I’m swamped at work, but I’m also outraged, because of Fuerza Dulce’s latest submission to our news tab– I can’t let this go. CNN may be a bunch of assholes with sensationalism on their minds, but their story and this one are essentially about the same thing; we do not value the lives of women. Via the BBC:
A two-day-old baby girl in India has survived after being buried alive in a field by her maternal grandfather in the south of the country. The baby, who had apparently never been fed, was discovered by a farmer near a village some 150km south of Hyderabad.
He said he only spotted her because her tiny hand was sticking out of the soil.
Police say they have arrested the baby’s grandfather, 52-year-old Abdul Rahman, after he confessed to trying to kill the newborn by burying her alive.
“I am yet to marry off four daughters and cannot take responsibility for a fifth one, even when she is only a granddaughter,” Mr Rahman was quoted as telling police.
The article went on to state that he may have taken his grandchild without his dauther’s consent. His unnamed grandchild. Whom he buried. Alive.
I am so livid, I can barely type. Because of this immutable fact, I will warn you that I will shut this thread down if:
- If “Maximum City” gets mentioned. I beg you, this is not the place.
- I get asked, “why didn’t you post about immigration/terrorism/the story I sent in four times, instead of this predictable infanticide story?”
- If one of you says this makes us look bad.
I really don’t care if all of the above makes me a pain in your ass or if it proves that the trolls are right and I am a bitch, after all. This doesn’t make us look bad, this IS bad.
A baby. Buried alive. Yes, it’s happened for centuries, but that doesn’t mean that reading such a story five minutes ago didn’t send a searing dagger in to my heart. We each blog about whatever moves us; there are no assignments in the bunker, no requirements or expectations. This moved me to despair. There will never be a point when we bless someone by saying, “May you be the mother of a hundred daughters“, and we are lesser for it.
I think a lot of us took a little trip to youtube after that!
Why common, your song is a perfect blend of rage and bitterness.
A loss of a child does leave one feeling rage and sorrow. And these emotions ultimately can lead to change and to legislation.
Regarding the reverse dowry, or “bride price” of the Arabs/Muslims — it was explained to me by a Pakistani muslim that a family who “loses” something as precious as a daughter needs to be given a small token in place of that, as a symbolic compensation for the great loss. I was thinking, “the same kind of flowery language used to describe dowry in India as “a gift of money given to their precious daughter so that she enters the husband’s house on an independent strong footing with wealth of her own”. Yeah right!
We all know that’s now how these things really play out.
Is there any reason we can’t have this while also living in a country with an society to the standards of the OECD?
Maybe, but what will we lose and what would we keep? Its a discussion worth having. What about our culture should we change, without being worried and losing what we like?
That a lot of us, including my husband and I, who have lived through several arguements/discussion cycles, here and there and everywhere, are still timid and hesitant about doing something practical and small-scale and personal.
Feeling rage and sorrow over our own personal inactions–now that would be really radical (although not yet quite practical).
Language, fashion, cuisine, poetry, music, dance, the art-forms, these can all be kept. Just some weird ideas about women, sex, caste and heirarchy have to go.
here we go again. another feminist.
A Feminist is a person who sees a “women’s issue” in every issue. A Radical Feminist is one who cannot see any issue other than a “women’s issue”.
By the shrillness of the original post and some comments, we have quite a few radicals here.
Yeah, but I think it would need to be free from a top-down model by which things are imposed. That would be bad because it would be less likely that only bad things would be thrown our. We don’t want to lose what is actually good because of following a model that doesn’t understand or value things that are societal virtues
Oh no, there we go again, the inevitable, dreaded S word.
This is what you had in mind, common?
comon, you can’t expect people to take you seriously when your own blind misunderstanding and hatred of “feminism” leads you to completely misdefine the political philosophy underlying the term.
Educate yourself. For all of our sakes.
Shouldn’t the words bra and burning be thrown in there somewhere?
Yes, romanticizing, flowery language issue aside, I am puzzled why this doesn’t favorably influence the status of women in those societies.
And allowing for regional differences, in general, what practice do Indian Muslims adopt? Dowry? Or bride price?
Don’t forget unshaven pits and hairy legs. We hot-headed paisans don’t believe in the oppression of our follicles.
There are definitely some who argue that they do.
I don’t remember if I first came across thiswebsite on SM, or somewhere else, but it still blows me away.
oh please, elevate your education beyond dictionary definitions. The de facto meaning of feminism as it is practiced out there is not equality at all. It’s about female supremacy. No reasonable person objects to equality. What i object to is the farce behind the demands of equality. just take a look at the public statements of Renuka Chowdhury, Girija Vyas, Brinda Karat, etc. It’s scary to think what they say in private.
I was going through youtube, and I came across a video by Gurdas Maan taken in New Zealand. Gurdas Maan is one of the major people today responsible for transmitting punjabi culture. I doubt you would find a singer with as much straight-up love for his craft. Would Gurdas Maan be what he is as an entertainer if there was not a wide-spread Diaspora? living in the places we live, we get A LOT of out it, and there’s a lot that is good about diaspora culture that is good because we immigrated. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
Gurdas Maan is totally carrying out a strong Punjabi culture, but my guess is also that he would be for a lot of the positive things about the diaspora, as he travels there a lot and a lot of his most passionate fans are those who have also gone abroad
comon, your analogies are like someone saying that belief in racial equality is extremist and then quoting Farrakhan. Anything seems ridiculous if you take it to an extreme. Contemporary feminism is, in its most practiced form, fundamentally about a belief in the equality of genders. This also translates into a critical analysis of processes and systems that promote inequality, both actively and passively, because of internalized norms regarding the value of one gender or another. It is not about female primacy; it is about opening doors.
Elevate my education? How can you argue about a concept which you haven’t even understood or defined properly? Instead of pretending feminism is whatever weirdness you think it is, why not consider accepting that it’s not as evil or nefarious as you are implying?
You must be so worried about that female supremacy…it’s horrible, the dowry demands put on sons, the abuse from father-in-laws, the pressure to have children of a certain gender, the infanticide. Oh, the horror. The horror!
WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE MEN, FOR ONCE?
sob
I’m all for sisterhood but also for oppressing my follicles and keeping the girls in check.
ANNA – see the links at my comment #166
Rahul, what bra? 😉
I went to one of them and got a headache from the rampant stupidity, my life is too short for the other. Forgive me, my radical sister?
No no nothing to forgive – it’s just that sometimes the comments pile up so fast that I didn’t want the links to get missed. But yeah – I got a similar headache. ‘Tis nuts.
Fuerza Dulce, probably the most hilarious part of that spell-unbound Sushmita blog entry is the title: Sexiest Advertisement by Levi’s!!
Camille, I am all about feminism, so no complaints from me! (Although, I liked your freudian (should I say Jungian?) slip, It is not about female primacy; it is about opening doors.)
No. Not Jungian, just Freudian as in when you mean to say one thing but instead say your mother, I mean another.
Rahul, am I super dense? I didn’t get the Freudian element. I am so obtuse =/
bess, that was very repressive, er, impressive!
Camille, I guess it isn’t technically Freudian, the phrase reminded me of the usual “if they are so independent, why do they still expect us to hold doors open/give them our seats/pay on a date” response to the feminism discussions.
let me tell you about some real events you wouldn’t experience in your north dakota bunker – a wife’s father demands from the son-in-law, 1 year and 4 months after the wedding “where is the flat [apt] your father promised during the wedding?” – wife’s mother and father tell the boy that he doesn’t have much education, doesn’t come from a well-to do family, and has no wealth of his own. He should be greatful that they married their daughter to him and he should do what their spoilt daughter tells him to do if he wants them off his back.
Of course, you’ll blow this off as a one-off incident even if you believe it. the same way I could blow off your original post as a one-off incident. But when it comes to statistics, you don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t have any, because men won’t admit to things like this. And abused men (there are many) will certainly never put on a F****ing show!
comon, do you mean, like this?
No, they just create organizations who claim that the women who pay them dowries are abusing them. http://www.saveindianfamily.org
comon, while your anecdotes are awful and merit sympathy, your misogyny is abhorrent. Good luck with things, man. It sounds like your feelings come from a place of deep anger, hurt, and hatred.
Dude, HMF, I think the female choice problem is a little more restrictive. They can’t count on the one Titanic or Pirates of the Caribbean to save them from the procession of Waterworlds and Giglis.
Camille, for what it’s worth, you have my humble respect.
Haven’t bahus been hearing the same thing from their in-laws for centuries now?
Anyway, to be fair, yes there are several cases of 401A abuses in India, and they need to be addressed and dealt with. However, that should in no way negate the cause for women’s rights in India.
Personally I think high school students the world over should be required to take relatioship prep classes and learn something about the nature of love and compromise BEFORE they get married.
I think one cause for 401A abuses in India is the fact that most of these cases spring from arranged marriages where there is no real sense of love or sexual attraction for one’s spouse. Let’s face it, a woman in love with and sexually satisfied by a man does not want to lose him. However, a woman who had an arranged marriage to a man she does not even find appealing, much less get all ooey gooey eyed in love for, will be more likely to try to take advantage of him when she can, right? What is there to bind her to him in an emotional way?
Like I said before, all of this issues need to be dealt with FROM THE ROOT. And at the root of it usually tends to be attitudes towards sexuality, Freudian as it sounds.
But that would make you wrong, because we all know it is most certainly NOT a one-off incident.
It would be one thing if you were pointing out that this isn’t a one-sided issue, but you’re not. You’re so consumed with your strange bitterness, you’re frothing at the mouth and you’re hurting your “side” by not making sense. It’s impossible to reason with those who lack it. We’re done here.
Thanks, bess 🙂
I’ve never noticed that Punjabis are more retrograde in their views than other desis. Could it be that it is more of an issue of urban vs. rural backgrounds ?Those of you Punjabis with Scythian ancestry can take pride in the fact that your forbears would occassionally let the girls out for night on the steppe. One academic theory regarding the Amazons is that they may have been an actual Sarmatian/Scythian tribe where women fought alongside the men
This is the last of my attempts to work Scythians or Lemurians into a post about serious social issues, I promise..
Then we are lesser for THAT. 🙂 I was enjoying it.
I’m back in business…the Masked Dravido-Lemurian of the New and Improved Sangam rides again !
I’ve personally noticed an urban/rural divide on this, but it’s strictly anecdotal, so I don’t know if it’s actually indicative of the community at large.
And Punjabi women did used to fight side by side with men. There were also female generals. And now there is a huge gender bias. I guess this is what I was trying to get at when I mentioned looking at the history of gender-relations in Punjab — they haven’t been some kind of static unchanging oppressive thing, they’ve been dynamic and have changed considerably.
Not Punjabi, but Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi is one of the prominent fighters of the 1857 mutiny.
Although she never took off her protective gear and yelled “No living man am I!”.
Okay, no offence… but 192 comments for this worthless story? This kind of thing happens all the time in India and China… there’s not exactly a mass action campaign to prevent it… yeah sure, pity the girl babies… just don’t forget, we live in the West, lets not judge everything by Western standards. Not everyone has subsidized medical care, a 401k plan, two or three college degrees, a trust fund, etc. etc… some people (not in the West obviously) face the prospect of starvation on a daily basis. If they want to kill their girl babies because girls mean one less hand to till the soil (by hand, of course), that is their buisness. Not that it is ethically correct, but again, we don’t live in their country – NONE of us faces economic depravation.
Anna and her stupid cheap sympathy threads!
LK1, if you’re going to make an ignorant comment, I would recommend first reading the 192 that proceeded yours. We have discussed, at length, the aspect of economics and risk. If a “western standard” includes the belief that it is morally reprehensible to kill a child solely on the basis of his/her gender, and to do so in a disgusting and cruel manner, and to do so at a rate that has led to a huge gender imbalance in many Indian states, then I guess we’re all Occidentalists. While this man may be a peasant, we’ve already discussed that son-preference is not unique to any one socioeconomic group or class, in the west and in India.
Also, there’s no need to be rude. ANNA’s threads are not stupid, and if you think they are and cannot find an intelligent way to express yourself about it, then kindly refrain altogether.
LK1 – What is the point of your comment? That we shouldn’t talk about it, or try to understand it? Is sodomy the only crime worth getting upset about? Could you help edify me as to what kind of things in India and China we are allowed to talk about?
And were/are you like a child soldier in Sierra Leone or something? I am really scratching my head to figure out how somebody can be so absolutely lacking in empathy or any human grace.
No offense, eh? Oh, none taken.
No offense, but you’re banned. You’ve pushed past the limit of what’s acceptable here. What you said about Sikhism a few weeks ago was bad enough, there’s obviously no point in seeing where else you might go.
Thanks for banning that jerk. He’ll be back with a different handle…but his rotten attitude will give him away. The guy is very understanding and compassionate towards perpetrators of hate crimes (although the victims tend to piss him off) as well as female feticide.
So, here’s a YouTube clip with far better sound quality, although Waheeda has a bit of a jaundiced tinge thanks to the unique coloring technology of the sixties, and the sole lotus in the pool looking like it got a wee bit of overdose of that good ol’ food coloring (I love that shot of the ripples in the pond disturbing the reflection of the moon!).
If you can’t make your point without abusive language, go elsewhere.