Rage and Pleasure: An interview with Mathusha Senthil, the Founder of Thaen Pot
Last weekend, the Twittersphere erupted with commentary on Trump contracting the coronavirus. Expectedly, blue checkmark liberal twitter resorted to criticizing racialized working class folks who refused to wish the President a speedy recovery. The tone online was reminiscent of Priyanka Chopra’s “are you done venting?” Yes, THAT tone.
Mathusha and I have “vented” to each other about the policing of Tamil women’s rage on several occasions. A couple years ago around Christmas, Mathusha was bombarded with complete vitriol over a t-shirt she wore in a photo she had posted on Instagram. The t-shirt in question: a black short sleeve with the words: No Bra Today written in white across the front. The t-shirt garnered attention online through a series of posts by men who claimed she was a disgrace to society and culture. They called her “anti-Tamil” and “anti-culture”. But Mathusha’s response, worthy of memorialization via a IG highlight named ‘X-mas Drag’ on her IG profile, was unapologetic, witty and memorable. However, the policing of Tamil women and their bodies hasn’t stopped and is something we often speak and rage about.
As we worked towards getting Thaen Pot/Thaen X up and running in the summer, we spoke about rage again. I hope to unpack this feeling, in an inaugural piece for Thaen X, through an interview with Mathusha, the Founder of Thaen Pot. The following is an excerpt from that conversation:
Laxana Paskaran (LP): How would you describe rage, what do you think it means?
Mathusha Senthil (MS): I think a series of events leads to the feeling of rage. It’s different from anger. It’s deeper than that. I feel it as a culmination of events that leave me at a disadvantage rather than being upset over one thing or incident. Rage is something that is built up and often the socio-economic status contributes to this rage. The issues I feel enraged about are systemic. It’s also tied to frustration I feel with not having full control over addressing it on my own, even though we are often told “change starts with you.” But change, at the systemic level, isn’t really in your hands.
LP: I agree. People who benefit from the status quo will tell us to vote, as if that one individual act is the extent of which we can enforce change in the systems that oppress us. People who are pushed to the margins of society and made invisible by the systems in place are the ones on the frontlines of every revolution and responsible for any marker of change we celebrate today. Do you think that this feeling of rage is important for that kind of political action to occur?
MS: Rage is villainized. People think of it as something that is wrong. But I disagree. Rage fuels the actions we take in working towards new political futures. Rage helps us understand what true liberation can look like for all us. The people who feel, and subsequently embody, this type of world-shattering rage, in my opinion, are the ones who are the most impacted by the systems that oppress us. When we talk about revolution, we are also talking about the rage that is a necessary precursor and continuous element that sustains any movement pushing for radical change. This is where the personal becomes political.
“Rage is villainized. People think of it as something that is wrong. But I disagree. Rage fuels the actions we take in working towards new political futures. Rage helps us understand what true liberation can look like for all us. ”
LP: I really appreciate you bringing the intricate connection between the personal and the political to this conversation. Lived experience is consistently brushed aside in favour of western knowledge systems. But we know that these knowledges always fall short, especially in considering the most marginalized communities among us. This connection between the personal and the political leads me to ask: How is rage personal to you?
MS: Rage is personal to me because of my lived experiences as a working class, woman of colour, who comes from what is deemed a conservative background but also a marginalized community that has experienced genocide. My rage, like a lot of Tamil women’s rage, is a result of a collection of experiences. It stems from the political and tied to our survival, whether it’s from the Sinhala state or within our own community. It comes from the fact that we are constantly tired of having to advocate for ourselves when pushing for safer spaces in our community. It comes from having to consistently fight to feel validated and our existence justified in the same spaces that were built off on our backs…the same spaces that were built with the labour of working class Tamil women and our struggles. Rage, for me, is tied to always being policed on how we express this feeling, this extremely valid feeling. People, mostly men, are always telling us how and what to be outraged at. I’m thinking back to the Christmas t-shirt drag from a few years ago, where men came after me for a slogan on my t-shirt. It may seem silly to some but that was a prime example of how women are constantly policed for simply existing.
I’m speaking mainly on the ties between gender identity and the connection to rage but there are folks who experience this differently than I do as a cis-het Tamil woman. Non-binary, trans, and queer folks experience this marginalization deeper in our community and are often made invisible. This is where I believe acknowledging this privilege is important to make way or rather ‘pass the mic’ to folks who are further marginalized in our community. Understanding that our rage is valid while also making way for others to express their rage is also important.
LP: Absolutely. You’ve brought up really important points here that I’m sure a lot of Tamil women can relate to. I know I do. I want to now sort of shift, although it may not be a shift at all, to the connection between rage and pleasure and how you see that through both a personal and political lens. How do both rage and pleasure intertwine?
MS: I would come back to the fact that women, no matter how we view sex or intimacy or pleasure, it will always be policed by people who hate to see us free, by people who benefit from our insecurities, by people who capitalize off of keeping us feeling shame. As long as the patriarchy exists, we will be policed no matter how much or little sex we are having, whether it’s before or after marriage or within or outside of romantic relationships and even by ourselves with toys. We will always be policed. This is where, I think, rage and pleasure become intertwined. The rage we feel is directed at the systems and society that police women’s bodies as we engage in what pleasure is for us. The rage is directed at rape culture that shadows over our lives, and the society that further exhausts us by placing the onus back on us to take up karate or carry pepper spray to fight off anyone trying to harm us. I’m not sure whether pleasure can exist in its truest form without the complete destruction of the patriarchy, which is obviously tied to so many other isms, colonialism, capitalism, to name a few. But at the same time, I am so inspired by so many women online who are reclaiming that power by being completely comfortable in their skin. I hope that Thaen Pot can also contribute to that.
LP: I was just going to add that I’ve seen more and more women, Tamil women, step into being unapologetic online and the community that forms as a result is incredible to see. How do you see Thaen Pot/Thaen X fit into challenging all of the oppressive ideologies you’ve mentioned?
MS: I saw the need for a radical space to respond to the ways sex and intimacy are treated and spoken about in the South Asian community. I kept seeing these spaces pop up but often in favour of western, white feminism and I never connected with that narrative. Porn, as everyone knows, is made for the male gaze, and feminist porn is still very centred around white bodies. And also intimacy doesn’t always mean sex. I’m also thinking about what intimacy means for everyone on the individual level. We all have different interests and preferences. There wasn’t a progressive, leftist space for Tamil women and I guess the larger South Asian diaspora, although I am careful in consolidating both groups into one, to learn and form a critical understanding of the different issues that contribute to our understanding of our bodies. Whether it be trauma, PCOS among other health concerns, sexuality and the ties to culture and the hypersexuality of certain bodies over others, there wasn’t a space to explore or rather safely explore all of this. I really hope to see Thaen Pot/Thaen X grow into a space where all of these things are celebrated and folks feel comfortable engaging with the content we put out. All of this was only possible because I felt that rage we initially talked about. I would much rather channel it into community care in this way than try to convince a politician to speak about it. This is how we take care of each other when the world won’t.
LP: Thank you for framing it in this way. I think that was a perfect way to end this conversation and if I can add: I look forward to not only the larger conversations that Thaen X will foster but the spaces it will disrupt. Thanks for speaking with me about this and for including me in this project.
MS: Thank you!
As I went to “leave” our video chat, I noticed another book on Mathusha’s shelf: The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by feminist activist Mona Eltahawy. Coincidently, the first sentence of the manifesto is: “I wrote this book with enough rage to fuel a rocket.”
