In India, Cows Are Sacred, Women Are Dispensable

https://medium.com/the-state-of-india-1/b50ee55ba5ff

by cmaher • 13 years ago

39 31 13 years ago

kunai3• 13 years ago

I am male, but I'm a strong feminist. I refuse to use GoDaddy for hosting because of their degrading and objectifying advertising campaign. But there's a problem stemming from two different views on feminism.

It seems like there are two distinct sides, and no neutral ground, for women's rights, and how one goes about fighting for them.

On one hand, you have sexually repressed apes perpetually abusing women and nobody bats an eye.

And on the other hand, you have clinically insane extremists who freak out over jokes about Github.

It's sad that we can't fight for what matters, which is women's rights. It's either go completely mad about it or do nothing at all.

gurvinder• 13 years ago

I don't think its right to call them two sides, when "sexually repressed apes perpetually abusing women" are million times more than "clinically insane extremists"

pekk2• 13 years ago

What? The point is that people are freaking out on normal and moderate people doing nothing while there are still extremely serious and obvious cases actually worth freaking out about.

subsystem2• 13 years ago

Disagreement is a pretty low standard for extremism.

kunai3• 13 years ago

So, publicly shaming and getting two individuals fired for talking about forking a Git repo isn't extremism?

smoyer2• 13 years ago

I am male and not a feminist, because I disagree with their man-hating propaganda ("A women needs a man like a bicycle needs a fish"). But I am all for equivalence and my wife is my equal as well as my partner (well ... if I admit it, she's my better half in almost every way). I think I'll go hug her - bye.

EvilLook• 13 years ago

>I disagree with their man-hating propaganda ("A women needs a man like a bicycle needs a fish")

How in the world is that man-hating? Would it be woman-hating to say "A man needs a woman like a bicycle needs a fish"?

EliRivers4• 13 years ago

"I am male and not a feminist,... But I am all for equivalence"

That's feminism. You're a feminist.

jaibot2• 13 years ago

It's...not though. You can do whatever you want. No one else forces your actions, and your dichotomy is a false one.

That said, if someone says that a joke about github (or anything else) is making them uncomfortable, it's probably worth at least listening to them. Especially if they have lived a life sufficiently different from yours that their subjective experiences are likely to be somewhat distant from yours, and especially especially if they are of a demographic people judge harshly (as determined by IATs: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html

cwbrandsma• 13 years ago

I'm looking at her list of things she has to do at the bottom of the article.

My wife and daughters do most of those (including a modesty scarf)...and we live in the USA.

mikestew• 13 years ago

Do your wife and daughters do those things for the same reasons as the author? If so, I'm curious about where you live. Because just a walk through the local mall (granted, affluent suburban Seattle) indicates to me that the fears of the author are not shared by the women in my area of the USA.

amartya9162• 13 years ago

Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated."

I guess Gandhi forgot that cows in India really do have it pretty good. Unfortunately, we, the people of india, haven't been able to pass a vital measure of moral progress: how do we treat our women. The woman taking a walk, travelling on public transit or the countless other examples that the author cites, should serve as a reminder of how spectacularly we have failed as a society. I wouldn't be surprised if we have actually regressed significantly [2].

It's hard to be optimistic about India, but hopefully these shocking incidents would stir up enough Indians to take notice and try to do something about it. For example, education(including sex ed. by the way) is a start. I am not sure how literacy rates have been affected by the RTE [1] act that came into effect in 2010, but I am hopeful that in the longer run, it'll improve our society.

[1] Right to Education Act: http://mhrd.gov.in/rte

[2] An interview from the former king of Travancore (read the last question, the one about matriarchs): http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Chunk-HT-UI-ViewsSec...

kumarski2• 13 years ago

Gandhi was also a known pedophile.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/29...

rraval• 13 years ago

Nothing in the article you linked supports your claim. It doesn't even mention the words "Gandhi" or "pedophile".

Intrigued by your claim, I turned to Google to find more. The only credible link was an article by the Huffington Post [1], and the claim had been redacted.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/the-gandhi-none-o...

tn13• 13 years ago

RTE is leading to more and more illiteracy. RTE is a ploy to shut down private schools aimed at poor students and ensure the total government control on primary education.

qompiler• 13 years ago

Do they? The cows are very skinny and malnutritioned, letting cows wander around through highly populated streets, eating trash and drinking sewer water is not what I imagine a cow enjoys doing.

thelukester• 13 years ago

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan needs to go back to America, Europe or whatever first world nation she came from. I've traveled the world and as 3rd world nations go, India is one of the safest for women. By contrast, Cambodia and Africa make India feel like American suburbia.

With a population of 1.3 billion, I'm not surprised you can "Pick an age — any number — and put “raped” after it in a Google search and see results from India."

Google "Vatican City + raped" You'll find a 9 yr old was raped in the smallest city in the world! The Vatican no less!

Rape happens all over the world. I'd love to see how long this woman lasts on 110 and Broadway in NYC without her "modesty scarf"

My girlfriend is from LA and never stops dressing like it, even when traveling throughout India. From large cities like New Delhi to a little town called Ichhawar, we never had any issues with all these supposed rapists. I'm guessing the reason why is my g/f has perspective and a handle on reality, where Meenakshi probably needs a b/f more than her bottle of pepper spay.

test001only• 13 years ago

One more article which goes on about how bad it is for women in India without suggesting any method of setting the wrong right. Women are also considered sacred but as goes for any religion, people take and interpret what they find suitable for themselves. The laws are there for namesake and enforced only when the perpetrator is from the lower rung of the society while powerful criminals go free. Also women from the economically and socially backward are not even aware of the protection the law guarantees them. We do not need one more article which goes on and on about how bad it is in India. We get that from the media everyday. We need practical solutions and discussions around it.

gallinaponedora• 13 years ago

written by... a woman. surprise surprise. Well, she just need to move to a country where men are dispensable. She´s in luck because that's just about any other country in the world except for evil India of course.

Disclaimer: I didn´t read the "article"

In India, Cows Are Sacred, Women Are Dispensable

Related Stories