Continues on from the above looong post with even mooore opinion.
Still about #254:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: Indian women have fought plenty of battles, but in a country not shy about demonstrations and revolts - by so-called untouchables, the landless, the indigenous, Hindus, Muslims - there has never been an inclusive, game-changing feminist movement.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->First: Hindus *are* the indigenous in Bharatam.
But why is Anand advocating a feminist movement/demonstration/revolt? When none had revolted in Europe for 8 to 9 million women being burnt at the stake, why would 50% of Bharatam's population revolt where we've never had a tyranny that was even remotely comparable?
Very subversionist proposal by Anand.
Why has he avoided asking the more obvious questions altogether? For instance, why has Britain not suffered a violent anti-class/anti-aristocracy revolution when it *deserves* it? Or, another reasonable question: why isn't he advocating that women in UK and US do large-scale anti-corporation demonstrations? (At least some 5-10 years ago - and perhaps still today - many women in CEO positions in those two countries were earning considerably less than their male counterparts. Why is no one inciting people in Britain and US to shake things into shape?) And oh yeah, where are the calls for native American demonstrations against the land stolen and occupied by the terrorist christosettlers? In America's case, we <i>can</i> certainly speak of the *indigenous* versus the murdering alien christo-invaders who don't belong.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: where are the women marching against millions of female feticides<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->As I understand it, in the regions of India where this happens, women are just as complicit in these feticides - many have been conditioned to choose to abort the foetus. Unless and until they and their husbands change their mindset on this, things are unlikely to change. But why only *women* are expected to march against female feticides is beyond me... This is a human issue in India.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"If we are put on this planet with the aim of figuring out who we are," Arshi muses one day, "and the only way we can figure out who we are is through someone else - either the person we wind up with or the person we create - then what hope does my generation, my we-don't-need-nobody-dude generation, really have?"<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Who in the world would write such meaningless and contrived junk? And why would they get published?
- "we are put on this planet with the aim of figuring out who we are" is an assumption. The general religiously-unaffiliated answer is: Who knows what - if any - purpose there may be. For all we know, life on Earth (which includes humanity) is just a random coincidence.
- "only way we can figure out who we are is through someone else" - again, an assumption. You can figure out a lot of things about yourself through knowing what you're interested in doing and doing it. You can write, or read books, you can express whatever ideas you have in different ways, you can ask yourself questions and try to answer them, and better understand yourself/the world around you. So another person is not the "only way".
- "either the person we wind up with or the person we create" - there are many people in everyone's life, in addition to one's spouse/lover or children. There's also family and friends.
- "what hope does my generation, my we-don't-need-nobody-dude generation, really have?" - What cheese.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Meanaxe: "If she were a true feminist...."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->That reminds me of something funny. As I recall, the Danish (?) movie <b>Tillsammans</b> (Together) is about a bunch of communists living together in one place. Among them is a separated/divorced husband-and-wife non-couple: the wife felt so deeply about communism that she believed her feminism should not be lived in halves, and so she decided she ought to become lesbian <b><i>on principle</i></b>. <!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I thought it a very good observation on the silliness of communism/feminism. People are often infatuated with ideas rather than actually having those ideas be a natural part of their being/who they are. That is, the difference between
- ideas for which one has to go out of the way to live it/incorporate it into one's life (even involving forcibly changing/sacrificing oneself for said idea),
- versus living principles that come natural to one or growing naturally in a direction of illuminating, expanding thought.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: But because these women don't sleep around, don bug-eyed sunglasses or down mojitos, it is Arshi's demographic that is deemed "liberated."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Deemed liberated by whom? Themselves? Opinions on self are inherently biased.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: Modernity involves more than sin. It demands irreverence. How many urban young women chop off their hair, or choose not to procreate, or dine out alone?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Use of "sin" with reference to "sleeping around" <- meaning the christo concept of sin is being referred to here. Alien dialogue.
Anyway, why suggest that modernity 'involves sin and, more than that, irreverence'? Why can't people be allowed to move forward without either of these; why insist that the way forward should be tied up with a violent turn against the existing society? Why can't people be allowed to introduce any improvements in the natural and unobtrusive way, the way changes have always happened in natural traditionalist cultures? And why advocate that urban women chop off their hair, dine out alone, not procreate (etcetera) <i>just for the sake</i> of showing "irreverence" to achieve "modernity"? Why should lives be lived/wasted merely to prove trivial points? Is life to be made into a mere statement? No sane person would argue so.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: How many, despite their modern garnishes, believe in prospering alongside, and not through, a man?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->"Prospering alongside" is the way it's always been in natural traditions. The ultimate reason parents there are driven to get their kids married is in order for their children to have someone for company/look after them in their old age. No one asks their daughters to get married in order for these daughters to gain access to their husband's bank account. Still, natural traditionalists have this (incomprehensible) sense of automatically sharing everything with their spouse, but it is not the *reason* why they get married.
But sure, just like in the larger mammalian family, the female instinctively seeks in her mate the promise of resources and protection for offspring. She's looking for safeguards for the future. That's just the way it is. Get used to it. Only those who lack the most basic of understanding will try to write articles to change Nature. Very funny that, "revolt against Nature". Why not. Every other type of revolt has been suggested already.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: The earlier feminism trashed bras, not as a fashion statement, but because it signified rupture. The lattice of attitudes, prejudices, customs and religious doctrines that kept women in place would not just step aside. The entrenched ways needed to be fought, deoxygenated, purged.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->As I learnt in history class, the real women's movement - which was one of the effects of the enlightenment - was opposed to the corset since it was actually bad for one's torso including back (this was long before the angry bra burning phase). Back then the movement just wanted comfortable wear for women, and to make this more acceptable and mainstream. That was their point. Seems very sensible and practical to me.
It makes sense to be opposed to detrimental things/societal strictures as there are actually worthwhile gains to be made in taking a stand against such things. But what's the point of raising so much sound and fury about ultimately meaningless issues that only 'betoken' something. Fighting about symbolic matters is just trivialising the real problems out there. It is what people who have no life and no real purpose (except complaining for the sake of complaining) do. And then these whiny characters insist on being heard too, as if what they say has any weight. They need to stop cheapening life by monotheistically reducing everything to a dichotomous struggle (for example, class struggle or man-woman struggles) - and doing so all over the globe too, even there where these dichotomies don't apply. The humanity on this planet is ~50% men and ~50% women. Those who can't deal with such unforgivable, blatant statistics may choose to follow Epictetus' advice on Permanent Premature Voluntary Retirement; and then the rest of us can finally fix any problems in our society in our own way, without having to hear all the useless complaining and theorising.
Indian women imitating or treading the path of western feminism makes no sense. The Indian experience is not the same as the christowestern experience, just as the Chinese or African or other people's experience is different yet again. Therefore, to then state that Indian women should make the same journey as christowest has made - merely so that they can then come to the same stage where western women are now - is to propose the ridiculous. Why do they think Indians are meant to arrive at the same outcomes? Our history is different, our path leads us elsewhere. Our future is not the same as the modernity of the west; no sense in artificially trying to induce a situation through which we end up at the same point as the west, as if that is all that the future can hold for humanity.
Am quite incapable of contemplating the sort of utterly trivial mindsets that come up with such 'clever' suggestions. Do they actually even think through what they are saying before speaking their thoughts aloud? Do they know they are an embarrassment to themselves and that on the other end I, and doubtless many another, are undergoing fits of laughter at their expense? Am not complaining - I welcome their inanity, have ever been intensely entertained by the inconceivable depths of unintentional human hilarity. And what's more, I have long been in need of jesters, especially the kind that will work without pay. People playing the fool without knowing that they are doing so is just <i>so</i> fetching. Therefore, welcome.
Still about #254:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: Indian women have fought plenty of battles, but in a country not shy about demonstrations and revolts - by so-called untouchables, the landless, the indigenous, Hindus, Muslims - there has never been an inclusive, game-changing feminist movement.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->First: Hindus *are* the indigenous in Bharatam.
But why is Anand advocating a feminist movement/demonstration/revolt? When none had revolted in Europe for 8 to 9 million women being burnt at the stake, why would 50% of Bharatam's population revolt where we've never had a tyranny that was even remotely comparable?
Very subversionist proposal by Anand.
Why has he avoided asking the more obvious questions altogether? For instance, why has Britain not suffered a violent anti-class/anti-aristocracy revolution when it *deserves* it? Or, another reasonable question: why isn't he advocating that women in UK and US do large-scale anti-corporation demonstrations? (At least some 5-10 years ago - and perhaps still today - many women in CEO positions in those two countries were earning considerably less than their male counterparts. Why is no one inciting people in Britain and US to shake things into shape?) And oh yeah, where are the calls for native American demonstrations against the land stolen and occupied by the terrorist christosettlers? In America's case, we <i>can</i> certainly speak of the *indigenous* versus the murdering alien christo-invaders who don't belong.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: where are the women marching against millions of female feticides<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->As I understand it, in the regions of India where this happens, women are just as complicit in these feticides - many have been conditioned to choose to abort the foetus. Unless and until they and their husbands change their mindset on this, things are unlikely to change. But why only *women* are expected to march against female feticides is beyond me... This is a human issue in India.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"If we are put on this planet with the aim of figuring out who we are," Arshi muses one day, "and the only way we can figure out who we are is through someone else - either the person we wind up with or the person we create - then what hope does my generation, my we-don't-need-nobody-dude generation, really have?"<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Who in the world would write such meaningless and contrived junk? And why would they get published?
- "we are put on this planet with the aim of figuring out who we are" is an assumption. The general religiously-unaffiliated answer is: Who knows what - if any - purpose there may be. For all we know, life on Earth (which includes humanity) is just a random coincidence.
- "only way we can figure out who we are is through someone else" - again, an assumption. You can figure out a lot of things about yourself through knowing what you're interested in doing and doing it. You can write, or read books, you can express whatever ideas you have in different ways, you can ask yourself questions and try to answer them, and better understand yourself/the world around you. So another person is not the "only way".
- "either the person we wind up with or the person we create" - there are many people in everyone's life, in addition to one's spouse/lover or children. There's also family and friends.
- "what hope does my generation, my we-don't-need-nobody-dude generation, really have?" - What cheese.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Meanaxe: "If she were a true feminist...."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->That reminds me of something funny. As I recall, the Danish (?) movie <b>Tillsammans</b> (Together) is about a bunch of communists living together in one place. Among them is a separated/divorced husband-and-wife non-couple: the wife felt so deeply about communism that she believed her feminism should not be lived in halves, and so she decided she ought to become lesbian <b><i>on principle</i></b>. <!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I thought it a very good observation on the silliness of communism/feminism. People are often infatuated with ideas rather than actually having those ideas be a natural part of their being/who they are. That is, the difference between
- ideas for which one has to go out of the way to live it/incorporate it into one's life (even involving forcibly changing/sacrificing oneself for said idea),
- versus living principles that come natural to one or growing naturally in a direction of illuminating, expanding thought.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: But because these women don't sleep around, don bug-eyed sunglasses or down mojitos, it is Arshi's demographic that is deemed "liberated."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Deemed liberated by whom? Themselves? Opinions on self are inherently biased.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: Modernity involves more than sin. It demands irreverence. How many urban young women chop off their hair, or choose not to procreate, or dine out alone?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Use of "sin" with reference to "sleeping around" <- meaning the christo concept of sin is being referred to here. Alien dialogue.
Anyway, why suggest that modernity 'involves sin and, more than that, irreverence'? Why can't people be allowed to move forward without either of these; why insist that the way forward should be tied up with a violent turn against the existing society? Why can't people be allowed to introduce any improvements in the natural and unobtrusive way, the way changes have always happened in natural traditionalist cultures? And why advocate that urban women chop off their hair, dine out alone, not procreate (etcetera) <i>just for the sake</i> of showing "irreverence" to achieve "modernity"? Why should lives be lived/wasted merely to prove trivial points? Is life to be made into a mere statement? No sane person would argue so.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: How many, despite their modern garnishes, believe in prospering alongside, and not through, a man?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->"Prospering alongside" is the way it's always been in natural traditions. The ultimate reason parents there are driven to get their kids married is in order for their children to have someone for company/look after them in their old age. No one asks their daughters to get married in order for these daughters to gain access to their husband's bank account. Still, natural traditionalists have this (incomprehensible) sense of automatically sharing everything with their spouse, but it is not the *reason* why they get married.
But sure, just like in the larger mammalian family, the female instinctively seeks in her mate the promise of resources and protection for offspring. She's looking for safeguards for the future. That's just the way it is. Get used to it. Only those who lack the most basic of understanding will try to write articles to change Nature. Very funny that, "revolt against Nature". Why not. Every other type of revolt has been suggested already.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anand Giridharadas: The earlier feminism trashed bras, not as a fashion statement, but because it signified rupture. The lattice of attitudes, prejudices, customs and religious doctrines that kept women in place would not just step aside. The entrenched ways needed to be fought, deoxygenated, purged.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->As I learnt in history class, the real women's movement - which was one of the effects of the enlightenment - was opposed to the corset since it was actually bad for one's torso including back (this was long before the angry bra burning phase). Back then the movement just wanted comfortable wear for women, and to make this more acceptable and mainstream. That was their point. Seems very sensible and practical to me.
It makes sense to be opposed to detrimental things/societal strictures as there are actually worthwhile gains to be made in taking a stand against such things. But what's the point of raising so much sound and fury about ultimately meaningless issues that only 'betoken' something. Fighting about symbolic matters is just trivialising the real problems out there. It is what people who have no life and no real purpose (except complaining for the sake of complaining) do. And then these whiny characters insist on being heard too, as if what they say has any weight. They need to stop cheapening life by monotheistically reducing everything to a dichotomous struggle (for example, class struggle or man-woman struggles) - and doing so all over the globe too, even there where these dichotomies don't apply. The humanity on this planet is ~50% men and ~50% women. Those who can't deal with such unforgivable, blatant statistics may choose to follow Epictetus' advice on Permanent Premature Voluntary Retirement; and then the rest of us can finally fix any problems in our society in our own way, without having to hear all the useless complaining and theorising.
Indian women imitating or treading the path of western feminism makes no sense. The Indian experience is not the same as the christowestern experience, just as the Chinese or African or other people's experience is different yet again. Therefore, to then state that Indian women should make the same journey as christowest has made - merely so that they can then come to the same stage where western women are now - is to propose the ridiculous. Why do they think Indians are meant to arrive at the same outcomes? Our history is different, our path leads us elsewhere. Our future is not the same as the modernity of the west; no sense in artificially trying to induce a situation through which we end up at the same point as the west, as if that is all that the future can hold for humanity.
Am quite incapable of contemplating the sort of utterly trivial mindsets that come up with such 'clever' suggestions. Do they actually even think through what they are saying before speaking their thoughts aloud? Do they know they are an embarrassment to themselves and that on the other end I, and doubtless many another, are undergoing fits of laughter at their expense? Am not complaining - I welcome their inanity, have ever been intensely entertained by the inconceivable depths of unintentional human hilarity. And what's more, I have long been in need of jesters, especially the kind that will work without pay. People playing the fool without knowing that they are doing so is just <i>so</i> fetching. Therefore, welcome.