It’s bad enough when your parents hound you for being single and ask why you were out so late last night, but the Christian Science Monitor points to the double standard that single women renters face in India at the hands of their prospective (and over-protective) landlords:
It took Chiya Singh three months and seven real estate agents working in tandem to find an apartment to rent in New Delhi.
The problem wasn’t her credit history or salary. It was her status as a single Indian woman. The questions blocking Ms. Singh from a room of her own were a bit personal, she says. Prospective landlords wanted to know why, at age 29, she wasn’t married and why, as a single person, she didn’t want to live with her parents.
“It was an exhausting process,” Singh says, of trying to find her own place after she divorced. “I became a broken record. They asked ‘Why do you want to live alone?’ I said, ‘Um, because I think I’m old enough.’ “
That response usually netted Singh a cold expression and a vague “We’ll let you know” from the landlord. [Link]
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p>Because, I mean…why would a single woman want to live by herself?
In India, “If you want freedom, it can only be for one thing – sex,” Singh says. “You want to tell them [landlords], ‘That’s the last thing on my mind. I think I’m old enough to take care of myself.’ But for the landlord, it becomes an issue of respectability.” [Link]
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p>Right. Here is the even more messed up part. It is okay to rent to single white girls because…well, they are already slutty (or at least that is what the landlord quoted below seems to imply when she says “they are used to living on their own”).
“It’s an Indian mentality,” says Sonia Kakkar, a landlord in South Delhi. “We just feel more protective. You just feel that you are responsible.”
Ms. Kakkar currently rents the second floor of her building to two French women and prefers foreigners because she does not feel as protective of them.
“They are used to living on their own,” she says. “If they have a problem with the flat, they come to us. Otherwise, there is no interaction…” [Link]
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p>Well, to all the parents reading SM let me tell you just exactly what it is that your live-alone daughters in America are doing:
Jennifer Chowdhury just invented the hottest new game in town. Screw the Wii. Ladies, get one of these. Then invite me over (so I can blog about it for the good of the readers I mean)
i’m glad we concur on the male wardrobe befitting these roles.
Of all the Western things that are becoming global trends, I personally consider the casual treatment of premarital sex to be the most damaging, (for both men and women) along with rampant materialism and lack of personal responsability
Thankfully, America is fast sliding down that slope; places like China and India that still place some value on personal morality and discipline will ascend correspondingly
Yo, it’s gittin’ like caligula up in here.
Seriously though-people really believe in the “moral superiority” of any country? Hahahahahaha!
My grandmother, (a zexy, old-country latina immigrant) used to say about pretty much anything whether it be college, marriage or a new sport, “Try it, seek if it works for you. If not, you could always try something else. Comer,nina!” Words to live by, man. Words to live by.
didnt m@zi g*rmany have “discipline”. werent they superior in culture? s!eg h@il!!!!
i meant n@zi.
I was trying to quote G Unit below the underline in #52 but it got screwed up. Hopefully, y’all know that ai’nt me.
I am all for the “fast sliding” down of morals when it comes to the sex. I’m not good at bein’ all romantical and shit so that makes it easier to git some.
You guys make it seem like it is pretty common to be single and having sex in India. Is it really that common? If it is then I can’t wait to go there and get in on the fun. My parents have a lot of real estate in India but I haven’t heard of them discriminating against singles.
is a guy sleeping around also wrong?
do landlords care if you bring girls up to your room a lot? are you just a playah at that point?
seriously, G Unit – if that was you treading lightly, i don’t even want to know the rest….
i come from a ‘conservative’ family in madras – but 75% of the men in my family have had affairs, some even with proper second wives (there’s literally a veedu in the chinna veedu situation), as well as children as a result. and the whole damn city knows about this. but nobody cares. meanwhile, our on-again-off-again chief minister karunanidhi is quite open about his two wives, who, for public consumption i assume, get along very nicely. can you imagine if a woman had done any of these things? this is surely a double-standard, and it can be seen even in smaller ways, like puliogre’s (sorry, dude) parents’ ban against girls with previous boyfriends, while he has obviously openly dated with his parents’ knowledge. and i don’t even want to start on all the things puliogre mentioned in #43. so, do i think of india as a particularly moral country? NO. and if that’s your idea of moral superiority, you can bloody keep it.
does this mean that i can rent my properties in india out to women only, and charge a lot of rent? that seems like a better deal for the landlord. i should be all over that trade.
maybe shouldnt have brought that up. my parents are actually really sweet people…
a man after my own heart! i hope you are teaching all of this in your sexed class – i could see several quotes from SM being helpful.
ak, you omitted the other on-again-off-again one Jayalalitha, whose ascendancy to power was primarily due to the fact that she was the mistress of the previous illustrious chief minister MGR. To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it is good to be the chief minister!
I was between apartments in New York so I rented a room in a private house from a Punjabi family. Myself being Punjabi it was kind of nice but then it got old really quick. They really wanted a girl to live there instead and they complained that I was always coming home too late (I work late). The apartment was ok for a temp situation, not bad but not the cleanest, but now they have a girl living there and all she does is complain about the cleanliness, things needing to be fixed, etc. Poetic justice I guess.
Someone said earlier about renting from management companies. I swear by that. They actually fix things on time and have set procedures for handling complaints. Much better than a private landlord who thinks the only thing they are supposed to do is collect rent. ANY landlord is going to be nosy as hell.
puliogre – your parents are not so uncommon in that view. hell, my own parents think dating is evil – everytime my mother talks about somebody else’s bf or gf, she says it with such heavy moral disdain (and uber-pronounced desi accent)that there is no way i would ever introduce her to any of my own bfs. so they know about none of my own endeavours. my parents are pretty cool otherwise, but dating is a big no-no…
Not that I disagree with your analysis with respect to affairs, etc.. However, two sexes (that, in my view, exhibit stark physiological and psycho-somatic differences in the way they perceive the world) would naturally lend it self to two standards.
hmm…i just view my tenants as a rental yield. i dont care about their “morality” unless it stains the carpet and therefore reduces my yield.
dating wasnt taboo for me. i mean…my dad dated in india in the 1960’s. my parents liked my grlfriends.
i hope you are teaching all of this in your sexed class – i could see several quotes from SM being helpful.
I teach it all, baby. I tell them-when you decide to make that choice-WHENEVER it is, here’s what you need to know. I encourage them to wait but many are already active so those who are-there’s stuff they gotta know man.
a man after my own heart
BTW …coach diesel=female. Your mind been blown?
fair enough. but it’s discrimination whene the differenetial in treatment has nothing to do with either of those two aspects you mentioned. having sex, per se, is not related to either.
Sheesh, get a room already, you two! As cousins, of course.
so….thast what they mean by “kissin cousins”
I think this has been said in different words above but let me express my opinions in slightly different terms: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, you are killing me. Actually India is probably one of the more promiscuous (and hypocritical about it too) societies in the world. Lest you think that is a sweeping generalization, look up some of the government statistics on the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Anecdotally (well, not quite), one of my friends did his two years of mandatory village service (mandatory in Maharashtra) after graduating from med school in a couple of places in Vidharba. By his reckoning (and he kept records) about 3 out of every four patients had multiple sexual partners. The difference in India is that no one talks about this and almost everyone is a f..ing hypocrite. Another problem is that such sexual conduct is tied up with a lot of social hierarchies (gender and caste, to be precise). Friend if you dig beneath the surface in India (or perhaps many other societies)and go beyond the frankly bullshit rhetoric you will find many dirty little secrets such as these.
sorry! you mentioned something in the previous post that inferred you had overlooked some aspects of the female anatomy/sexual process. i also have not been on this blog long enough to ascertain you clearly as a female. but it was NOT because i think coaches can only be men.
i just view my tenants as a rental yield. i dont care about their “morality” unless it stains the carpet and therefore reduces my yield
I view my tenants as my own private peep show.
theres an idea i havent thought of. i should hook up a webcam…
People, I think what all of you are missing, is that if you don’t acknowledge or talk about sex, like in India, it’s effectively not happening. It is a similar philosophy to the abstinence education out here. And look how well that’s working. It’s not as if it is a natural human instinct or anything, with no deleterious consequences (with appropriate protection etc.).
you mention only you and your dad – so if dating wasn’t taboo for you or your father, how come it is for the prospective wife?
sorry! you mentioned something in the previous post that inferred you had overlooked some aspects of the female anatomy/sexual process. i also have not been on this blog long enough to ascertain you clearly as a female. but it was NOT because i think coaches can only be men
Is good, baby. I didn’t take it that way to be pissy, just makin’ a funny. I may purposely create a little ambiguity sometimes…
In my experience if someone is getting their chaddis in a twist about others getting some action, its because they are not getting enough or they did not have the same freedom when they were young and are jealous.
I know this is anecdotal, but I have noticed that its usually women who are the self appointed watchdogs of sexual morals. Is it just my experience? If its true, I wonder why.
not sure its taboo. its just that my mom (oddly enough, not really my dad)makes it a point to ask if a perspective grl has had a boyfriend before. if the answer is yes, she then makes a funny face.
Is that what the Kinks meant when they said “she walks like a woman and talks like a man”?
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They don’t call ’em The Kinks for nothin’, baby.
Rahul, was that you who emailed me the other day or another imposter?
Beige Seige, it’s a good guess (and yes, I’ve often thought the judgemental aunties just needed to get a vibrator already) but most of the landlords who refused to rent to me as a woman were male.
AK – basic logic, beta – men are allowed to date, women are suspect if they do. The women that these men dated in college (my father, uncles, etc etc) will then, after being dated, be considered unworthy marriage material and rather “fast” – there are women for fun, and women you marry. It’s changed a bit now, thank god, but the double standard hasn’t gone away altogether.
Whoa! No, I never emailed you!
i would think that women would want their daughters to be better off than them? would expect guys to get more bent out of shape.
On my block, yes. Also double and having seks w/ someone other than your insignificant other? Yes, yes, yes.
Re: morals. From Gangs of NY, “The appearance of law must be upheldâ€.
Matunga, reprezent!
but there is clearly a different standard there, even if slight? she’s OK with your gfs, but not OK with the ladies’ bf? surely, if you dated before and had gfs and your mom was OK with that – why not the same treatment for the girl? the very fact that this is enough of an issue for her to ask that question of the prospective wives means she is not OK with it.
Rahul-there is an imposter trying to git wit me using your name. I saw right through it though. They didn’t have your ‘lil somethin’ somethin’.
heres the real twist..shes ok with my female relatives boyfriends. i gave up trying to understand….
I know this is anecdotal, but I have noticed that its usually women who are the self appointed watchdogs of sexual morals. Is it just my experience? If its true, I wonder why.
I’ve noticed the same sort of thing, and I’m not sure it’s limited just to Indian society either. I mean, you never hear “been around the block” in connection with a guy’s past, do you? And American fathers presumably don’t lecture their sons on how nobody will buy the cow if they can get the milk for free…
Coach, although, if you send me (or SM admins) the email (actually just the headers, but we need the headers), we should be able to extract IP address information, which when correlated with SM’s comment logs, could potentially help identify the perpetrator.
If you care enough to do that, mail me at rahulsmutiny. The mail address is on yahoo.com.
puliogre – do you have a sister?
SP – sigh. this is something i’ve figured out way before – and i try to fight the fight. but really, given my family’s views (and those of desi society at large) – i know what is mentionable and what is not in the family social circle. but even in the larger society, it’s only changed somewhat – for instance, a lot of men will not have a relationship with a woman who ‘gives it up’ too quickly. or who has sex with a lot of people (even if it’s less than the number of women with whom they have slept). i don’t know why, but many guys are just not cool with having a woman who is as sexually active as them, much less more so.
Uh oh. I have friends in high places! I may just do that…
a female cousin. very much like my sister. the relationship between her and me, my parents is very close.
ive had girls parents do due dililgence on my past. parents in india get really suspicious cause im an american, and everyone knows americans sleep around.
I’ve found that putting this as my name on the horoscope (of course, horoscopes need to match!) eliminates the sleeping-around question. Feel free to try it out.
i don’t know why, but many guys are just not cool with having a woman who is as sexually active as them, much less more so
They are not cool with it because it is intimidating for them. It causes self-doubt, worry and comparisons, provoking anxiety which is, as we all know, very romantical and zexy.
the horoscope matching makes me angry some times. one parents wanted a horoscope match. I asked why. they said “your american, we need to be extra careful”. I thought “so, because of my nationality you cant be sure of my morality, so the position of neptune at the time of my birth will asuage your fears?!”
puliogre – the fear with prospective grooms is not sleeping around – it is that you already have a wife, or that you have ‘tricked’ other women into marriage/prospect of marriage in bringing them over to the states.