non-smoker denouncing my dope trips, it would have made a lot of sense. However, the hypocrisy/irony in his reaction given that he had been talking about his countless Sundarijal trips was detestable. Why is marijuana the topic of your first feminist piece on sajha, you might ask. Well it is 4-20. Besides, this isn’t as much about the weed as the gendered stereotypes and/or expectations in and outside of the pot-culture that agitate me. Nepal has been a patriarchal society that expects women to follow the rules set by men. As in any patriarchal society, the heteronormative* masculine experience is the “normal” and the marginalized feminine experience is the “other”. ( *I f ucking hate it that MS Word still puts that red squiggly line under heteronormative. Give me another word, Steve Ballmer!) The “othering” of my experience as a cisgender woman, in combination with the stereotypes that define my femininity – physically weak, ritually pollutable and lacking strong willpower – have often devalued, marginalized and stigmatized my experiences whenever I have wanted to break free. I am in no doubt that some academics in sajha and elsewhere will deplore the relevancy of my musings. We come from a nation that denies a married woman her share of natal property (this was news to me until a couple weeks ago, I guess I’ve been living under a rock). And, that is only one of the various archaic, conformist laws that stem from what I call “invincible ignorance”. Given that there are plenty other exigent issues women need to fight for, my rant on weed-culture-hypocrisy looks seemingly unessential. Despite the trivial nature of the issue and its consequences thereof, I believe it underlines the paramount difficulty women deal with – men’s attitude and the consequent need to strengthen womanhood in an individualistic and personal level. I can’t be the only one who has encountered guys labeling drunken/high men as “jhyaap” whilst druken/high women are called “bitches and sluts”. It is beyond me how one’s promiscuity or mind-set is remotely related to their substance intake, but the notion that drinking/smoking is a man’s thing, and that, if women partake in the consumption of these paraphernalia, they are razing our cultural values is hilarious, to say the least. (If your cultural values are so easily annihilated by my substance intake, it seems like those values weren’t that well-built to begin with, were they? Annnnnnd, here is my middle finger to you.) Unlike the lady at feministing (forget her name), I am not requesting that we make smoking pot a feminist act (although that would be pretty darn amazing – let me fight for my rights after this splif!). My intentions are to reiterate the hypocrisy that exists among some Nepali men – even the ones that tout their liberal beliefs and American ways. You don’t have to go out of your way to find these men – just peruse any thread in sajha, and you will find men combating over which one of them is more educated and Americanized, while imparting their misogynistic views at the same time. Again, we have larger battles to fight, and my musing is one trivial aspect of the giant sexist Nepali culture clusterf uck. This is one of the various issues that is a part of my feminist struggle, and even if you don’t relate to it, you can’t possibly ignore the underlying gender bias and the ensuing double standards. Challenging and changing the traditional views of women and letting-go of narrow-mindedness when it comes to gender norms is a novel concept in sajha. The participation of women (or the lack thereof) is apparent and even when women do express their feelings, some of their views still seem to be in line with the gendered stereotypes/norms. In a forum where women debate their marriage/date-worthiness based on their employment at PWC as men laud the ones who land white girls while concurrently labeling all of them are promiscuous, this piece will be digested well by only a few. However, I am not here to start a movement. This is just an issue that has bugged me for a while, and I’m getting it off my chest. Ok, let’s move back to the topic in hand and away from the tangent where I bashed the knobheads. To the women who can relate - as women, we can keep up — and beat — dudes in our jobs, sports, whatever. Just not pot. And that's okay. Next year, I'll smoke a joint in honor of that. Happy 4/20 y’all. Here’s to hoping that there isn’t a surprise drug test at work tomorrow. Statutory (not really) directive: Inhaling enough of ANY kind of smoke (cigarette, exhaust, wood fire, barbecue) or particulate matter increases the risk of cancer.   Last edited: 09-Jun-13 05:51 PM