Wednesday, December 3, 2008

rants

Am I a feminist? 

(This blog is inspired by Usha’s blog. If you have not read it, take few moments to read the blog. ) 

Dictonary.com says feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. By that definition, yes, I am a staunch feminist.

I don’t believe in discrimination of any kind. Man or women, at the end, all are separate individuals. And all individuals have equal rights.
I was hoping around in the blogsphere and I saw a blog where the author has written a comment made by author’s friend “A new women joined our office and she got promoted. Obviously, she slept her way around” - I was like – man, wtf. If it is a guy who got promoted, will any one say he got promoted coz he slept around? I hardly see that. 
I see lot of discrimination happening around women around me.I have heard many of my friends saying that they hate men because of the experience they had.  But when I think about it, I have friends who hate women because of the experiences they had.

In my opinion, generalizing people under a gender is something which one should not do. I have seen many women bloggers saying "never trust a man" and I have seen an equal number of guys’ blogging "never trust women". If you look around, you can see the good, bad and ugly in both the genders. Michael Schumacher is a guy - does that mean all guys are good drivers? Absolutely not. I have seen guys who should not even be allowed to come near a car or a bike, driving merrily to their hearts content. I have seen excellent women drivers who can give any man a run for their money. But that does not prove that all women are excellent drivers. 

It is all in the individuals. Why drag gender/cast/creed/color and build barricades? Why cant people be taken as individuals and appreciated / abhorred for what they are, than taking examples and generalize the whole? 

Hm. Now I realize I started this blog from one topic, and then went to another topic.. digression digression… the ban of a wandering mind. 

IF you are a mallu, watch this video – this is hilarious. I got this from Manu’s blog


 





Lori maari poyi….

13 comments:

Preeti said...

U - my dear anoo - r a different guy...trust me, u r...and i agree with u when u say generalizations shud never be enocuraged cuz it really mars judgement...

unfortunately, it is REALLY difficult to break away impulsive judgementalism...which i am guilty of...especially when it comes to genralizin men ;)

P.S: Im first! :) :) :)

Winnie the poohi said...

As far as I have seen.. generalization occurs bothways.. and I am sick of ppl who try to categorize!

Anonymous said...

nice to read such good views once in a while !!

Praveen said...

very true man!
i think feminism as an idea has given rise to so much of hipocrisy..
loved ur analogy with schumi..tht hits the nail on its head..
lets stop such generalisations

Jaya said...

We see one or two people behaving in a way that we don't favor and then try to generalize the behavior which is of course not true.

That is sad. It is like statistics. Get the idea but don't believe in it.

Meira said...

Not just gender...we do it for caste, religion, colour, community, education!
I'm sick of hearing 'oh how did you land up with such an intelligent guy'...just because TS is from a premier institute!DUH!

Meira said...

n the Schumacher analogy's good :)

Mana said...

Even I hate discrimination based on gender! It makes no sense.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't have agreed more with you on this.

Discrimination & generalization ... both happen. I think ppl like you & me can do a lot in this regard. No ?

Anonymous said...

well said chetta.. *claps*

Tys on Ice said...

:)...loved tht video..always did think that russians are just white mallus ( communism and all)...

regarding feminism....i really wish i cud sleep my way to the top...sounds like more fun than work..seriuosly, i think any sort of bias has its roots in lack of understanding and fear..truth is women had to bear the brunt of our way of handling anything that threathen us..but its thankfully changing...iam getting boobs.

Usha said...

hey, thanks for the linkback! Im finding this post pretty late though.

I so remember ur take on the gender based generalisations on driving too. And yeah, successful women are used to people attributing their success to sleeping around with men in power. I know quite a few girl friends who've been through that. Those are times when I feel glad for not having a high flying career on a fast-track though! :P

It's quite refreshing to hear a guy talk about this. One has to be man enough to acknowledge it as sensitively as you have done.

And the video, was totally ROTFL!

namrata said...

What specially draws me to your posts is the sensitivity you articulate in this blog post which talks about gender descrimination, feminism and the negatives of cast and religion leading to violence. And it is this innate sensitivity that we at bellbajao.org want to tap, hoping that people like you will appreciate the cause we stand for and sensitise eevryone around you about it.
Our latest multimedia campaign 'Bell Bajao' seeks to break the mould and address the issue of domestic abuse. Bell Bajao is an awareness and intervention campaign against domestic abuse. The campaign has been created pro bono by Ogilvy & Mather. It seeks to engage men as direct partners ready to 'ring the bell', and intervene in situations of abuse - a new venture within the Indian context. The campaign is unique, in that it uses media, education and pop culture to reach out and cause change in the zeitgeist.

The campaign also has an online avatar at www.bellbajao.org which

* Provides information on Domestic Violence
* Creates an online discussion space for domestic violence with a public blog
* Is designed to target youth, media and women's rights activists
* Offers a series of education tools to learn and teach about violence against women
* Is aligned with online partners like Google, Zapak Games, Contests2Win, The Viewspaper, IBIBO, Blogworks, Foxymoron, Blank Noise, etc.

Please visit the site and do write back to me at namratad2224@gmail.com about your thoughts on the campaign.And if you're interested, do blog on the site as well. And if you're a regular blogger, we'd be happy to put you on our blogroll and crosslink your blog page on our site.

Thanks and hoping to hear from you,
Namrata.