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WAR ON WOMEN, INDIA AND THE U.S.A.

1/23/2013

 
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War On Women: India and America
    In 1955-56, I visited Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Agra, and New Delhi as a member of a dance troupe. Wherever we danced, Indian dancers danced for us and I was swept away by the most advanced dance art on earth. it was Indian Independence Day when we arrived in New Delhi, and we saw a great parade that included dances by more than 30 cultures. In the Adjanta Caves, we saw the treasured carvings of an ancient civilization, in Agra, stood in awe before the Taj Mahal, were aware that this was the venerable civilization that had produced Mahatma Ghandi.
    But today India, now a great power, has seen its epic history muddied by an unspeakably vicious rape/murder, followed by the revelation that Delhi is one of the most virulently anti-woman cities of India.  The crime exposed a deep hatred and fear of women, expressed by a young man who complained that educated women are taking men’s jobs. It echoes what I heard here in the aftermath of WW-II, when women were expected to relinquish their war-time management and factory jobs to return to kitchens and nurseries.
    No American can be self-righteous vis-a-vis India.  Our recent presidential campaign exposed our own women-hating men, men who cannot accept women out from behind male shadows. The jejune delusions of ex-politicians, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and Joe Walsh, cannot be laughed off, because thousands of similarly benighted voters put them in office and have not suddenly lost their fear and hatred of women. Those beating the drum for American exceptionalism, close eyes and minds to our own poisoned well of backwardness.
    India, with four times our population, must start to deal with its savage backward males. Swift and severe punishment of the perpetrators is the merest first step.


Linda Lessner
1/23/2013 10:33:58 pm

I couldn't agree with you more but I have a small complaint, your use of the word retarded to describe some people. I work with "retarded" people and this is an insult to them. By the way, the word has been replaced by the phrase "developmentally disabled" in an effort to correct the perjorative meaning of "retarded".

Stuart Hodes link
1/24/2013 12:47:32 am

Thank you for pointing out this insensitive mistake, now changed to benighted. Stuart

Paul
1/24/2013 09:04:51 am

I am not convinced that "hatred"and "savage" are appropriate words here but
"fear" surely is. And, it is a natural reaction to change. It is not just educated women taking jobs from men, it is the Industrial Revolution, the press of population explosion and a host of technological and social evolutionary advances that inevitably lead to fear and reaction. It is appropriate to request mediation, as you have here, but understand that these problems are inevitable and will presumably get worse as population increases. One of my pet grievances is that the planet is 4/5ths water and many peoples do not have enough fresh water to survive. The injustices are endemic to societies everywhere and the solutions are never easy to come by because we are encumbered by the human condition which drives us compulsively to take care of our families FIRST, then perhaps OUR neighbors, then perhaps OUR nation, and so on. But we are bound to family first which may include generation upon generation of family - FIRST. Nothing is easy and it gets increasingly more complicated. Ciao!

Martha
1/25/2013 06:03:13 am

As for women in combat in the U.S.: Anti-ERA folks (that's the Equal Rights Amendment) said it would force women to serve in combat. Well, now women can serve in combat... and we still have no ERA.

CH
1/28/2013 03:42:40 am

"Savage" really isn't the right word. It implies something out of the ordinary, incomprehensible, and violence against women, not only in the form of rape and murder, but in the form of routine cultural and social oppression, is the NORM throughout the world, including here in the US.

Misogyny is global, not only in the sense of hatred, but in the sense of women's lives (and bodies), having less vlaue. That's what makes them easier to objectify. And murder. That's the nature of patriarchal systems. That is what must be dismantled.


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    Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

    Being 90 years in this world,  with great kids,  great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
                                   Stuart Hodes

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           With my friend, Nero.
                   April, 2012.
        Photo by Ray Madrigal

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