Mostly opinion, but contains something on Rome (skip down to big quoteblock).
About post 254:
<!--QuoteBegin-ravish+Sep 25 2008, 08:56 PM-->QUOTE(ravish @ Sep 25 2008, 08:56 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Arshi is a literary invention[right][snapback]88452[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Of course she is.
Foreign countries as well as internal 'psecular' orgs are very interested in diverting and subverting subsets of the Indian population. They use the leveraging principle (since India's too big to reach down into every part and mess with): brainwashing people through bombardment with junk and through buying up strategically placed people like editors and presenters in print and visual media. It's all part of the grand experiment: Indian media including magazines like Femina, movements like the self-proclaimed feministas, drab books written by clueless characters purporting to explain the 'real' lie of the land to the ignorant Hindoo woman, etcetera. Other conditioned (or bought-and-paid-for) minions in India write pieces taking it out on Hindu epics and literature - like the oddity discussed at http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HkPage.aspx...EID=6769&SKIN=C
Indian feminism is a foreign insert that has been artificially introduced with the intention of creating cultural amnesia and confusion in Hindu women, and in the hope of creating misandry against Hindu men. Men and women are - respectively - seen as a threat and as a resource or means. Heathen men are considered the threat, heathen women can be made into temporary allies, though usually they are just considered easy pickings. Creating gender enmity is a valuable tool in subverting a population. The usual means are to portray the society as patriarchal and the males as either oppressive, not being able to provide security, not progressive (not liberated enough), and even more trivially as not attractive enough compared to whoever. The aim is to instill a certain *perception* that will create distrust and resentment in the hope that this will help in fracturing a society (in addition to that achieved by other subversions).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(Meanaxe) Reddy Madhavan said in a telephone interview that her characters reflected the real dualities that Indian women straddle.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->There will always be some trivial people (see also McCabe excerpt below) - and how humorous could life be without them anyway, who will the rest of the world poke fun at? But the statement that Meanaxe's imaginings represent "the real dualities that Indian women straddle" is too general a remark to be taken the least bit seriously.
Who elected her to be spokesperson for 50% of the Indian population? What Indian women is she talking about? Possibly only those that spook around in her head. Meanaxe's readership could easily consist of many (wo)men who accidentally pick up her book, find it hysterical and pass it on to other Indian (wo)men as a peek into the mental vacuity of some entities. That is, she and her work may merely be thought 'interesting' as an atrocity exhibition. Because, going by the article above (post 254), her opinions and ideas are certainly not worthy of any other sort of recommendation, nor are they conducive to giving any food for thought. Anyone may write better and make more relevant statements/more meaningful observations.
Never understood why such characters appoint themselves to speak for others. Actually, no, I think I do understand - it's the monotheistic tendency again: like every other subverted (controlled) kind, feministas have their absolutist monotheistic missions to "save" others - women in this case. They're bored, they need something to do, someone to save. There's always some mission the monotheistic ideologies have. And if they can't find one, they'll manufacture one.
In any case, Hindu women - and moreso the urban ones that Meanaxe has presumed to play the mouthpiece for here - can represent themselves and explain their own life's situation (if they feel the need for explanation) without needing recourse to another's intervention on their behalf - particularly the uninvited kind. And especially when that other is so alien in mental makeup to themselves. But if it turns out to be necessary, am sure they can find a more representative instance than the Meanaxe sort.
An example of the eternal existence in society of silly people - was also the case in history.
McCabe, I think:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Apart from intercourse with a married woman, a man was free in Roman (and all other) law. But there is no evidence that the middle and wealthy class of Rome were more free in practice than they are today. <b>There was always a "fast set," and it grew larger under the bad emperors.</b> These men gave, in their marble mansions with cedar ceilings, banquets which were orgies of choice wine and naked Syrian girls, while slaves in the roof poured perfume and flowers on the intoxicated guests. There is no reason whatever to think that this set was more numerous, proportionately, than the corresponding set which patronizes actresses and chorus-girls today, and sets up mistresses in luxurious apartments.
<b>But these are just the things which "get into the papers." Virtue, which we so much admire, is uninteresting. Vice, which we deplore, fascinates us; and the more picturesque it is, the more readily we read about it.</b>
Any real student of Roman literature will conclude that the great body of the men and women of Rome were as temperate and regular as we are. Really intimate and reliable pictures are best afforded by private letters, which reflect the character of the circle to which they belong. We have several volumes of such: the letters of Cicero, Pliny, Seneca, and Symmacbus. Every single letter could have been read without a blush by Theodore Roosevelt. Bryan would have been disappointed in them. They reflect, in different centuries, circles in which vice is ignored, as a thing not done by gentlemen.
I have already said that the Stoic philosophy had a wonderful influence in Rome. Emperors were Stoics. Crowds followed Stoic orators like Dion Chrysostom, or read Stoic moralists like Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. Most of the famous Roman jurists, the creators of European law, were Stoics: humanitarians of the highest character. A kind of blend of sober Stoicism and Epicureanism was the philosophy of life of the gentlemen of Rome. Their letters, and such works as the "Saturnalia" of Macrobius, a slave author who describes what is under his eyes in his master's house, give us the true measure of Roman character. lt was generally fine.
The two leading authorities of our time on the subject are Gaston Boissier ("La religion romaine"), and Sir Samuel Dill, a Protestant ("Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius," "Roman Society in the Last Centuries of the Western Empire"). They agree in this verdict. Dill, in particular, analyzes the whole Roman literature for the first, fourth and fifth centuries, and he comes to the same conclusion that I have. The middle- and wealthy-class Romans, as a body, were as decent as we are. Another Protestant writer, a close student of Rome, Dr. Emil Reich, breaks into indignation when be notices ("The History of Civilization, p. 371) how his religious colleagues slander Rome. "The average Roman gentleman," he says, "was a firm believer in the pure doctrines of the Stoic" and he writes a long and glowing eulogy of what he sarcastically calls "these rotten Romans."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Don't think we need to panic when some characters in India choose to be trivial either. In a country of nearly a billion, there's bound to be some extreme oddities. They do not make up the core of the population nor are they representative of it. And the sad output of their limited 'intellect' will mostly invite scorn rather than producing any considerable effect on society.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Arshi's liberties make her a feminist of a kind, she said. But Arshi also sees men as emotional and financial feeding tubes.
"If she were a true feminist," the author added, "she wouldn't <b>need</b> him to <b>define</b> her."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->How deep that is. How well-observed.
arcasm
Tsss, the kind of banal statements that some people keep spouting as if these were insightful observations...
"Defining"
People are always affected by the presence of others in their lives. Your parents, siblings, family, choice of friends, choice of spouse/lover, offspring - define you. As do the strength and depth of relationships you build with them and which they build with you. Your interests, the things you are willing to expend effort and time on, your thoughts, experiences, also illustrate your character.
In particular, the sort of people you *choose* to be with (friends, spouse) - as opposed to those you can't choose (family) - betrays a lot about you to the rest of the world.
"Needing"
Except for children and people with some serious physical or mental disability, no one *needs* others when you have a steady income and are able to strike up casual conversations with anyone when you feel like it. Yet, daily, people still *choose* to get married or to enter into some kind of serious relationship, including regular friendship. Why does Meanaxe single out the man as not being required for 'defining' a woman? What about regular female/male friends - why not protest to their presence/interference? Why not suggest ditching them as well since they are also crowding the individualist's character? Oh, but I forget, Meanaxe was talking about feminists here; there's no room for general misanthropy, only for misandry. But Meanaxe has her work cut out for her in trying to squeeze society to conform to her distorted views, since by far most women don't see men as a separate/distinct group, and vice-versa. When it comes down to it, we're just animals. And there's no telling animals to get liberated from the 'other' either. We don't hear her, because the entire topic of her conditioned monologue is alien and irrelevant to us.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"I have super-feminist friends who will conform to gender roles with their partners, like they'll take it upon themselves to be more nurturing than their partner would be, taking care of them when they're sick, cooking and stuff like that," Reddy Madhavan said.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->"Super-feminist friends". How super.
All relationships involve sacrifice. But only unprincipled entities would make themselves do something when they don't have to/don't want to ("conform to gender roles with their partners, they'll take it upon themselves to be more nurturing than their partner would be".) You get what you put in. If people have to fake their life and feelings, they have only themselves to blame when they get nothing out of it. They can choose to stay alone or choose to be in a relationship. People should quit whining about their own choices. They can always unmake them. The world these people are living in is a free one, where no one is twisting their arm to stay with their partner. Only their fear of "ending up alone" is keeping them there. Not the best of reasons by a long shot.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"I find myself doing this every now and then," she added. "It's partly fear that if you spend your entire life bucking the norm and being different, I might end up alone and eaten by my cat."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Meanaxe wants that "different" tag, bet it makes her feel special. She is special in a way - in that she is uniquely forgettable. Her thoughts are inconsequential, uninspiring, not worthwhile; she's not even an original thinker. At best, someone in the future may bring out her book or name as an example of a social conditioning experiment gone wrong. Eewww. Wouldn't people rather be forgotten altogether than remembered as a failure? Or maybe feministas, like communistas, are *aiming* for the latter: infamy as the price of immortality. Go for it, I say.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas reports: Indian feminism is the feminism of compromise.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Ugh, no. Please no. Not another affected truism to toss out there as if it was oh so profound. If people *wanted* such deep-sounding lines that are meant to pass for insight, we would all be writing our own random sentence generator rather than hearing an insipid bot compose one.
Feminism in general merely hijacked the earlier movements for women's rights in the west; movements which started as a consequence of the enlightenment and which had gone on to encompass the suffragette movement (equal pay for equal work), agitations for entry into universities and of course voting rights. These were all meaningful issues - very necessary in the western world where christo misogyny had refused these basics to western women for so long until they finally woke up and demanded their rights.
About post 254:
<!--QuoteBegin-ravish+Sep 25 2008, 08:56 PM-->QUOTE(ravish @ Sep 25 2008, 08:56 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Arshi is a literary invention[right][snapback]88452[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Of course she is.
Foreign countries as well as internal 'psecular' orgs are very interested in diverting and subverting subsets of the Indian population. They use the leveraging principle (since India's too big to reach down into every part and mess with): brainwashing people through bombardment with junk and through buying up strategically placed people like editors and presenters in print and visual media. It's all part of the grand experiment: Indian media including magazines like Femina, movements like the self-proclaimed feministas, drab books written by clueless characters purporting to explain the 'real' lie of the land to the ignorant Hindoo woman, etcetera. Other conditioned (or bought-and-paid-for) minions in India write pieces taking it out on Hindu epics and literature - like the oddity discussed at http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HkPage.aspx...EID=6769&SKIN=C
Indian feminism is a foreign insert that has been artificially introduced with the intention of creating cultural amnesia and confusion in Hindu women, and in the hope of creating misandry against Hindu men. Men and women are - respectively - seen as a threat and as a resource or means. Heathen men are considered the threat, heathen women can be made into temporary allies, though usually they are just considered easy pickings. Creating gender enmity is a valuable tool in subverting a population. The usual means are to portray the society as patriarchal and the males as either oppressive, not being able to provide security, not progressive (not liberated enough), and even more trivially as not attractive enough compared to whoever. The aim is to instill a certain *perception* that will create distrust and resentment in the hope that this will help in fracturing a society (in addition to that achieved by other subversions).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(Meanaxe) Reddy Madhavan said in a telephone interview that her characters reflected the real dualities that Indian women straddle.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->There will always be some trivial people (see also McCabe excerpt below) - and how humorous could life be without them anyway, who will the rest of the world poke fun at? But the statement that Meanaxe's imaginings represent "the real dualities that Indian women straddle" is too general a remark to be taken the least bit seriously.
Who elected her to be spokesperson for 50% of the Indian population? What Indian women is she talking about? Possibly only those that spook around in her head. Meanaxe's readership could easily consist of many (wo)men who accidentally pick up her book, find it hysterical and pass it on to other Indian (wo)men as a peek into the mental vacuity of some entities. That is, she and her work may merely be thought 'interesting' as an atrocity exhibition. Because, going by the article above (post 254), her opinions and ideas are certainly not worthy of any other sort of recommendation, nor are they conducive to giving any food for thought. Anyone may write better and make more relevant statements/more meaningful observations.
Never understood why such characters appoint themselves to speak for others. Actually, no, I think I do understand - it's the monotheistic tendency again: like every other subverted (controlled) kind, feministas have their absolutist monotheistic missions to "save" others - women in this case. They're bored, they need something to do, someone to save. There's always some mission the monotheistic ideologies have. And if they can't find one, they'll manufacture one.
In any case, Hindu women - and moreso the urban ones that Meanaxe has presumed to play the mouthpiece for here - can represent themselves and explain their own life's situation (if they feel the need for explanation) without needing recourse to another's intervention on their behalf - particularly the uninvited kind. And especially when that other is so alien in mental makeup to themselves. But if it turns out to be necessary, am sure they can find a more representative instance than the Meanaxe sort.
An example of the eternal existence in society of silly people - was also the case in history.
McCabe, I think:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Apart from intercourse with a married woman, a man was free in Roman (and all other) law. But there is no evidence that the middle and wealthy class of Rome were more free in practice than they are today. <b>There was always a "fast set," and it grew larger under the bad emperors.</b> These men gave, in their marble mansions with cedar ceilings, banquets which were orgies of choice wine and naked Syrian girls, while slaves in the roof poured perfume and flowers on the intoxicated guests. There is no reason whatever to think that this set was more numerous, proportionately, than the corresponding set which patronizes actresses and chorus-girls today, and sets up mistresses in luxurious apartments.
<b>But these are just the things which "get into the papers." Virtue, which we so much admire, is uninteresting. Vice, which we deplore, fascinates us; and the more picturesque it is, the more readily we read about it.</b>
Any real student of Roman literature will conclude that the great body of the men and women of Rome were as temperate and regular as we are. Really intimate and reliable pictures are best afforded by private letters, which reflect the character of the circle to which they belong. We have several volumes of such: the letters of Cicero, Pliny, Seneca, and Symmacbus. Every single letter could have been read without a blush by Theodore Roosevelt. Bryan would have been disappointed in them. They reflect, in different centuries, circles in which vice is ignored, as a thing not done by gentlemen.
I have already said that the Stoic philosophy had a wonderful influence in Rome. Emperors were Stoics. Crowds followed Stoic orators like Dion Chrysostom, or read Stoic moralists like Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. Most of the famous Roman jurists, the creators of European law, were Stoics: humanitarians of the highest character. A kind of blend of sober Stoicism and Epicureanism was the philosophy of life of the gentlemen of Rome. Their letters, and such works as the "Saturnalia" of Macrobius, a slave author who describes what is under his eyes in his master's house, give us the true measure of Roman character. lt was generally fine.
The two leading authorities of our time on the subject are Gaston Boissier ("La religion romaine"), and Sir Samuel Dill, a Protestant ("Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius," "Roman Society in the Last Centuries of the Western Empire"). They agree in this verdict. Dill, in particular, analyzes the whole Roman literature for the first, fourth and fifth centuries, and he comes to the same conclusion that I have. The middle- and wealthy-class Romans, as a body, were as decent as we are. Another Protestant writer, a close student of Rome, Dr. Emil Reich, breaks into indignation when be notices ("The History of Civilization, p. 371) how his religious colleagues slander Rome. "The average Roman gentleman," he says, "was a firm believer in the pure doctrines of the Stoic" and he writes a long and glowing eulogy of what he sarcastically calls "these rotten Romans."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Don't think we need to panic when some characters in India choose to be trivial either. In a country of nearly a billion, there's bound to be some extreme oddities. They do not make up the core of the population nor are they representative of it. And the sad output of their limited 'intellect' will mostly invite scorn rather than producing any considerable effect on society.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Arshi's liberties make her a feminist of a kind, she said. But Arshi also sees men as emotional and financial feeding tubes.
"If she were a true feminist," the author added, "she wouldn't <b>need</b> him to <b>define</b> her."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->How deep that is. How well-observed.
arcasm Tsss, the kind of banal statements that some people keep spouting as if these were insightful observations...
"Defining"
People are always affected by the presence of others in their lives. Your parents, siblings, family, choice of friends, choice of spouse/lover, offspring - define you. As do the strength and depth of relationships you build with them and which they build with you. Your interests, the things you are willing to expend effort and time on, your thoughts, experiences, also illustrate your character.
In particular, the sort of people you *choose* to be with (friends, spouse) - as opposed to those you can't choose (family) - betrays a lot about you to the rest of the world.
"Needing"
Except for children and people with some serious physical or mental disability, no one *needs* others when you have a steady income and are able to strike up casual conversations with anyone when you feel like it. Yet, daily, people still *choose* to get married or to enter into some kind of serious relationship, including regular friendship. Why does Meanaxe single out the man as not being required for 'defining' a woman? What about regular female/male friends - why not protest to their presence/interference? Why not suggest ditching them as well since they are also crowding the individualist's character? Oh, but I forget, Meanaxe was talking about feminists here; there's no room for general misanthropy, only for misandry. But Meanaxe has her work cut out for her in trying to squeeze society to conform to her distorted views, since by far most women don't see men as a separate/distinct group, and vice-versa. When it comes down to it, we're just animals. And there's no telling animals to get liberated from the 'other' either. We don't hear her, because the entire topic of her conditioned monologue is alien and irrelevant to us.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"I have super-feminist friends who will conform to gender roles with their partners, like they'll take it upon themselves to be more nurturing than their partner would be, taking care of them when they're sick, cooking and stuff like that," Reddy Madhavan said.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->"Super-feminist friends". How super.
All relationships involve sacrifice. But only unprincipled entities would make themselves do something when they don't have to/don't want to ("conform to gender roles with their partners, they'll take it upon themselves to be more nurturing than their partner would be".) You get what you put in. If people have to fake their life and feelings, they have only themselves to blame when they get nothing out of it. They can choose to stay alone or choose to be in a relationship. People should quit whining about their own choices. They can always unmake them. The world these people are living in is a free one, where no one is twisting their arm to stay with their partner. Only their fear of "ending up alone" is keeping them there. Not the best of reasons by a long shot.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"I find myself doing this every now and then," she added. "It's partly fear that if you spend your entire life bucking the norm and being different, I might end up alone and eaten by my cat."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Meanaxe wants that "different" tag, bet it makes her feel special. She is special in a way - in that she is uniquely forgettable. Her thoughts are inconsequential, uninspiring, not worthwhile; she's not even an original thinker. At best, someone in the future may bring out her book or name as an example of a social conditioning experiment gone wrong. Eewww. Wouldn't people rather be forgotten altogether than remembered as a failure? Or maybe feministas, like communistas, are *aiming* for the latter: infamy as the price of immortality. Go for it, I say.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas reports: Indian feminism is the feminism of compromise.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Ugh, no. Please no. Not another affected truism to toss out there as if it was oh so profound. If people *wanted* such deep-sounding lines that are meant to pass for insight, we would all be writing our own random sentence generator rather than hearing an insipid bot compose one.
Feminism in general merely hijacked the earlier movements for women's rights in the west; movements which started as a consequence of the enlightenment and which had gone on to encompass the suffragette movement (equal pay for equal work), agitations for entry into universities and of course voting rights. These were all meaningful issues - very necessary in the western world where christo misogyny had refused these basics to western women for so long until they finally woke up and demanded their rights.