[Reader-list] Fw: Fw: reeling from discontention 2.:n a bit Gender sensitisation

[subhrodip sengupta]

" Friendliness is valued superior to friendship, Friendliness is a quality a talent to share warmth with people as and when you meet them, and with time, make friends. Friends are a codification of relationship, trying to condense friendliness into earthen clay. They develop out of friendship, but one must be friendly towards friends as well, else it becomes a world of enemies and liabilities. So one needs to be friendly towards people rather than making a fuss about friendship requests and quantifying them. To a friendly person even a perfect stranger gives joy he cares for none not even the soul" ( A bit self-stylised value taken from Osho, essence is more important than form)


Dear Rakesh
          You have done a great job by speaking your heart out. One big problem in fixing problems is tracing them out, you might be familiar with this. By naming, you have shown a certain quanta of courage. Any good social work in the name of Decorum, Security etc lacks courage in itself, be it gender sensitisation. And peculiarly on a broad basis, a Gender Sensitisation cell is missing, in Pune and Bengal at least, or people in such academic institutes lack knowledge of it's existence, know not about IIT's, but certainly at Nit dgp.. It would be really good and friendly if women and men could interact with each other on a friendly basis, it would help reducing crime rates, by double edge, the second reducing Brutal pornography, a special sect(I believe all adults are on this forum, if not may this serve for some missing sex-ed). On a personal account we had to take much initiaves to hold events, talks start a debate, and worse reduce
 anti-feminism by including how men get harrased due to harrasment of women and their anxiety for others safety, friendship and respect. We were shocked how blatantly identity is imposed and feminism was equated with leftism. If a woman steps on your foot accidentally and smiles, she's probably say sorry, not flaunt about insulting men. At all counts she does not deserve to be slapped. This guy would never burge before a male bully! There are horny men and women, may be but that does not necessarily demean the sense of purity or self esteem attached with the body. Worse cases are rare, not only by virtue of physical configuration but coz thats not in culture. One big trouble in Gender Sensitisation is institutional politics, and people preffer not to engage in a specific case or worse talk about people and problems, because they all know them, as a fellow, a teacher, a friend, a star, an enemy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . .  .. . . . 
But membership to a committee is not compulsory, and taking at a primary level is not as dirty as what it could take on a later level. By ignoring individual traits, they are party to the same harrasment. And by the way, passing lewd comments, atalking, and oogling, causing discomfort all amount to sexual harrasment. Only by the end of the year all acheived was a group of minimally trained people having participated in talks created awareness who are careful about gender issues. NExt year on, they'd hopefully do some more good job. Ma'ki is very difficult to stop, had resisted it. The boyz school stuff.Seriously believe some kind of sex education is required by both male and female teachers. What kind of harrasment goes on there, imposing feminity on the boy and then abusing, not to mention crotch-grabbing game(while lightly it's yoga, in a fight mode,this releases hormones responsible for blood pressure, and could have neurological, sexual and
 cardiological effects), hitting gentials and then a few perv male teachers. And all this is institutionalised in proving manliness. The sect of psychologists who could possible thus explain male aggresiveness are evolutionary psychologists, and they make as much sense as evolutionary genetists do. These issues need to be understood, handbooks of legal framework, Practical manuals by experts based on real cases on locality should be compulsarily made availabe and understood, if not for creating sensitivity(in case one feels ignorance is bliss, there is no harrasment), also to protect males and females from misuse of rules and defaming allegations. The rules of the game should be clear and fair. But not so in practice. We can take up interesting issues later. Any individual should be left to interact at level he/ she wants so if they want a seperate institute, have it, but provide the basic ammentites of security. I empathise, with your trauma, but do
 not support your accusing females for putting down your request. This shows inferiority complex acquired by seeing and more of hearing. Women do become good friends as long as you control the situation. As social butterfly is chosen only by horny ones. Surely you can make some good friends by respecting individually, behaving step-and comfort manner, and that does not need physical contact.though a kind touch is humane. And I believe we'd be ostracised if we talk about our past affairs/ what men think about women and about what men thaink that women think that so on.......................... Many women have turned down my friend request too. BUT what I was saying was the futility of studying imborn traits if these could be conditioned. The result is a sublimial conflict, and lack of esteem. Friendliness and sensitisation go hand in hand, that's why orthodoxy is named thus. I seriously feel that major changes should be made in our education system,
 as a child who with great respect emulates his teacher should recieve the best caring support from him/her, and they should be ready to stand up and fight for their cause. Notion of quality of life, dignity and rights are eroded/formed somewhere there. Do one favour give your girl child or boy child to kiss each other as a mutual show of affection. Something bad happened to me for kissing a freind on the cheek in childhood. . . . . . .
Regards,
Subhrodip.










 



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From: Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com>
To: subhrodip sengupta <sub_sengupta at yahoo.co.in>
Cc: Readers list Yousuf Sarai. <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Wednesday, 24 June, 2009 11:04:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Fw: reeling from discontention 2.

Dear Subhrodip jee

I am sorry on this account, but I am quite unlucky to have studied during my prime period of adolescence (Class 7th to Class 12th) in a boys' school at Bhopal. And then I managed to come to IIT-Madras, which is not different from my school I referred to, simply because there are 3 girls in my branch out of 37 students. What a pity!

May be the govt. should seriously consider reserving 50% of all seats under each category (general, OBC, SC, ST) for women to empower them rather than wasting those seats in the Parliament, where the legis
lators' wives would gain entry. This will achieve so many objectives. For us, our interaction with girls will be great as required in the college (or so we all boys feel) and we will stop growing desperate (which we do in four years here). For the nation, the educated women would actually mean economic and social empowerment of women (after all, IIT women graduates are not going to be housewives and automatically get empowered socially and economically). What a win-win situation!

I hope all Hindutva ideologues, Communist supporters and Centrist workers as well as others have no objection to such a step if it were to be taken. I also feel no boys or girls school should be allowed to be kept. We should have Co-Ed schools. 

On a serious note, I believe the problem is also about the way we look at women in our society. The woman is looked upon as a mother or a daughter. When a girl is raped somewhere say in a city in India, the words used for that in Hindi aren't 'ek ladki ke saath balatkaar kiya gaya', but 'ek ladki ki izzat looti gayee'. In other words, a girl's dignity can be torn to shreds if raped. Think of it. When India is pointed out as a mother by our Hindutva ideologues, some of them constantly refer to the fact that the mother is being raped. And I remember Aashish (one of my friends and also a member on this forum) who said ' This means that the father has gone away, the son has to take responsibility of the mother, and so if the mother is being raped, the son has to go and kill the rapist'. This immediately creates a resonance with the idea that Muslims (rapists) are raping the nation (mother) and Hindus (sons) have to save it.

Look at even the abuses in Hindi used in our society. They are based on mother (maa ki......) and sister (behen ki....) by and large. This gives us an indication of how females are looked down upon in the Indian society by and large. Now even Tamils in Chennai use such abuses, ironical in a society where ideologues like Periyar always stressed on equality of women. 

Look again at how we look at pre-marital sex. If a boy does it, everybody feels jealous. But when a woman does it, people just think of her as a prostitue in our society. So a boy doing such sex is fine, but for a woman it's unacceptable. Why? 

Look at the reaction one gets when one finds that one's girl is in love, and when one's boy is in love. 

After thinking of all this, one realizes why a girl's parents are always in worry right from the day she is born till she dies. She can be subjected to dowry, can be raped (and rape can still be dealt with, but what about the society which feels the rape victim is to be blamed and looked down upon, and decide that her dignity is torn to shreds), can be maimed and tortured, and our society accepts it. And what' s more, it gets further institutionalized.

So much so, that a woman is the biggest enemy of a woman. Patel women were reported to have helped their husbands in burning Muslim women or even raping them. What a shame! We always hear tons of stories regarding burnings due to non-payment of dowry, and saas-bahu problems. A woman, in order to overcome patriarchial domination and prove her own worth, assaults her own daughter-in-law, or bahu, is that acceptable? 

And now we have the Mangalore pub attacks and attacks on girls on the Valentine's Day celebrations. 

Personally, I believe I am conservative, though the extent is difficult to tell. May be the reason is what you said Subhrodip jee, but yes I do feel awkward with girls easily mingling with boys when I am with boys (rarely will I be with girls, I don't have friends in them. I am so unlucky that even when I send friend requests to women on this forum, they are not accepted. And this is just about online talk, not personal meeting). However, I am not the moral police going to stop someone from this inter mingling, for that I believe is personal opinion and taste. And that is where I am liberal (if I am at all liberal, that is). 

So my point is that it's fine with me if people are conservative for themselves. What is wrong and should not be tolerated is their infringing upon other people's rights to do as they wish. Just because I don't like going to pubs doesn't mean I forcibly stop someone else from going to pubs. I can stay put at my home. It is all fine if you convince me by arguments that my stand is wrong, but using force for the same would be wrong. And equally, me using force to support my own arguments would also be wrong. 

The Togadias and the Thackerays may kindly re-consider their stands on such issues. 

Regards

Rakesh

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