Racism and Sexism on popular comedy show

For past year or two, there has been a very popular comedy show showing on one of India's cable tv channels. It is actually a competition where every week a few comedians try to make the crowd laugh harder and harder, and whoever manages to get the highest points wins. Cool, isn't it? Well, I had rarely watched it even though it was a rage amongst a lot of people because I rarely find their jokes funny.

Recently, I started watching it because of my roomies who seem to like it a lot. I have to say that I am apalled at the stuff that passes around as comedy in this country. Actually, I am more apalled to see that the 95% percent of their jokes are sexist/racist/sick. I am not surprised that they make such jokes but good clean comedy is totally non-existent in their jokes!

One of their favourite (perhaps, the most favourite) target is women. There are always those usual wife-jokes that seem to be omnipresent in the entire world. What surprised me was how blatant and explicit some of their jokes were in exposing the status and perception of women in our society. One incredibly unfunny comedian enacted a conversation between men where men have started referring to their girlfriends as 'flats' and there is this entire segment in which they describe their girlfriends as if they were describing flats. And people were laughing at this. I was speechless. When feminists say that women are viewed as property, as possessions and not as human beings, this joke is like the undeniable proof of that claim. It is incredible the amount of insensitivity to women should go into making such kinds of jokes and to laugh at such jokes. The fact that people did laugh out loud at it makes it even more sickening and kind of makes you want to distance yourselves from them.

The racism of their jokes is also quite evident. It is always some other group that they target who are expected to take it in jest but in reality reveals the prejudices that people incorporate in themselves.

Culturally, jokes are quite an eye-opener to the outsider and to ourselves. It is time we reviewed our society through the jokes that we laugh at. If we respected different cultures and different people, we wouldn't find such jokes funny and there wouldn't be such jokes in existence. But as we can see, these jokes do exist and there is no denying their influence in our society.

I could go on and on about how this show disgusts me with the attitudes presented in them but I cant. They make me so mad!!!!

The magic of editing...

Go watch!!

It's hilarious!!!

Beach life of goa 

Anti-development?

You must have heard the term quite recently being bandied about by seasoned netas in the news channel. So, shall we take a look at this term? What does it mean? Who is it being attributed to?

The term depends on one's understanding of what 'development' is? And development is a matter of perspective. What do we call developement? Is it just an imporvement in the infrastructure or a rise in the standard of living? Is it the swanky new cars that have started to invade the Indian market or the plethora of airlines vying for customers by offering cheaper and cheaper air fares?

The thing about development is that it has improved the quality of life of a section of the population in India. Whereas there is this huge section of Indian polulation that has been affected inversely due to all these developmental activities that cater to the needs of a few.

In the last decade, there has been an increasing trend of farmers committing suicide because of mounting debts and lack of protection. In an unque approcah to protest against the government lack of concern for them, villages in Vidharba were put on sale. What is scary is that the suicides are not endemic but are quite widespread in regions like telengana, karnataka, maharashtra where the produce is heavily dependent on the monsoons. No monsoons, no produce. A couple of years of bad monsoons and you dont have a means to survive. In a land where its farmers (the food-producers) are facing a crisis of survival, the future is indeed bleak.

The post-Manmohan Singh era of economic liberalisation has seen India opening up its markets to the world's capitalistic companies. India is a huge market for these companies that are running to invest in India. Though globalisation is touted as a phenomenon that levels the playing field, it is arguably not so. Only a corporate can think of manufacturing seeds which would work for only one generation, making the farmers buy them again and again from the same company. The MNCs of the world see an opportunity to do business in India. It must be noted that big busnisses of the world have the capital and the cruelty to destroy the local small businesses and take over the entire market.

22 years ago, we saw one of the world's most horrible chemical accients happening in India. The CEO of UCC at that time never responded to the summons of the Indian court and was declared a 'fugitive from justice'. It does really help to do business in a different country without concerns of punishment, doesnt it? The people still dont have potable drinking water even today and you know what the government does to their pleas? thats right, it ignores them!

Another contentious issue that has been going on for approximately the same amount of time is the Narmada Valley Development Plan, which basically involves construction of a huge number of dams on the Narmada and its tributaries. NBA (not the sport) has been accused of being anti-development but there is a lot of abuse that goes on behind the scenes that NBA actually is protesting against. For example, whenever you build a dam, you are going to drown out a humungous area that acts as the reservoir. An area inhabited by people! The fact that these people are adivasis and marginalised communities does not make any less important, because thats what our constitution says (all men and women are equal). These people need to be rehabilitated, something that the government ignores to do or does so reluctantly. To protest against rasing the dam's height without rehabilitation of the people is anti-development! because somehow these people are not important, not as important as the bourgeois who live in the city and have ever increasing energy needs (ACs, TVs, Computers, etc).

In case you didnt know, both these groups were protesting in the capital recently. What depresses me is the fact that the no major media reported their protests till the hunger strike by Medha Patkar precipitated action from the ministry or till Aamir Khan came out in support of them. The latest news from the PMO is that they will go ahead with the height increase of the dam despite a Supreme Court order that supports the NBA. If the government goes ahead without rehabilitating the people, shouldn't it be taken as contempt of court and the PMO held accountable? Not so sure of the legal stuff but I think something can be done there.

Are these people anti-development? Bullshit! How can you just develop one section of India and 'develop' at the expense of the other??? And how is protesting against this inequity anti-development??

When MNCs are let to run amok in the country, cases like Plachimada and Bhopal would keep happening.

I consider the 'anti-development' argument as very stupid and ridiculous;an argument that aims at shutting dissenting voices by invoking jingoistic ideas.

Today depresses me...

Actually, I have been depressed for quite some time but there are some days when you just feel so low that you think there is quite possibly no hope out of the situation. The phenomenon of depression amuses me no end and it is one of those areas of psychology that interests me because it is personal.

The reasons for my depression are many - personal and those not so personal (but still are). I wont discuss the personal because I have never done that on this blog (and will never do so in the future, either. For that I have my own pseudonymous blog). I discuss politics here and thats what I shall do today too.

Apologies to my readers for my flaky writing.

Nice post on institutionalised racism.

If you think that is not relevant to India, think again.

Caste system and the Hindu-Muslim divide is perpetrated by segregation.

On meritocracy.

The interviewee basically argues whether the standard tests designed to test 'merit' are really indicators of the true principles of higher education? For example, the Harvard study that is mentioned in the interview found that "the two variables that most predicted which students would achieve these criteria were low SAT scores and a blue-collar background". Now this is an amazing revelation! What if this experiment was done in the IITs/NITs/DU? What might the result be?

What interests me more is this Ten Percent Plan. The plan is basically that 10% of students of all high schools in the state are given admission to University of Texas (the state where this was implemented). With the IITs going the CET way with the JEE (making it objective and all), this study and assertion could be very interesting. Maybe, we could replicate the idea in India. Take the top 10% in all dsitricts (perhaps, even get down to the schools) and offer them opportunities for higher studies in our premier institutes. I would say that this will go a long way in alleviating the huge socio-economic differences that exists in this country.

(I was unable to find a link to the Harvard and Mischigan studies other than other interviews of Lani Guinier, though she just cant be dismissed because we could not find those studies. If somebody could dig it up, I would be much obliged)

PHILOSOPHY: Proudly corrupting youth since Socrates.

Lol

Thanks to: Abhi

Hitler and empathy???

How was Hitler able to rise to power within a short time. His coup was a failure but then he was able to win popular vote and gain a majority in the Reichstag. Just how did he manage to do that? People do not doubt his gift of speech and his gift for rhetoric, because to rile up the public with his hate-speech needed some doing on his part. It is quite well known that he did rehearse a lot for his speeches but did he possess some kind of empathy that helped him to play himself to the tune of the other person? Or was it sociopathic mirroring? Appletree digs this interesting observation from pictures of hitler found on the internet.

Thanks to: Ampersand

8th March 2006

Just another day? Nah! It's International Women's day!

Today, the feminist carnival enters its tenth edition. Go read!

Arrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried importing my blog to wordpress and it put a 'temporarily out of service' message on my blog. So, I have temporarily changed the template to the one you are viewing right now. I will revert back to my new template (the one I put up a few days ago) after I get back home.

Am considering writing an angry angst mail to wordpress...

Of women and men...

There is no privilege like the male privilege. We are born with it. It is like a birthright that is biased against women by its very nature. Men and women are treated differently right from the day they are born. So different that in quite a few places in India, the female child is killed; sometimes as sacrifice to the Gods asking for a male heir. That is an extreme case and most urban, middle-class families would distance themselves from such practices but it does not mean that the longing for a male heir does not exist in their minds. And boy (pun unintended) do they wish it! In the cities, they are more sophisticated and female infanticide becomes female foeticide. I am not against abortion but what I am against is the selective abortion of children based on this privileging of the male child.

Even if women survive this initial period of their lives (over which they have no control over whatsoever), they have a lifetime of segregation to face. They would have to hear comments like, "you have to learn cooking because that's what will help you keep your husband happy" and "you are just a visitor who will leave for another home soon" and "what will you do studying so much; they will not help you", almost all their childhood and adolescence. This is still overt and there are subtler ways of putting a woman down. Even if you do not say those above words, those intentions and thinking behind those words would still be there and is quite perceptible to children who are so sensitive to adult behaviour.

Even if a woman does get educated well by her family and does manage to get a job in the world, she faces problems just because she is a woman. Women are harassed on the streets, in public places and there is nothing they can do about it expect carry pins and respond violently to the harassment. One feels disgust reading the testimonial of Annie and that of others who have responded in the comments with stories and anecdotes of their own. I have blogged about this before and you could also follow the link there and read the stories there too. Today is March 7, 2006, a day declared by Black Noise Project as a day for Blog-a-thon 2006.

Of course, this is not the only the only problem that women face in the male-dominated world but this is one of those problems that pervades their life everyday, at all times, and something that they are vulnerable to.

As a man, it disturbs me to see that it is so pervasive and so problematic to women and it seems to be quite universal. Every woman has a harassment story. Most women face harassment every single day. It seems to be a socially sanctioned practice that hampers the everyday life of millions of women. I take special care on buses to stay away from women because I am afraid that I might unknowingly/unwittingly cause mental stress in the woman standing next to me just because the driver thought it was prudent to brake so hard. In Madras, there were special 'Magalir mattum' (for females only) buses that used to (still might be in operation) run during rush hour that alleviated the stress that women felt in the mornings going to colleges and offices. I strongly recommend such buses as I do not see the situation improving overnight. I used to wonder why educated women would leave a prospect of a promising career and become housewives but the more I read the testimonials of these working women, the more I realise that it is not such an easy question to answer.

How do you tackle this problem? There are numerous suggestions that keep popping up in my mind.

1. Make legislation that metes out harsh punishments to people who harass women.

2. Spread awareness of this issue and how women feel about this in society

3. Learn marital arts and beat up every single person who does something undesirable.

4. Take their pictures and post them in a public place like Holla Back NYC (it does not necessarily have to be a blog. It could also be a news channel) and hope that it embarrasses them so much so that they won't behave like that again.

The problem with the first suggestion is that there is already existing legislation does not seem to be effective. If it was, 'eve-teasing' would not be called by its harmless sounding name and it would not be so pervasive that Indian movies would not show them as a valid wooing technique!! And there is one story by a female commentor on the one of the above mentioned blog posts which seems to suggest that the police are indifferent to this kind of mistreatment of women. The problem with this kind of offence is that of proof. How will you prove that a certain person groped you? How would you convince the people who saw the whistling/eve-teasing to come with to the police station and testify? How would you convince the policeman that you were not over-reacting and you don't want to just let it go? In other words, how would you break the barrier created by gender stereotypes that typecast women who fight back against such men as evil, conniving, lying feminists who hate all men?

The second suggestion is what Black Noise Project is all about and I think it is the most effective one because it seems to target the thinking of people in society. Spreading awareness of this issue is an important step towards making the world more equitable for women. Changing the perception of the people is a slow process, one that is probably going to take a couple of generations and it does not alleviate the problems faced by women today.

The third suggestion is something that is already in place. Women do learn martial arts to be able to defend themselves on the street but it cooks my goose that they have to live by jungle rules to be independent, working women! It seems to put the onus of defending herself on the women and seems to suggest that men would always be like that and women should expect such behaviour from them and they should defend themselves as it is unlikely that the society would come to their help. Saying that, it is still a very practical approach and one that is strongly recommended. Martial arts / expertise with handling pins / using heels as toe-busters are all useful skill in the present scenario!

The fourth suggestion is a question of feasibility. If you take the picture of the guy who is harassing you, he could easily misconstrue as a statement of interest and harass you further. Also, no public place is that public, is it?

Saying all this, I wonder about all the men who do such heinous work. What do they really think? I suppose there might be some distinction amidst them. There would be the gropers, the whistlers, the starers, the 'eve-teasers'. It is not necessary that all harassers do all of this. There would be some who would 'eve-tease' thinking it is just teasing but they might never grope. Most men are starers, particularly when the object of their stare is at a distance and not looking in their direction. But even here, there is finer distinction. There are those who make it a point to stare and hang out in public places to leer at women passing by, there are those who do not do it regularly but would leer if some well-endowed woman passes by, etc, etc. But I think that in all these cases, the problem is the same - the objectification of women. And our popular media seems to reinforce that idea in the minds of the people. The bollywood movies, the remix videos, the bangra videos, the fashion shows, etc, etc. I personally think that the image of women in media has to change. Today, I saw an ad in the paper that shows a woman with a child on her lap, talking to some one on the phone, and working on a laptop, the tagline was "Women can multitask. Blah blah blah." The implied meaning being that men can't multitask. Such an image of women serves as an excuse to expect them to do all the housework, take care of the baby and pursue a career. It is either this or the portrayal of a woman as a vamp whose overactive sexuality lures men left and right.

Given all this, I am surprised that women don't screw men over whenever they get the chance (some women do but not all) because men (again, not all men) screw them over (pun intended) all the time. I am also surprised that in spite of going through all this, they never say all men are like that (and it is true). I wish Black Noise Project all the best in their efforts to change the perception of the world and I hope that we can make a better world where men and women would be truly treated equally.

Its all black and white for this bloke...

"I was affronted by that "Endulkar?" headline," he continued referring to the photograph caption in a national daily. "When I was a kid, we used to watch westerns on Saturday morning. It was pretty simplistic stuff, with the good guys wearing white hats and the bad guys in black ones. Sachin has been a role model for this team, with the way he prepares, the way he takes on challenges and the way he deals with more pressure than perhaps any other man in the history of the game. But I sometimes get the feeling that the media seems to be supporting the black hats. If we reward the white ones, India can be the best team in the world. If we stick by the black hats, though, no chance."

Source

It is pretty obvious what this bloke is referring to! This might be from the same interview he gave to some British paper where he said that captaincy was important to Ganguly for financial reasons; a statement that has elicited an angry response from the latter.

The feud seems to be never-ending now and there looks to be no chance for Ganguly with the end of the Dalmiya reign and the loss of his place in the team. I think Ganguly brought this upon himself. Who asked him to make a statement that he was asked to step down after his cenutry against Zimbabwe. That was a pretty stupid thing to do.

So far, the Chappel-Dravid combination has succeeded but the true test will come when they go to West Indies in May. The team looks very promising and there seems to be a genuine interest in team building.

Changes this weekend...

So, I finally get around to changing my template and updating my blogroll. I think there are still some blogs that I read that are still not there in my blogroll.
I am thinking of using some blogroll serivce which would probably make it easier to maintain the list of blogs I read.

Comments on the new template are welcome.

Whew..

a lot of lessons learnt by the entire "Save Indian Family" fiasco.

I expected them to come and spam my blog, to completely ignore what I said, to be idiotic and belligerent, and to make asses of themselves.

They did all that and their comments vindicated my post. Not one of them bothered to comment on what I said about them. Instead, they went on and on about 498a and how the "evil feminists" are destroying their sukhi parivar.

Any sane, unbiased person visiting my blog would have read my assessment of them and the proof of my assessment. Well, it is all there for them to see.

But along the way, I have a few observations about these guys. One of them is that they are desperate to get more and more people to support them. They are impatient and want to get back at their spouses by de-teething the law that got them in trouble. Thus to assuage their male ego, perhaps? That is why they are spamming everywhere - on blogs, newsgroups, etc. Little do they realise that this is not going to work and they are going to attract people like themselves and that does not worry me at all. That is why they went on a streak, posting and re-posting the same thing over and over again. Perhaps they believe in the idea that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes a truth.

Then they started to get people to write first-hand accounts of their sob stories. On how their wives/daughter-in-laws have ruined their lives for apparently no reason. A change in strategy? Oh yes, because first-hand sob stories are so believable. The thing about such stories is that they never find faults in the person telling the story. The protagonist is always the victim who would "never hurt a fly". Secondly, even if the person had in fact harassed their daughters-in-law, they would never accept it (why would they; very few culprits confess the crime). The daughter-in-law who fights back becomes an evil person for them and they never see the evil in themselves. Every person thinks that s/he could do no wrong and that their beliefs and ideas should be the law (heck, sometimes I think that too, though I try to keep an open mind). Plus, in the internet world, we are never sure whether the person is real or fake (heck, we have played a lot of jokes on our batchmates using fake names and fake ids).

What I did not expect was other people who have been frustrated by this group of spammers would get so riled up and start venting out their anger here. It was starting to turn ugly and I had to put an end to that... They have still persisted, perhaps in the hope that I will publish their comments but as far as I can see, they have written nothing new and so, there is no point in exhibitng them. So, they stay rejected.

Another thing that I noticed was their attempts to provoke me. it followed the similar patterns of hysterical people who try to rile up people for patriotic/religious purposes. Sadly for them, I had chosen to ignore them long before they came to my blog.

My purpose was never to engage in a dialogue with them because it would have been frustrating. And I think my purpose was fulfilled in that extremely long and drawn out comment spam series.

These guys are really a bunch of idiots that are not really worth my time. And thats all I have got to say about this matter.

Of foetus and souls

An NGO in punjab has taken the interesting step of mourning the soul of a foetus in front of the house of the family that is suspected to have killed that foetus. They call this the shokh sabha and it is probably believed that this would shame people so much that they would stop murdering female fetus.
I saw an article in ToI today but am unable to find it online. But I did find this online. Scroll to the bottom of the page. The NGO is called Upkar.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060206/region.htm

While I would nod my head in approval of their intentions but I do disapprove their methodology. They are unknowingly stepping into dangerous territory. Attributing a soul to a foetus is one of the ways that anti-choice advocates in the US are fighting abortion rights. While it is debatable whether a unborn child has a soul or not, abortion rights are very important because more than the life of an unborn child, it is the health and life of the woman bearing the child that is at stake. 1% women still die at childbirth and women should have the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies. If you are going to say that an unborn child has a soul and that terminating pergnancies is equivalent to 'murder', you are saying the exact thing as utterred by the neo-cons in the US who are fighting to make abortion illegal or difficult in the states. So, beware and be warned.

A thoughful post...

Annie is a fantastic writer. She has the power to capture her readers attention because she writes from the heart but is never maudlin. She always researches her stories properly and tries to bring out the true picture.

Why the sudden effusiveness about her writing?

read this.

I knew that Islam is the only religion in the world that gives women property rights, divorce rights, etc, etc. In her post, she tells us a lot about the rights that Islam provides and the reality of the world. I wont spoil it for you, so I advise to read her post.

I think for India to be truly secular, it should provide equal laws for all people. It does not make sense to have different laws for different religions in the same country. That is simply not just. After all, we live in the modern democratic world!

Look deeper...

We always say that things are not always what they seem to be and one should look closer and deeper before making a judgement about anything and anybody. Sometimes, you do get sucked into something that superficially looks genuine and rational. But the core is rotten and you realize this after a while.

One of the ways that right-wing seems to attack feminists/liberals is to pick up some isolated cases and generalize it. They get a few people who are supposedly victims of some injustice and they use them to create enough noise to compel lawmakers and people on the fence to believe that their cases are genuine and that the feminist movement is evil. Interestingly, I see it happening more often than not with the communists. There is a wide-spread belief that communists are anti-development, trouble makers, etc, etc. Why? Pick up any paper on any given day and you will never see anybody discussing the communist's point of view. Moreover, it is likely that you will see cartoons and articles deriding the communists without looking at their messages. Before you start accusing me of being a communist, let me just say that I am not. But I do not think that there are pure evil in the way the media seems to portray them and they do make some relevant points. I am more likely to pick a communist newspaper/magazine because I feel that though there is a definite communist bias in them, they report things in meticulous details and they report things that are generally ignored in the mainstream media, which seems to be obsessed with things urban.

Recently, a bunch of 'activists' spam-posted on my friend, Jaya’s, blog. The first post sounded quite reasonable. (for the uninitiated, the law basically protects women from the harassment they receive from their in-laws regarding dowry. The law makes this offence un-bailable) Well, there is nothing wrong with protesting against unjust usage of the law but the misogynous nature of their views is there for us to view right in this post.

"See growing rate of divorce. Few days back there was news in HT, as per which majority of divorce cases are because women are having extra-marital affairs, why this situation is there, it is because certain women feel with weapon of section 498A on their side, they are much stronger than their husbands and In-Laws. My appeal to President of India, Prime Minister, Cabinet ministers, and Judges is please examine this issue on priority and save Indian culture. Introduce Law, which will protect innocent - both women and men."

Look how quickly they make the connection between divorce and the power given to women by the law. It is connection that is neither substantiated nor correct! And they go to further make the pronouncement that this law is against Indian culture! First, there is no proof that this law really is the cause of divorces nor do they bother to give any. Second, their idea that divorces are against Indian culture and thus, evil would be hilarious if they were joking. For the patriarchy, divorces are dangerous as it challenges their claim to power by giving women the option of getting out of a marriage that are not happy in. One of the reasons why people are forced into marriage early in their life is because of the fact that it takes a long time and education for an average person to be able to get a decent paying job and be independent. So, parents try to get their children, especially daughters, before they are able to "stand on their own legs". Daughters are put under more pressure because they are supposed to live a life that is subordinate to their male counterparts. Most women succumb to this pressure and get married to someone that their parents pick out for them. For people like Satya, this is Indian culture. It is sad to see our culture being derided by such obnoxious people!

People give anecdotal stories of how they have been harassed by their better halves but they are always the victims of some malicious woman whose seems to be worse than the devil, according to them! I am not saying that there wasn't any genuine case of the law being misused. I am not saying that all women are angels but neither are all men innocent. Besides, it is men who hold all the power, both economically and socially. And the dowry system is a real social problem, which these guys never seem to address. To break away from an abusive family, the women needs to be economically and socially empowered but that is sadly not true in the majority of the cases. Most men and their families expect the women to give up their career once they get married and take care of the household. This makes the women economically dependent on her husband. Secondly, a woman who leaves her husband is looked down upon in our society. She might even get turned out of her own parent's home because it is no longer 'her home' and that her husband’s home is 'her home'.

Jaya is pretty sane and she is definitely not interested in encouraging such spammers on her blog. She basically tells them to go look somewhere else because she is not interested in their 'activism'. Sadly, they do not want to leave her alone and there is this barrage of comments on her blog that she is forced to post a series of posts titles, tongue in cheek, 'Save Indian Sanity', spoofing their movement's title -- 'Save Indian Family'. :)

Here's what she has to say –

"I can't say anything other than this that these people are behaving pathetically. Look here - if a law, any law in the world, is being misused by anyone, its wrong. Who would be foolish enough to go against that stand? Okay, here is another law that probably is being misused by some. Its a great idea if one could help people who are unnecessarily being troubled by that. But as Abhaya rightly pointed out, what the heck does that have to do with Indian culture and family and divorce!! I mean, that's just too much. Misusing a law is just that, misusing a law. Has got no cultural connotations please… Then think of how pathetic it is to appeal to IITian sentiment for that; or for that matter to bash Feminism as a whole."

Derision of feminists is not uncommon. The image of feminists as bra-burning, male-hating, lesbians is now so common that it could quite easily manage to get into the dictionary! So, this response that she gets wasn't really that far off..

"Damn every evil thing in thise world is related to evils of feminism , sowry.
NCW is planning to steal the houses from IITians under the new domestic violence law.
IITian suffer the highest percentage of those trapped false dowry cases.
So are just makies all teh freshies aware of how these laws operate.
Dear IITian
The mere fact that you are not a dowry monger is no excuse for you to avoid jail .
That is the beauty of of our Dowry laws drafted by our misandryst feminists"

For being stubborn and unmoved by their incredibly inane bombardments, she gets bad publicity on their blog (I do not want to link them here but you can find the link on Jaya's post)! She just wants to be left alone and her blog unspammed but she does not get her wish...

http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/save-indian-sanity-ii/#comment-1046

http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/save-indian-sanity-ii/#comment-1048

http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/save-indian-sanity-ii/#comment-1056

"Some people prefer to be adamant with their own view and never has courage to try putting onself into other’s shoe!!"

She doesn't give in to their views and resists their attempts to make her 'understand' and she gets derided for lack of empathy! I wonder whether these people ever empathize with the women who do get harassed by their in-laws for dowry.

Just when you think that it just cannot get more stupid, we see this. I think this is where they realized that their shouting was not having any effect on Jaya and out comes their hatred for what they call "modern supernakh" (shoorpanakha is a character in the Indian epic, Ramayana. She is the cultural stereotype of a bad woman – immoral, head-strong, lying, conniving, lustful, etc, etc).

http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/save-indian-sanity-ii/#comment-1060

scroll further in those comments and you find this self-righteous comment...

http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/save-indian-sanity-ii/#comment-1068

"Jaya
You had been exposed , though you try to best to take a msk of Modern Sita , but SIF volenters exposed your real face , you can not hide the coments in your bolg .
This for your reference , let the whole world observe how you are killing our age old parents and pregent sister by doing the legal terrorism in india ."

In fact, it is they who have been exposed! Their lack of rationale and ridiculous perseverance in saying the same things over and over again without trying to understand what the other person is trying to say can be attributed to their mind-numbing stupidity or is it their lack of English skills? One will never know!
When they realize that their shouting is not having any effect on the listener, they come out with their real inner views.

http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/save-indian-sanity-iii/#comment-1082

I really do not know which portion of the comment to put here. So, I am going to ask you to follow the link and read the entire thing. If you do, you can see how the person has traced the root of all problems to the education of women! This is classic. The reason why women were never educated was exactly due to the fear that they might rebel against their second-class-citizens status. It is a classic example of how much the patriarchal thinking is ingrained that people resist change and resist things that seek to point out the injustice present in the system. Men are so privileged that they do not realize that they are suppressing women. It may not be willful but the practices of our society that ensure that women so not get equal opportunities and chances do just that and many men do not realize that suppression need not be an individual thing. Just because it is societally accepted practice does not mean that it is right.

"Why a women have to be fed till her death after marriage in India?"

Hmm.. Why is it that it is a woman who is expected to forsake her career, cook the food, clean the shit of the babies that she is expected to produce, work seven days a week and 12 hours a day without pay, and still is expected to be grateful to the man who brings in the food! And why is a woman who refuses to live under these conditions considered evil, immoral and cast out of society leaving her little choice regarding her course of action? And why is a law that seeks to equalize this disparity just a little bit a cause of such heartburn to you?
The misogynism in this person’s post is an inner peek at what these people are really seeking. "Better keep her ignorant, lest she becomes untamable". They are afraid of women. After all, they do make up 50% of the population (well, not quite, thanks to female feticide and infanticide).

http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/save-indian-sanity-iv/#comment-1074

" Feminists are Hypochondriac Hypocrites.
Every year women drive 23000 men to suicide and go simply scot free."

http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/02/11/save-indian-sanity-iv/#comment-1083

"Root problem
Infact, the problem is our Indian ppl are poisoned by the Feminists organisations dangeroulsy. Whether a male or female, a child doesn't know. They acquire knowledge throgh the society. This society contains most vultures than any other as NGOs. So, continuos spread of hatred towards a man and dowry made these little children prone to poison. Dowry is a social custom in India for centuries. Crime by dowry demand is nothing but greed. we already have laws for cheating, greedy, characterless fellows. why this 498a? and 'mental tension clause' ...nothing but corruption."

'Poisoned by feminists organisations'? Really? I hardly think so. There is so much prejudice against feminism , it is hardly feasible for a person to become a feminist without conviction. It is not something that you do because of peer pressure because, lets face it, there is no peer pressure with regard to feminism. Besides, isn't dowry a social evil? Don't women get abused and killed because their in-laws are not satisfied with the dowry? Dont the woman's family get held for ransom just before the marriage in the wedding hall with threats for more dowry or no marriage? Just because we have laws does not mean that they are effective. If it were, people would not be able to break it with such impunity.

"If they were in USA, by now they would have met their fate. Rascals of the country, devastating the culture of my country."

ROFL! Interestingly, they attribute feminism to the western world and they also expect feminists to be non-existent and brought to 'justice' in the western world. Sometimes, I wonder why they seem to idolize the western world at the same time resisting the change saying it is western and against 'our culture'. Perhaps, it is our culture to be corrupt and being rascals?

"if you notice, population increased highly after sometime, this IPC498a is enacted by legislation. Main reason, marital discord between men and women. women were not capable of earning, but learn about this law by parents for their selfish reasons. Men being not happy with his marrid wife, he is always under 498a threat, wisdom got lost. The men who are in threat are greatly public servants, social ppl, highly educated, scientists in urban areas participating infrastructure design for the country. what happens when these ppl. are not healthy in living? That naturally gets affected on the rural areas. No proper planning, infrastructure got affected, wisdom got lost and the country led to 48% poverty level now(eating one meal in a day)."

Just how flawed is this guy's thinking. He is blaming one law for everything going wrong in this country! It is incredible that men are considered to be good at logic and reasoning! I mean, look at this guy reasoning. Whatever he may be, he definitely is not teaching 'Logic and Reasoning' to some maths graduates somewhere, that's for sure!

"Britishers who directly ruled India are far better than these ppl, who have already poisoned the society."

You know who makes this statement more often than not? RSS. About the congress governments that ruled India for the majority of our independent lifetime. Listening to the same view put forth by this guy made my suspicion that this person is coming from an RSS grooming stronger. Not that it wasn't already evident in their blatant misogynism and anti-feminist tirades but there are some statements that give a very clear view of their background. And this is one of those statements that mark them out. There are several variations of this statement and I have heard them primarily from an RSS source –
"We were better off under british rule. I wish we were never freed."
"These people have ruined my country. Thanks to the britishers that we have atleast this much."

This person's comment really brings out the entire thing. Their's is not a movement that seeks to make amends to an unjust law but to maintain what they call "Indian culture" (or what they perceive to it to be), which is basically the patriarchal world where the women are uneducated, ignorant, and subordinate. Their's is a movement that seeks to wage a bigger war, a war against feminism, against liberty, against radical movement that seeks to eliminate injustice.

I believe that today's radicals would be tomorrow's liberals and today's liberals would be tomorrow's conservatives. Change is the only constant in this world and there is no way the right wing is going to succeed in its anti-change, status quo agenda. It is simply not possible! So, here's to a better world!

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PS. Two things.
1. you are not going to get free publicity on this blog. So all posts with links to places like 'harassed husbands' will be deleted.
2. If you have something reasonable to say, say it. Dissent is not unwelcome but posts discussed above are NOT welcome. They will get deleted.

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Thirdly, Before you jump up and post something, re-read my post. Try to see exactly what I am criticizing and then, if you have a counter-point, say it.
An example of something that is not a counter-point is arguing that there are cases where the law is misused.
If you still persist in inane comments that give me the impression that you havnt read the post, I will ignore (or delete it if I consider it fall under the above two categories) your comment.

The eighth carnival of...

Feminists..

I won something today...

go to this page and you will know what I did win.
To see why, you will have to see this.
:)

The HC nightmare

For all those from IIT Kanpur, we all remember how frustrating our HC (Health Centre) was. I remember once I went there to get medicines for a fever but instead was given an IV and lots of glucose and bruffen! For four days!
I never felt more sicker than at that time when I was there. I have always had sickness in my life and since my pop is a doc, I knew that there was never any necessity for all that I went through there.
There was a concerted effort by students and faculty to improve the standards of the HC but it never really went anywhere. The indifference of the doctors and the nurses in the HC. People keep getting Bruffen fall all their ailments.
That is why, this story comes not just as a shock but also instigates concern for all those who are dependent on the facilities provided by HC.