Archive | feminism RSS feed for this section

Thoughts on A Life in Clothes

4 Jan
Last week after I won that award I began to read all the other winning entires. And then I began following the links from those entries to read other articles, stories, confessionals, and manifestas, hundreds of pages of women (and a few men) bearing witness to the realities of women’s lives. I’ve come away feeling humbled, and inspired.

One read in particular stands out.

A mother and blogger calling herself Vidyut writes a stunning five-part series of articles titled “A Life in Clothes”. This is a memoir chronicling her life so far as a rebellious child in an abusive home, as a teenager dropping out of school to get into a disastrous marriage, then as a divorcee mountaineering instructor and nomad reinventing herself over and over to “learn” each new place she is forced to move to because of social approbation, and finally to now as a city dwelling mom remarried to another abusive man.

Photo © Vidyut

It’s so interesting to note what exactly people consider to be her “failures”, and the exact source of all her struggles. This basic source takes many forms: it is her father forcing modest clothes on her all through her childhood with violence and even now through adulthood with trickery; it is her many “friends” freezing her out simply because they don’t know how to interact with a divorcee; it is the varied cast of the men in her life who cannot cope with her strength and talent without feeling emasculated; it is her two mothers-in-law who insist that she make her peace with ‘a woman’s lot’ even though they agree their sons are abusive. But the source of all this is one and the same: an all powerful patriarchy boxing women into subhuman containers marked “daughter” and “wife” and “mother” with never a thought given to her humanity.

Just imagine this story taking place in a westerm country. Would Vidyut even cause anyone to bat a single solitary eyelash? A three year old running around naked in the house? Cute! A high school dropout? That’s someone who needs help and second chances! A divorcee? What a quaint word to describe someone completely normal. A mountain climber and horse breeder? What a catch she would be for the most eligible bachelors!

In America, Vidyut’s life would be almost boring. In India, it is a monumental struggle.

The thing I find beyond amazing is that all of this reads like a success story. And in context, it is! Against all her overwhelming odds, she emerges wise and strong and powerful, more in control of her own life than any of the other women or even men who surround her. Imagine that. This is a woman stuck in an abusive marriage. How far has Indian society fallen that this is the best we have to offer someone like her?

I’ve been trying for a long time to find the words to show exactly why feminism is “still” so necessary. Now I don’t need to. Read about Vidyut, and you’ll see for yourself.

This is what a war looks like

18 Feb
I’m watching in slack-jawed awe as U.S. lawmakers wage non-stop war against women. Here’s a quick roundup of the assaults from just this last month…

Feb 18, 2011: The House votes to ban all funding for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is already prevented by federal law from using federal dollars for abortion services. This amendment takes away the money they use to provide family planning, birth control, medical and preventive services, including cancer screenings.

Feb 18, 2011: Proposed GOP spending bill would cut approximately $1 billion worth of welfare, birth control, family services, healthcare and other benefits from women and their families.

Feb 17, 2011: Texas Senate passes law requiring all abortion-seeking women to first get an ultrasound. This is in addition to the 24 hour waiting period and “medical information” spiels (anti-abortion propaganda) already mandatory for abortion seekers.

Feb 16, 2011: Republican officials in Maryland cut funding for the Head Start, a daycare program for children of low-income families, saying that women should get married and stay home with kids instead. Huh?

Feb 15, 2011: South Dakota Republicans table a bill that would make murder of abortion doctors legal.

Feb 9, 2011: GOP backs massive tax increase to deter abortion coverage by private insurers. Private insurers. Massive tax increase. GOP.

Feb 9, 2011: Republican lawmakers in Ohio unveil legislation that would ban abortions of any fetus found to have a heartbeat. Fetal heartbeats develop between 2.5 weeks and 6 weeks after conception, before most women even realise they are pregnant. The move would therefore effectively ban almost all abortions.

Feb 7, 2011: Georgian lawmakers proposes relabeling all victims of rape, domestic violence and stalking as “accusers” rather than “victims” until the accused is convicted. Victims of all other, less gendered crimes such as assault, fraud, burglary, etc. would remain “victims”. 

Feb 3, 2011: GOP introduces revised HR 358 bill which lets ER doctors and hospitals refuse life-saving treatments to pregnant women if the treatment may harm the fetus. Ironically dubbed the “Protect Life Act”, it seems oblivious to the fact that if pregnant women are refused life-saving treatments, the fetus dies with them.

Feb 2, 2011: Republicans stop health insurance coverage of birth control. Every dollar spent on birth control is shown to save ~$2.10 in welfare spending.

Jan 27, 2011: Arkansas is poised to ban private insurance coverage of abortions, requiring women to purchase additional special “abortion rider”policies if they think they might need an abortion someday. These special plans are not offered by any insurance provider in the state.

Jan 26, 2011: Kansas Republicans introduce a bill that would require girls under the age of 18 to receive the explicit consent of both parents before seeking an abortion. In the event of family sexual abuse, the girl women will still need the approval of one parent.

Jan 25, 2011: Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MI) proposes the “Life at Conception Act” bill, which seeks to define human life as beginning at the moment of conception and terminate abortion rights created by Roe v. Wade.

Jan 24, 2011: Idaho upholds the right of pharmacists to deny any medication to women whom they suspect of having had an abortion sometime in the past, even if the medication causes no harm to any fetus past or present, and even if the medication is potentially life-saving.

Jan 21, 2011: GOP introduces HR 3, the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act”, intended to codify the Hyde Amendment already in effect since 1976 which denies federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape and incest. The bill redefines rape of poor women to mean only violent “forcible” rape, excluding previously eligible victims of date rape, statutory rape, and other presumably nonobjectionable forms of not-really-rape.

Jan 20, 2011: GOP proposes a $318 million annual spending cut from Title X Family Planning, a figure that represents the program’s entire budget as of 2009 (2010 figures unavailable). Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing low-income individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services. It does not fund abortions.

The really interesting thing to emerge is a nice summary of the Republican platform: fuck poor people.

Birth control should not be affordable. Abortion should not be accessible – failing that, it should not be affordable. Childcare should not be affordable. Women should not work outside the home. And also, poor families should not get welfare benefits of any sort. Fuck poor people.

I’m pretty disgusted with the world right now.

The Theory Of The Warring Siblings

10 Nov

For years I’ve had a theory that economic and social conservatism actually do go hand in hand, in accordance with popular belief and contrary to the claims of libertarians.

I used to be enchanted with libertarianism, whose major draw was an obvious-sounding take on economics without the mess and fuss of religion, sexism, xenophobia, racism etc. I’ve since found out that the movers and shakers of the real world libertarian movement do indeed muck in and enjoy the mess and fuss of all that I wanted to escape, but that is besides the point. In theory Libertarianism’s draw was that it was socially liberal while being economically conservative.

Economic conservatism is really a rather appealing philosophy. It is, at its core, a very optimistic theory, one that has scads of faith in the innate awesomeness of human ingenuity and survival skills. Leave people alone, it says, no rules no schmools, just room for people to work, create and build unhampered by meaningless regulations or crippling taxation, and we will CONQUER THE UNIVERSE! YEAH! There is a lot of fist-pumping and cheering, inspirational speeches and lavish celebrations of success. Very like a football game in that way. It is exhilarating to be a true believer.

Economic liberalism is the sad and mopey sister of this studly jock. But what about the losers, she whines. One cannot be anything but sad and mopey when losers are one’s constant preoccupation. Studly jock wants to brush this aside with airy cliches like “failure is but a stepping stone to success” and “if at first you don’t succeed, try again!” But economic liberals know life is not a football game. The losers aren’t going to end up with an empty spot in their trophy shelves, they’re going to end up dead of exposure and starvation and disease. (Verily this economic liberalism sister is the killer of all lighthearted jokey analogies.)

The studly jock espouses a certain brand of dog-eat-dogginess in the realm of the marketplace. He wants the survival of the fittest in the economic sphere. He not only celebrates the victorious, but also the death of the inefficient, the unprofitable, the slow.

Now, some economic conservatives might fool themselves that fitness in the marketplace is determined by talent and hard work, but the sad and mopey sister knows for a fact that’s not true. Fitness in the marketplace is determined mostly by luck: if you were you born in the right country, in the right neighbourhood, with the right skin colour, with a penis, without deformities, with a well-functioning brain, to the sort of family that values its children and values education and believes in giving kids a step up in life instead of letting them wallow, then you pretty much have it made. Without ever factoring in your talent or hard work, you’ve reached a level that most people struggle their whole lives never even glimpsing: your basic survival is guaranteed and your path to additional success is clear.

Most people, though, are born the wrong colour or the wrong gender or in a Somalian slum or without hands, and chances are they’ll never even get to look at the marketplace, let alone participate in it. All they will ever be is grist for the market mill.

There is no room in the marketplace for the disabled or the stupid or those erroneously percieved to be disabled and/or stupid (women, minority races, poor people). There isn’t even any room in the marketplace for those who are unpopular with the “fittest” i.e. luckiest (queer folk, most foreigners, ugly or deformed people).

It’s hard to get into business when VCs and banks and clients and customers implicitly mistrust you, whether for tribal reasons like ohnoes look at your skin colour it’s so much darker than mine, or insecurities like ohnoes a man wearing a dress halp my masculinity is in question, or because they think you’re going to take their money and then quit to do stupid womanly things like having and raising babies, which everyone knows is the most useless activity ever – can we see the next applicant please?

No, there’s little room on the “free” market for these very troublesome types of people, who become impoverished, dependent, and yes, even a little bit degenerate sometimes because life without hope can do that to people.

~ sniffles can be heard in the audience as the mopey sister pauses dramatically ~

Here comes the question at the heart of my theory: what do you suppose happens to the lucky ones, the “fittest” ones, when they see the perpetual “failure” of the “losers” who are unable to thrive in the FAIR! BALANCED! FREE! marketplace?

They begin to believe that they are inherently superior to the degenerate losers. They become racists.

They begin to believe that women are only good for having sex with and popping out future workers, and do not belong in the marketplace, and while they’re home they might as well cook meals and wash dishes, right? They become sexists.

They notice how the successful members of the marketplace look and behave exactly like they do, and their affinity for conformity becomes even more entrenched. They become xenophobes, and they develop rigid social codes of behaviour which serves as an elaborate secret handshake into the inner circles.

The best among them begin to question the callousness, brutality and immorality of the free market, and seek to correct it by forming private organisations to encourage morality and charitability. They invent religions.

The marketplace has given these people money. Money is power – the power to enforce these beliefs on the rest of the population, the power to repeat these beliefs often enough and loudly enough to brainwash the rest of the population into believing them too.

The cycle is complete. Economic conservatism has resulted in social conservatism.

Unveil

31 Jul

Proposition: High heels are the burkhas of Western society. (RT’d and heartily agreed with by Divya.)

Definitions:

Argument: Spot the crucial differences between fashions above and below:

(Hint: Only one set of images features actual fashion, aka that which your government and family do not command you to wear.)

Anticipated Counter-Argument 1: But high heels are barbaric.
I Say: So don’t wear them. Making this choice does not lead to excommunication. Yay!

Anticipated Counter-Argument 2: But high heels are really, really barbaric and thus Bad For Women.
I Say: Let women decide what’s bad for them. Second-wave style prescriptive feminism is so passe. :)

Anticipated Counter-Argument 3: But women are brainwashed/pressured into wearing high heels.
I Say: Not true. High heels are the fashion among the most privileged women in our world, who are least likely to be pressured and brainwashed into anything. They’re the polar opposite of burqas in this important way.

Anticipated Counter-Argument 4: But some women do choose to wear burqas, the same way some women choose high heels.
I Say: The overwhelming majority of women who wear burqas are forced into it, and the overwhelming majority of women who wear high heels choose to do so freely. Fringe cases should not constitute your entire case. (Please point me to these women who freely choose to wear burqas, since I have a hard time believing they exist.)

Conclusion: Saying high heels are the burqas of western society is like saying McDonald’s is the Somalian famine of western society: very wrong and rather offensive.

The Flip Side Of Sin

30 Jul

There were quite a few really interesting responses to that post on my sins against gender norms, and many rather confused ones. I think it was a mistake to start writing about breaking gender norms without bothering to even say what gender norms are, or why they’re worth breaking. Can one break them without losing one’s gender identity? And what is gender identity anyway? Is that worth preserving or should we question that too? …

I keep forgetting that this is a Feminism 101 space. I’ve been reading up about this stuff for years, and most of you guys haven’t. There are concepts and definitions and beliefs that I take for granted, unsaid, in my own head, which I need to spell out here. That’s fine: you all have your own areas of expertise, and sharing our expertise is what this blogging deal is about. I always knew I wasn’t – and didn’t want to be – writing for an audience of hardcore feminists alone. So later in this post, some clarification might be in order (though an essay on gender identity itself is too much heavy lifting for this blog post perhaps). The befuddlement of some shall cease!

But first -

Shalaka, Tilo, Mockingbird and Saurabh (edit: and now Heather!) had transgressions of their own to share, a few of which I can’t resist highlighting.

It seems none of us girls have qualms about hauling stuff or assembling furniture or balancing checkbooks or doing yardwork any such supposedly male task. And it seems our male responder has no problem painting his nails and admitting to crying when he read The Bridges of Madison County. (Please tease him mercilessly about this last: not because he “acted girly” but because TBoMC is such utter bilge.)

Tilo mentions one of the crazy expectations that married Indian women living overseas have to contend with: the dreaded “time share” ratio during visits to India. “I live in the US,” she says. “I get to visit India only once a year for 3 weeks. Now, since I am married, I am supposed to spend majority of that time with my in laws and not my own parents?” Well said, Tilo. Those of us who’ve lucked out with awesome in-laws (aided by the prodding of awesome sisters-in-law ;D thanks Shalaka!) are truly in the minority.

The Indian Homemaker astutely points out that men are also severely constrained by gender norms (a concept known in feminist circles as PHMT – Patriarchy Hurts Men Too). She says, “It would be so wonderful … when men refuse to be forced to be guardians, bread winners, protectors of the morals of women and helpless victims of male egoes.” Hear, hear.

Heather writes, ” I talk about sex with my 15 year old son. Sure it is uncomfortable, but I don’t hide behind my husband and expect him to do all the talking, just because I have boys.” That is so awesome, and I can’t believe I hadn’t thought about this much. (In my defence my son is TWO.) I’m keeping this in mind for when Angad gets older though. Isn’t it important for kids to hear about sex from both parents?

And Mockingbird shares a moving, honest appraisal of motherhood. “Motherhood was not all it was hyped up to be,” she says. “It is so rewarding in ways I couldn’t have imagined before becoming a mom, but it, more often than not, sucks balls, and has taken a toll on my marriage. There, I said it.” It’s difficult to overstate the degree to which honest discussion of motherhood or even pregnancy is taboo in our society. Where babies are involved the straitjacket of “cooing happy momma” is forced on every single woman, to such an extent that to merely suggest that motherhood isn’t all roses is a revolutionary statement. To say, as Mockingbird and I have, that becoming a mother, even though it has compensations, more often than not sucks balls is – well, I’ve literally never heard anybody else say it. So thanks for sharing that, Mockingbird. It’s good to know I’m not the only mean, bloodsucking, less-than-perfectly-thrilled momma in the world.

And finally, both Shalaka and Mockingbird included lists of ways in which they do live up to gender stereotypes. This is an excellent idea! My “Flipside Of Sin” list goes like this:

  1. The few skirts I do wear, I wear with JOY. There’s really nothing like something twirly and colourful hanging off your hips to make you feel 6 years old again, is there? :)

  2. I like hanging out with women more than men, in general. It used to be the other way around up until I was 19 or 20… I have no idea what changed. I seem to have an easier time bonding with women ever since I hit adulthood.

  3. Shopping is AWESOME, I am constitutionally incapable of going to a reasonably-priced shop and buying nothing.

  4. I love to cook. I love demystifying the cooking process, mainly, making “opaque” foods suddenly doable in my own kitchen. For example, until a few years ago, pizza to me was just… pizza. Never really cottoned on to the fact that it was basically an open-face sandwich even though I’d been eating it for years. (Yeah, OK, I’m a bit retarded.) It was something of a revelation to look at a pizza recipe and see that it was just bread and toppings and cheese and sauce. I’ve been unstoppable ever since!

  5. Like Shalaka, I always wish I had a better dress-up sense and make-up skills. I wish I could look as polished as some women manage all the time!

  6. I love being a mom. Yes, there were times that I even loved breastfeeding. What can I say? It’s a love-hate relationship I have with this motherhood deal.

  7. I love, love, LOVE being female. Well, OK, my privilege plays a huge part in this love, of course: if I was poor and lived in India I’m pretty sure I’d much rather be a man. But in my circumstances, as a reasonably well-off, educated, vocally feminist woman living in the US, whatever my other handicaps, I have greater freedom of self-expression than men. It’s great! I wouldn’t trade that for a little extra money or the ability to not become pregnant. Don’t you guys sometimes wish you were able to cross strict gender roles more easily? See, these posts on breaking gender norms are not totally a selfish exercise…

And that’s my list. Guy Who Commented Jokingly (I Hope) On Facebook (“I can understand you women wanting to be like us, but wearing only pants won’t get you there – nor will cussing.”) and Anonymous (“I sometimes find that the women who take up the mantle of women’s rights … suppress the feminine aspects of their self…”), please note: we who try to break gender norms don’t suffer from penis envy (or vagina envy). Really. To the best of my knowledge none of us are transsexual. I’m not trying to become a man, and the men who’ve responded are not trying to become women.

Of course, some people define “woman” and “man” according to prescribed behaviour rather than biology or preferred self-expression. Anonymous seems to be suffering that very affliction. “If you act like men all the time,” he says, “I’d have to be gay to like you. No? If you want to deny your feminity, then also stop expecting men to take ownership of the yard work, the heavy lifting etc. not to mention, opening that pickle bottle your mom sent you.”

Dude, I think you’re suffering from an overdose of 60′s-era Bollywood heroines. :P What, women are defined by their behaviour now?! Walk with swaying hips, grow your hair long, cultivate an air of helplessness around men (but be strong enough to do all kinds of heavy lifting in reality), lower your eyelashes modestly when men smile at you… Thus Spake The Handbook Of How To Be A Woman. And here I was thinking women are defined by, like, vaginas or boobies or choosing to be female. But what do I know, I even thought gay men were attracted to people with penises, when apparently any woman who can open her own pickle jar will do the trick!

Look, Anon, I don’t want to be harsh on you. Like I said before, this is stuff I’ve been reading up on for years, I don’t expect someone who hasn’t read much sociology or anything to do with gender studies to be attuned to the implications of everything you’re saying. But FYI, in just those two sentences, here is what you managed to say:

1. Womanhood and manhood are defined by adherence to certain behaviour, not biology/brainsexing/choosing to be a woman or man.

2. Gay men are not really gay, they are attracted to women who act manly.

3. To break prescribed gender roles is to deny my femininity.

4. Only men ever take ownership of yardwork, or do any heavy lifting, or open pickle jars.

5. It’s unfeminine to do yardwork or heavy lifting or open pickle jars.

6. And as a corollary, manhood is defined, in part, by yardwork and heavy lifting and opening pickle jars.

7. Women who break gender norms deserve the punishment of no man ever helping them when they need help with yardwork or heavy lifting or opening pickle jars.

8. And as a corollary, the chains of gender norms are the just price for women to pay for simple helpfulness from men in the areas of yardwork, heavy lifting and opening pickle jars.

9. It is the duty of women to be sexually attractive to you; this supercedes their desire for self-expression. (You’re free to like ultra-feminine women, of course, but you’re saying all women need to be that way.)

10. And as a corollary, all women are interested in is to garner the sexual attention of men like you. (Some men are attracted to butch, some women are interested in men at all, and many women are of the opinion that men can take it or leave it, we are who we are.)

I hope I don’t have to tell you that every single one of these statements is sexist, and several are homophobic and transphobic to boot. I don’t think you mean to be sexist or homophobic or transphobic. What you said is probably the result of unexamined beliefs rather than conscious bigotry. But don’t you think it’s time you examined your beliefs a little more thoroughly?

It would also help if you didn’t assume that everything feminists do is about men. (“[Feminists] suppress their femininity in the belief that if men like it, it must be a form of oppression.”) I assure you my little brain is capable of having preferences in what to wear, how to behave, etc. all on its ownsome; the purpose of my life is not to spite men but to live free.

All in all, Aamba summed it up perfectly when she said, “Here’s hoping for a future where we all get to choose the way we live our lives and what our likes, dislikes, and actions will be regardless of our gender!”

My Sins Against Gender Norms

3 Jul

This may not come as a surprise to people who know me or my blog, but “womanly” is not what comes to mind when you try to describe me. Fulfilling the obligations of this tag is therefore a walk in the park – no, scratch that, it’s being carried through the park on a palanquin. Hey, that’s a nice way to write a blog post: reclining in a luxurious palanquin lined with silk cushions, tapping away on my netbook to the background music of the palanquin bearers singing “hun huna hun huna hun huna re hun huna” a la kaliganj ki bahu. But I don’t think the parks around here have wireless internet, which makes this fantasy totally unrealistic.

Anyway, where was I? Listing my sins against gender norms. Right.

  1. I don’t wear a mangalsutra, or sindoor, or bindi or or toe-rings or any of the external symbols of marriage exclusive to women.

  2. I didn’t change my name after getting married.

  3. I am not the least bit religious. I don’t keep “vrats” or bond with other women over favourite deities.

  4. I wear pants all the time. Traditionally womanly clothes like skirts and salwaar kameezes and sarees either look like crap on me or they’re too much trouble.

  5. I’m not coy talking about sex or birth control.

  6. I am completely clueless in the universe of makeup. I tend to stay far away from all of it.

  7. I am logical and rational rather than emotional during arguments, to a degree that infuriates my husband.

  8. I talk, out loud, in very opinionated terms in both same-gender groups and mixed-gender groups. I’m rarely shy about calling people out on “manly” topics even if I’m the only woman in an all-male group.

  9. I swear. A lot. I’m trying to stop because when your kid starts saying “goddammit” it’s only cute a couple of times…

  10. I am not shy about saying that motherhood often sucks balls. It may have its compensation, but it is definitely a mixed bag.

The ever-insightful IHM asks women in the post in which she tagged me:

Have you ever wanted something that is considered ‘manly’ ? Like a basketball, a cell phone, a dog, a camera or a new laptop? A new car or motor bike? Ever wanted to be a pilot? A doctor or not a nurse? And the manliest want of them all – The remote!

To be honest, I looked at that list and thought: What? Dogs and cell phones and doctors are manly?!

But on a moment’s reflection, I realised my gut instinct is not very reliable for these things. I had parents who spent my entire childhood encouraging me to do whatever was best for me, gender roles be damned. I grew up rebellious and questioning and non-compliant, and I’ve remained an iconoclast into adulthood mostly because I can afford to: I know I can survive very well even if I become an outcaste, since I live in a free society in the internet age, I have skills and a good education, and thus hundreds of ways in which to earn my living without having to please the crazy gender police. I am not at their mercy.

But an overwhelming majority of women are at the mercy of the gender police for one reason or another.

Most women in our world are brought up to remain dependent on men for their survival, both literally and figuratively. The vast majority are denied education, an even bigger portion are forbidden from earning a living by being denied payment for the work they do. More insiduous than this is the near-universal brainwashing of women to think of their futures Disney-esquely, as if their lives end in marriage instead of marriage being a new beginning. The brainwashing comes from everywhere: remember when the whole of India asked without a trace of irony whether Aishwarya Rai will continue her acting/modeling career after marriage, and if so, won’t it be awkward if she has someone other than her husband in the role opposite her?

The final barrier is that of personality: few people are willing to risk and lose as many close relationships with family and friends as I have lost in the service of breaking all those gender norms. Most days I’m not even sure I’ve done the right thing in treating those relationships so cavalierly, but some inner compulsion drives me to do it regardless. I would not wish this drive on you, or on all the women who cow before family pressures or peer pressure, and trade a little bit of their freedom of self-expression for love and social harmony. Who says they didn’t make the right decision?

I think the point I am trying to make is this: I don’t think we ought to be too self-congratulatory about personally breaking gender norms. It’s more a measure of our privilege than our awesomeness. I think more worthwhile work lies in trying to change other people’s heart’s and minds about these issues, doing the difficult work of persuading rather than arguing…

IF you figure out how to do this, for the love of FSM drop by and tell me.

D’oh, I was supposed to tag people!

OK: Saurabh, “METWOH”, Jupiter Juice, Sherene, Mockingbird, Captain Molecule,Nimbupani, Angelsera, Tilopinion, Anil Karanam (who has a blog but no posts :P ), Heather and Lehmunade, you are all tagged. If you don’t have a blog, leve your sins against gender norms here in the comments. Anybody I’ve missed out, please tag yourselves!

Two Big Birthdays; Or, Ask Aunty Nandini

24 Jun

I haven’t posted a lot of baby stuff lately, which is a shame because Angad’s really something these days. I can hardly keep up with this boy: one minute he’s fixing to jump off the arm of the sofa and break his head on the coffee table, the next minute spinning himself dizzy while singing “ninga ninga dozes” (Angad-speak for ringa-ringa-roses), and before I can blink he’s dashing off to the car to “slide-u” (Kannada – and coincidentally also Japanese – for slide) down the windshield. It is a pleasure and the closest I’ve felt to what other people call a ‘blessing’ to watch him grow. Very cool.

Anyway, Angad turned two last month. That’s him up there about to cut his Thomas the Train birthday cake, eyeballs fairly popping. The cake was YUM. The party was not too shabby either.

The day after Angad’s birthday was Mothers’ Day, which coincided with the 50th birthday of the Pill being introduced in America. And here I kind of want to write about how awesome the Pill is (it is) and how much it’s done for women (a helluva lot) and what a brilliant thing contraception is in general (brilliant, brilliant, brilliant). But, meh, I’d kind of like people to move past the Pill to better options by now.

I don’t know about you but the Pill always made me want to throw up while simultaneously making me fat, like having bulimia without the weight loss benefits. I have friends who stopped wanting to have sex at all as a side effect of the Pill, irony of ironies. And let’s face it, it blows having to take a bloody hormone supplement – how does the ad go? – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, every day…

So what options does a girl have, you ask? (Sadly, our great and very egalitarian pharmaceutical industry thinks that contraceptives for men were perfected back in the 1800s and there’s no need for further innovation…. *sigh* so it’s just us girls having this conversation for now.)

You’re asking the right person, because I’ve tried a lot of this stuff. And most of them are just terrible:

1. Depo Provera, the hormone injection that you take every three months, makes you VERY fat. (I didn’t try this one; in before anybody else says I look like I did.) Plus it’s expensive.

2. The Ortho Evra Patch (stick a band aid type patch somewhere on your body, change it once a week, works by releasing a low dose of hormones) is quite good, but expensive since there are no generic alternatives yet.

3. The Nuvaring (stick a little plastic flexible ring in your vagina, change it once a month, works by releasing a low dose of hormones) is terrible because it falls out or needs to be taken out a lot, plus it’s expensive since there are no generic alternatives yet.

4. Implanon (an honest-to-goodness futuristic IMPLANT, tucked into the skin under your upper arm and stays in for three years, works by releasing a very low dose of hormones) may work for you. I haven’t tried it since it wasn’t available in my zamana, but it freaks me out. Even though generic alternatives are not available yet, its cost does get averaged out over three whole years so it’s not expensive.

5. Centchroman (a non-hormonal pill taken every day that works by making you ovulate at the wrong time, thus preventing implantation) is for some reason only legal in India where it is sold under the brand name Saheli. I was considering this when Angad kind of … happened. Never tried it, information about this is very welcome.

6. You can try the good old rhythm method – natural family planning. Insert strong words of caution here: even if you go the high-tech route and take your basal body temperature first thing in the morning and all that jazz, this method has a typical failure rate of 32%. That means 32 out of every 100 people using this method are preggers within one year. Oops.

7. And finally I get to talk about IUDs. I have three words for you all: IUDs. Are. Awesome. They’re little plastic or copper thingummies inserted into the uterus, that work by releasing either a very low dose of hormones or minuscule amounts of copper. Their failure rate is less than 0.5% (compare to the Pill at 8% typical use failure rate, and condoms at 15%)! The worst thing you can say about the IUD is that it hurts when your doctor puts it in, yeah, but that’s no worse than bad menstrual cramps. The pain is gone in a couple of hours. The best part? You’re set for five to ten years,you guys, depending on whether you get the hormonal IUD or the non-hormonal copper kind. (You’re not locked in to the 5-to-10 year commitment either; they can be taken out anytime you feel like having a kid.)

Now some of you may have idiotic doctors who tell you you can’t get an IUD until you’ve given birth. This is your cue to fire your doctor and get a new one. A small percentage of the population may have uteri too small for an IUD to stay in but that’s no reason to stick with a doctor who refuses IUDs to nulliparous women on principle. That’s just stupid. IUDs are the most popular contraceptive on earth. For some really random reason, it’s not very popular in the US: apparently only 1% of women here use it. *eyeroll* You don’t have to miss out, though.

Rather belatedly in honour of both Mother’s Day and the Pill’s 50th birthday, I exhort those of you who are trying not to become moms to get with the program, and get an IUD. Stop wasting your time with Pills and rings and patches and injections. You can thank me later. :)

Dr. George Tiller Was a Hero: Redux

22 Apr

One cold and very windy morning late in December of 2007, I was at the doctor’s office, 20 weeks pregnant and about to find out if my baby was going to be a pink baby or a blue baby. The nurse ran the scanner over my belly and – definitely a boy, just take a look at that ultrasound, oh he is not the shy type!. I remember it like it happened last week. The nurse left the room taking the ultrasound images with her. I pulled my shirt down over my pregnancy bump, my BOY bump. Saurabh did a hoppy little dance around the room, I’m gonna have a boy, I’m gonna have a boy. I forgot to be feministily annoyed at him for this, because I was just too full of glee myself – ultrasounds are awesome, you get to see your kid waving and kicking and generally living it up, and it’s all in your uterus. We phoned both sets of grandparents-to-be. And we went back to work, all big smiles and springy steps, because how often does it happen in a person’s life that they’re 20 weeks pregnant and they just found out they’re having a boy? It was a special day.

Then I got the doctor’s call in the afternoon.

An ultrasound isn’t done for frivolous things like helping colour-coding parents decide what colour to paint the nursery. It’s a serious diagnostic tool, one that helps OBGYNs determine if the fetus is growing well, whether it’s healthy, whether there are any signs of impending birth defects. In the excitement of is-it-a-boy-or-a-girl, it’s easy for parents to forget that there’s going to be a phone call later once the doctor has looked at the images, and that phone call will contain maybe good news, maybe bad news, or maybe ‘maybe’ news.

That afternoon, I got some ‘maybe’ news. An earlier blood test had shown that I was a carrier of the cystic fibrosis gene. This in itself doesn’t mean much. It’s a recessively inherited trait, and since Saurabh’s bloodwork had come back clean of known types of CF, there was no chance of our kids getting the disease – except for the tiny possibility of unknown types of CF the blood tests don’t know to look for. Now, the doctor had seen something in the ultrasound – possible cysts or masses of fibre, which had shown up as opaque white spots near the fetus’s intestine. Maybe the white spot was some floating amniotic matter it had accidentally swallowed… or it could be that the baby was going to be born with cystic fibrosis.

It’s a scary, scary disease.

CF is caused by a mutation in the gene for the protein cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). This gene is required to regulate the components of sweat, digestive juices, and mucus. …

The name cystic fibrosis refers to the characteristic scarring (fibrosis) and cyst formation within the pancreas. Difficulty breathing is the most serious symptom and results from frequent lung infections that are treated, though not cured, by antibiotics and other medications. A multitude of other symptoms, including sinus infections, poor growth, diarrhea, and infertility result from the effects of CF on other parts of the body. …

There is no cure, and most individuals with cystic fibrosis die at a young age — many in their 20s and 30s from lung failure. Ultimately, lung transplantation is often necessary as CF worsens.

All day I had been hardly-working in the office, my mind in a happy flutter of it’s a boy, heee heeeee, it’s a boy. After the phone call my mind was just blank…. for about a minute. Within the next minute, I had a plan. I’m good at dealing with crises, you know. It’s a dubious distinction, because it tends to make me the sort of person who waits for a crisis in order to begin dealing with anything. But when a crisis actually happens, a clear head is a precious and welcome blessing.

I knew what I had to do. Step 1: call Saurabh. Step 2: call the doctor to ask for more details (all the information I had now was a voice message on my cell phone left by the nurse). Step 3: get more tests done. Step 4: possibly get an amniocentesis, a painful and slightly dangerous procedure where they take a sample of amniotic fluid by means of a long needle inserted into the abdomen, in order to directly analyse the fetal cells for genetic abnormalities. The whole thing would probably take – quick Googling gave me the answer – two weeks. In the meantime, do we tell grandparents-to-be? Not until we knew for certain one way or another. OK. Deep breath. Don’t be tense. It’s bad for the baby. Time to work the plan.

Step 1 went smoothly. Talking to Saurabh was good, because he was all, No way, our kid doesn’t have CF. Come on. That’s so unlikely. I knew he was being totally irrational but it was nice to hear it nevertheless. (If he’s reading this, he’s going to be rolling his eyes going I was right. Shut up, Saurabh. :P )

Step 2. I called the doctor. Now, up until that point I had liked this doctor. She was impressive and seemed very competent even if she was a little brusque. But in that one phone call she showed herself to be such a MORON that I am still angry about what she said to this day. I mean, here I am, scared to death that my kid might have a horrible deadly disease. I say: hello, please tell me what’s going on, can you explain to me why you think my kid might have CF.

Her response: There’s definitely an abnormality that I can see in the ultrasound. But that’s not what we need to think about now. The real question is this: what are YOU going to do if your fetus has CF? You have to make a decision. Think about it.

And then she HUNG UP.

Can you imagine the effect of her words on me? Is she saying what I think she’s saying? Does she really mean I have to decide NOW whether I want an abortion? Is it going to be a legal problem if I want one? I vaguely remember there are only two or three people in this country who even do abortions after 23 weeks, is that why I need to hurry up and decide? Decide… Decide… Decide between killing the almost-baby I’ve spent five months carrying inside me… Or dooming a real, live child to a terrible disease and a painful, early death…

This time it was quite a while before my clear head kicked in. When it did, I had the sense enough to get angry with the doctor’s callousness and appalling lack of bedside manner, not to mention her dismissiveness and reluctance to take the time to answer my questions. I called her back and made her answer. We had more tests. The tests went well, everything was fine and the specialist couldn’t even figure out why my stupid doctor had thought it was CF. I eventually gave birth to my healthy little boy, who’s going to turn two in a couple of weeks’ time.

But when I saw this amazing article about Dr. George Tiller today, I was reminded of those few awful moments during which I contemplated my options, tried to choose between fatal disease and late-term abortion. And I don’t know 1/1000th of the real deal, do I? My alarm turned out to be a false alarm; there are millions of others who grapple with actual crisis pregnancies every year. Can we begin to imagine what their thoughts must be like?

I’m even more terrified when I think of the possibility of there being no options. Maybe CF is, bad as it is, an OK disease… at least the child lives to be about 20 years old. What if it was something else, something that may kill my baby much quicker – or worse, slowly and painfully? What if I had been forced by law to carry such a baby to term, give birth to it, make it suffer, watch it die?

Now you know why this is personal for me.

People talk about how having kids has made them pro-life… Any person with half a brain would go the opposite direction, I think. Being pregnant made me start thinking about my pro-choice-ness a little more seriously than I used to. Giving birth made me a steadfast, ardent, vocal supporter of abortion rights.

Thank FSM for George Tiller, and the two other doctors in the US who do late-term abortions. Out of all the big deaths of last year, his was the one that affected me the most and brings me grief and anger to this day. Trust women, he said. Trust women not to be monsters. Trust that they will not get pregnant for the heck of it, puke out their meals for three months straight, suffer swollen feet and swollen ankles and swollen bellies, endure the hemhorroids and endless heartburn, and then near the very end on a whim decide that HEY, I LOOK FAT SO I’M GONNA GET ME AN ABORTION. Trust women.

Buffy Squee And Buffy Boo

15 Apr

Isn’t Buffy The Vampire Slayer awesome?

Saurabh and I have been watching two or three episodes a week for a couple of months now, and we’re absolutely loving it. We’re halfway through Season 3 already. I can safely say this is the only non-sitcom that has ever managed to sustain my interest this long. Heroes, Lost, Six Feet Under, and 24 all fizzled out after the first season but Buffy has endured. And this despite the big inherent weakness of a show of this type – the whole Monster Of The Week deal, which in general is synonymous with repetitive and boring. But surprisingly, not in Buffy. Suprisinglier still, the show works on several levels even when the Monster Of The Week doesn’t. Strong writing, good vision, and lots of emotional torture for the main character… there’s your magic formula, screenwriters!

This is not to say it’s flawless, however.

For one thing, it irks me that in a so-called feminist show the Monster Of The Week is always male. If the MOTW is female – only twice so far! – she is the exception that proves the rule, consigned as she is to the role of KILLER-UTERUS: the female giant preying mantis kidnaps young men only to breed with them. Male MOTW, on the other hand, have any number of motivations for their evil. They’re men, so they’re allowed an existence outside of babies, eh? The show’s staple bad-guys are vampires, and male vampires seem to outnumber female vampires twenty to one, too.

This has been a pet theory of mine for a long time. Why are Orcs always male? Why are Oompa Loompas always male? Why are goblins, leprechauns, centaurs and giants always male? I think when women have achieved parity in villainousness, with equal representation in major and disposable villains alike, we will have taken a big step forward.

But at least one can’t fault the show for having its heart in the right place when it comes to representations of women. According to creator Joss Whedon, “the very first mission statement of the show … was the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.” And in many ways, Buffy succeeds in its portrayal of a strong, multi-dimensional female character.

When it comes to race, however, we can’t even say the show has its heart in the right place. There isn’t even an attempt at tokenism here. Sunnydale is as white as white bread with crusts cut off, and just as unnatural and unsatisfying. There isn’t a single major character of ANY colour but white – no black people, no Asians, no native Americans, no Hispanic people. That’s worth repeating, you guys – no Hispanic people in California. Not even in that episode set in LA. Season 2 had a Caribbean slayer show up for one episode who was promptly killed off in the season finale, so that doesn’t count. Season 3 has introduced a black vampire called Mr. Trick and he’s been on screen for maybe 10 minutes total, if that. Interestingly, MsOTW come in all colours – red, blue, green, purple, black, grey – but unless they’re vampires they’re never white.

This matters. Representation matters. If you’re writing stories that are set in a certain time and place, you ought to write about all the people who live in that time and place, and try very hard not to filter characters based on skin colour. Is this not elementary? Is this not obvious?

For months I’ve had an unfinished draft of a post sitting in my queue. It was going to be a post about why representation is important – why it really is a big deal that in the mainstream media we see and hear so few stories of anything other than the straight-white(or other majority, like Hindu)-male. I never could find a captivating way to write that post, but today I stumbled across another blogger who said it all for me better than I could have.

It’s tempting to quote her whole entire post, but I will try to limit myself to the choicest bits if you promise to go read all of it here.

Stories teach us how to survive. They tell us that our lives can be transcendent, that we can overcome almost anything, no matter how strange, that we can go into the black wood and come out again, that the witch can be burned up in her own oven, that we can find someone who fits a shoe, that the youngest, unloved child will find their way in the world, that those who suffer can become strong, can escape, can find their way into comfort and joy again. That there are secrets, and they are always worth discovering, that there are more and different creatures in the world than we can ever imagine, and not all want to eat us. Stories teach us how to win through, how to perservere, how to live.

As a child of abuse, fairy tales kept me going when I was a girl. Because Gretel could kill the witch, because Snow White could come back from death, because Rapunzel could live even in the desert–then, well, I could too. I could dry my tears and clean up the blood and keep living. This is what stories do. They say: you are worthy of the world, no less than these heroes.

And when we see story after story that has no one like us in it, a book entirely without women, a TV show where white people speak Chinese but there are no Asians visible, a movie set in California without Hispanics, image after image of a world where everyone is straight, and when we are told that it’s no big deal, really, there is no race in future societies, that it’s not anyone’s fault if all the characters are white, that’s just how they are, in the pure authorial mind, that we have no sense of humor, that we are ganging up on people because we speak our minds, this is what we hear:

You do not have a right to live. There are no stories for you, to teach you how to survive, because the world would prefer you didn’t. You don’t get to be human, to understand your suffering or move beyond it. In the perfect future society, you do not exist. We who are colorblind, genderblind, sexualityblind would prefer not to see you even now. In the world we make in our heads, you have been obliterated–even better, you never were. You are incapable of transcendance. You are not worthy of the most essential of human behavior. If you are lucky, we will let you into our stories, and you can learn to be a whore, or someone’s mother, or someone’s slave, or someone’s prey. That is all you are, so pay attention: this is what we want to teach you to be.

…

It is eugenics.

That is what this is about. … Only those who look a certain way, act a certain way, fuck a certain way are allowed to have the blueprint, to have any guide on a path grace, peace, love in their lives. Everyone else can just lay down and die.

And since there is nothing I can say that can top that, this is where this post ends.

Biology vs Culture DEATHMATCH! (Part 2)

4 Apr

Story so far: Amit Varma took a look at the lives of Indian women, examined the additional hurdles to independent identity/actions placed in their paths every step of the way, and declared that this played little role compared to women’s innate genetic politics-hating-ness in why so few women “naturally” make it in Indian politics without reservation. I outlined a few over those overwhelming hurdles in an effort to suggest they cannot be brushed aside so lightly.

In this second part, I’m going to show you that the OMG BIOLOGY hypothesis is truly and completely bullshit. This is because evolutionary psychology (EP) is a bullshit field in general, one that is very prone to endorsing sexism, racism and other Very Bad And Harmful Social Attitudes.

See, the biggest problem with EP is that nobody’s ever found a “dependent/clingy/emotional/anti-math/anti-screwdriver/I-hate-sex/pink-loving” gene in women. There isn’t any sign of a “beer-loving/fat-women-hating/unable-to-see-dirt/umemotional/rape-loving” gene that is exclusive to men either. Hard evidence is really, really important, because that’s what gives weight to explanations of social observations.

For example, you can’t just prove that men outperform women at math and deduce from it that men have better math genes. Claude Steele is a researcher whose work on gender differences in learning gives solid grounding to the concern that simply saying that women are genetically inferior at math is exactly what makes women bad at math. Steele studies the way stereotypes affect people’s performance. And he has found that when women are told that a test is going to measure cognitive differences between genders they tend to do much worse than men. But when they’re told a test is gender-blind, they tend to perform as well. The pressure of the “stereotype threat,” as Steel terms it, actually leads women to do worse.

Consider the case of classical musicians: until blind auditions were held for national orchestras, women were radically underrepresented in field of classical music. Many had argued that women have less wind power and were biologically incapable of performance at highest levels on many instruments. Since blind auditions have been held, though, the participation of women has risen precipitously—evidence that it was almost entirely discrimination that was keeping women out.

Hard evidence in support of EP is completely absent. In my opinion this makes evolutionary psychology only the most recent in a long string of ideologies that keep cropping up in our world to justify the supremacy of the fair-skinned often-western male. Natalie Angier, author of Women: An Intimate Geography and a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer is puts it scathingly:

In the Darwin-o-gram reckoning of human nature, a stereotype is not an intellectual pitfall to guard against; it’s an opportunity! What is a stereotype if not an expression of a potentially universal truth, which means it could be the signpost of an adaptation, a trait that might have conferred selective advantage on those who bore it? All of which merits further exploration by the distribution of a questionnaire to a couple of hundred willing college students to see whether or not they believe the stereotype to be true.

EP works so well for men. Religion proclaimed him owner of the earth and everything in it. The concept of the white man’s burden proclaimed him king of the world’s people. The Hindu caste system proclaimed him leader of the dark-skinned untouchables. White supremacy proclaimed him master of the coloured folks. How convenient for the modern “progressive” internet-class males that “SCIENCE” confirms their exclusive right to all the power, wealth and women in the world.

That’s what Amit claims: that men are naturally power-seeking, women naturally shun power, so it’s only fair that men are the only ones that have any political power. Note that nowhere did he provide any scientific evidence for this. He invokes the sacred name of science while steadfastly refusing to be at all scientific. But if you dispute his claims he turns around and accuses you of not believing in science and trying to censor science.

Oh, the irony.

All Amit and his ilk have is “logic”. But what if I turned this logic on its head? It’s easy: politics is a fundamentally people-oriented business. And hey, guess which “science” tells us that women are biologically people-oriented and men are biologically machine-oriented! Let’s try another tack: politics is about building better communities by taking care of the people’s needs. The ideal politician is one who sacrifices self in the cause of helping others. Hmm. I wonder which gender according to evolutionary psychologists is intrinsically more in tune with communities at large, more nurturing, empathetic, and interested in helping others?

Since I as your newly minted evo psych expert have now proved that evolutionarily speaking, women are biologically fine-tuned for the task of being politicians, haven’t I thus also proved that it is UNFAIR that politics is male-dominated? Obviously the men are stopping the biologically good politicians from doing what they should because they are power-hungry, oppressive boors.

This is the second reason why evo psych is bullshit. You can draw any conclusion you like from it. You can justify contradictory points of view with it. You can make it tell you what you want to hear every single time. If a theory does not make actual predictions, it is not science. Because where’s the test for it anymore? Falsifiability is a non-negotiable requirement of any scientific hypothesis. Science rejects most God hypotheses for precisely this reason: postulating God is not useful, and since it predicts nothing there’s nothing can happen in the universe that will prove the non-existence of God. This is the basis for Russel’s Teapot and parody religions like the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Falsifiability is an alien notion to evolutionary psychology. It makes no predictions, only offers just-so stories to explain observed behaviour. Take the claim that women prefer redder hues because as stone age gatherers women had to look out for red berries to pick. Couldn’t we just as easily reason that women like red because red is the colour of blood which leaks out of them every month showing that they are still fertile YAY? Or maybe women have always been nuts about flowers, and their favourite flowers have always been red roses…? Or maybe red is a colour associated with strong emotions and women are obviously more emotional than men? We could go on all day. None of these explanations is any less logical than the other. None has any more evidence for it than another. But somehow EP picks the berry theory. Most red berries are actually inedible the world over, so if women had any brains they’s consider red a sign of poison or danger. Just goes to show, eh?

Another example is human propensity to fight vs human propensity to co-operate. Noam Chomsky says:

“You find that people cooperate, you say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their genes’ perpetuating.’ You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else’s. Just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it.”

What’s interesting is how very often the behaviour being explained as genetically ordained corresponds very closely to what was considered normal in USA in the 1950s – an era stunningly similar to the Old Stone Age apparently! So we have EP’s biggest champions saying that women are pogrammed to be dependent on men; that women ought to stay home and make babies and only think about having a career in their 40s when the kids are grown; that women prefer pink (what a 1950s concept that is! Before that pink was considered a very manly colour); that everything related to race and gender are not socially constructed but genetically programmed, e.g. that living in a ghetto is genetically progammed into those tribalistic Africans; women love being raped and men are biologically programmed to rape;

Let’s also try basic common sense. Consider the claims of evolutionary psychologists that men are biologically wired to be more likely to seek power. The question then becomes, how much more likely? And does the real world reflect this probability distribution?

One evo psych claim for which we do have hard data is that men are genetically better at math, and are more likely to be very good at math than women are. This famous Lawrence Summers claim shows a distribution which gives us real numbers: men are about 3-6 times more likely than women to be very good at math.

But the real world does not reflect this distribution. Math faculties at universities around the world are almost guaranteed to be staffed by men only. Harvard just tenured a senior female mathematics professor for the FIRST TIME in its 374 year existence! This overwhelming lack of female math professors is clearly not the result of biology.

To summarise:

  • There is no hard evidence for EP; no genes have been found to confirm its theories.

  • EP makes no predictions and is not falsifiable; it is thus disqualified from claiming to be science altogether.

  • EP, even if assumed correct, does not account for real world gender imbalances – not even close.

Does it make any sense at all for people to cry OMG BIOLOGY at every attempt by oppressed minorities to legislate equal rights into the real world? I hope it’s clear that I am not among those who claim that men and women are biologically identical. I freely grant the existence of biological differences. But this does not justify unequal rights, or unequal opportunity. It does not justify bias against women as a class which always manifests itself as bias against some individual woman at the mercy of a statistical fallacy. And most important, it does not justify doing nothing to rectify real-world systemic oppressions, denials of opportunity and biases against women.

I mean, let’s say EP is simply TRUE, assume we have evidence, assume even that it fully or mostly accounts for why so few women are in politics. EVEN THEN, reservation for women in politics makes a lot of sense – in fact it would be even more necessary than it is now. Because if there is no hope for women in politics even after wiping out discrimination, then what other way than reservation do we have to get women into politics?

A democratic republic MUST HAVE WOMEN IN POLITICS. Amit Varma is fundamentally wrong when he says that politics should be a “merit based” profession, whatever “merit” is in this context (the ability to win elections?). Politics, unlike say engineering, is ideally about representation and not “may the best man win”. Switzerland works by putting every single government decision to vote with the general public – god only knows how they manage to keep that working (I should really read up sometime) – but India works by electing representatives who do the nitty-gritty policy voting for the people. Human beings being who they are, every representative will best represent the segment of population that he identifies with: a Hindu brahmin man from a big city is quite unlikely to fathom the needs of an adivasi woman who lives on a mountain, much less be willing to fight in parliament for them. For representation to work, diversity of representation is an absolute requirement.

So you see, even if women are somehow genetically programmed to not seek power, democratic priciples dictate that we do everything we can to get women into power anyway. Only women can fully represent women’s interests – and I hope I do not need to explain why it is important for the interests of half the population to be adequately represented. (The same principle applies to other marginalised sectors of society: poor people, LGBT people, illiterate people, disabled people, people from SC/STs, etc. Ideally, our house of representatives would be a microcosm of the country itself to the best degree of accuracy possible.) This is why reservations – positive discriminations or quotas or whatever you choose to call it – is such a good idea, such a necessary idea. They can be misused – they are being misused – but that is no reason to disqualify its basic soundness.

Remember the papers I linked to in Part 1? Reservation not only achieves representation for minorities in the short term, it also keeps working even after the policy has ended. It is proven to reduce bias against not just female politicians but females in general.

That sounds like something we should be appluading, doesn’t it?

Related Funnies To Make Up For Lack Of Jokes In My Post:
Tom Tomorrow on EP guru David Brooks
Belief in EP May Be Hardwired, Study Says
Evolutionary Psychology Bingo Card

← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.