Ripples of my Reflections

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Tag: Women (Page 1 of 2)

The “Brave Girls” book

July 15, 2023 /

My daughter generally needs more time to get over her fears. I have been worried sick & even lost sleep over how easily she scares. I believe this world needs courage, especially in women.(Maybe, I am extrapolating my experience and surroundings when growing up a lot more than I should, I don’t know)

A cousin gifted my daughter a book,Good night stories for rebel girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo. My daughter was too young when she got the book to understand the stories. Out of curiosity, I started reading it and loved it. The nice portraits of the women and the stories of their lives and struggles taught me humility. They brought out the privileges that I took for granted and painted me a picture of how far women have come and how much more there is to cover.

When she was ready, I introduced the book to my daughter by reading it as her bedtime story and now it is her “Brave girls” story time every night before bed. I am still not sure about how much inspiration or influence she is deriving from the book. However, I feel that my wish to show her different times and lives, how it is possible to do anything and become anyone if she sets her mind to it, is fulfilled to some extent. I also feel she is processing and sometimes even absorbing some courage from these stories as she understands them to be accounts of real women who once lived or are still living.

The book has one page accounts about women from different time periods and recounts what each of them went through to do what was considered impossible at that time. Starting from Ada Lovelace, ranging through Amelia Earhart, Cleopatra, Florence Nightingale, Rani Lakshmi Bai, Grace Hopper and many more, the book talks of a hundred brilliant women who broke stereotypes and absurd rules to do what they wanted to do but were told otherwise and were discouraged in every possible way.

It’s been a huge inspiration to me to read about these women and think of the strength they possessed. I hope these stories inspire my daughter and many more girls out there to gather their strength, the strength that they have but are not aware of. I consider this an excellent gift to anyone but more so for 5 – 10 year old girls.

Here’s to strong women, may we know them, may we be them. may we raise them!

Until later 🙂

WhatsApp and Sexism – part 2

March 21, 2021 /

Read part 1 here.

I couldn’t quite cover the other side of the coin with my earlier post. So, penning down this sequel in an attempt to cover more vantage points.

So when I discussed how lack of social responsibility leads to a trend with WhatsApp forwards that portray men as victims of marriage at the hands of women, I also had a look at the other side. Are there no jokes about men? Of course, there are. In fact, I would argue, the same jokes that target women are the most insulting ones to men. They portray men to be weak dummies in a marriage, they show men as incapable of being independent, taking part in running a household, unable to cook… the list is endless. One counter-point to my earlier post was that men take such jokes lightly. Well, they shouldn’t. If I were a man, I would be terribly offended by this trend. Especially when the men are equally equipped with household, help out in parenting, do everything they can to pitch in. These jokes are totally unfair to them.

If we analyze the direction in which the scales tip when you see the statistics, even with generalization, there are a lot more jokes that target women than men. This, as I said earlier, is just how the meme/joke creation process. Whichever jokes go viral, their themes are the trendy ones. So if a certain theme is more prevalent, we only have ourselves to blame. So how do we achieve balance or equality? There are quite a few ways to go about it. The easier way would be to take everything lightly and make fun of both men and women equally. Or the longer route would be not to use social media as a platform to target any particular faction. Unbiased social media! Well, that’s the dream 🙂

Let’s also look at another way of taking things sportively than to blindly make fun of everyone. Let’s say, a husband makes fun that his wife can’t cook, straight to her face, and she gets back with an equally funny response about him being useless in the kitchen and the family enjoys a laugh. This scenario is less nefarious because it is a personal situation handled directly within the family. There is no stereotyping that all women cannot cook. There is no generalization that all men are useless. This is about a couple/family laughing together over a funny comment about themselves. They know what boundaries not to cross. However, when we take this scenario, share it on all social platforms, influence the audience who might or might not have an opinion about it, that becomes a meme. Slowly as the meme feeds on colored opinions and conditioned mindsets, the boundaries fade into non existence. And eventually it ends up offending some while others say it is not so bad.

Now, let’s go one step further and remove gender from the main premise. Even if a meme is just about how bad married life is, think about the message being conveyed. And if the number of times you listen to this message keeps growing exponentially over the years? It is easy enough to be influenced. After all, we live in the digital age. If we look at a particular brand’s advertisements often, we are tempted to choose it over others. How hard is it for teenagers or younger children to think that marriage as a concept is just a joke? How can we explain to them about the value or culture of marriage after feeding them years of bias? If we are fine with them taking this message in, then we shouldn’t be cribbing about how the culture of this country is going downhill because youngsters no longer want to get married, they prefer live-in relationships and the such.

Social media is bad enough with the privacy invasion, tracking users and their behavior, mining users’ data and selling it for profit. Throw bias and prejudice into the mix and you get one colorful cocktail. One that will make you feel on top of the cloud while actually robbing you of your personality, individuality, and credibility.

Until later 🙂

Stop giving us what we already have

January 13, 2021 /

Before thinking about providing salaries to women who manage the household, before debating if this is a right idea or is it putting a price on things done out of love, before arguing about whether this is a pride or an insult, how about we do a few basic things?

Before talking about money, status, and pride, let’s talk respect, compassion, sharing the load, treating them lovingly. Let’s stop the empowerment rage for one second and let’s talk why the necessity for empowerment was born. Let’s stop the oppression (not just for women). Let’s stop the patriarchy that is conditioned into each cell of this society. Let’s stop forwarding the distasteful jokes about marriage and how women spoil men’s life after marriage. Stop kidding yourselves.

Women don’t need protectors. Women don’t need someone else to justify their work. They need one thing – just letting them be. Treat them fair. Respect them for who they are. Women who need someone else to voice their concern won’t exist today if they were not fed years of implicit and explicit patriarchy.

For every brand that uses women’s day as a campaign premise,
For every politician who uses women empowerment just for the vote bank,
For every single person who thinks the marriage/husband-wife jokes on WhatsApp are funny,
For every brand that makes a sexist ad for cheap popularity,
Stop creating the problem and you wouldn’t have to search for the solution. Stop doing what you do and you wouldn’t need to empower women. Women are empowered, more than you’d think, more than you’d know, more than you could ever imagine. Just stop being a jerk and start being unconditionally unbiased.

Until later 🙂

#WhatIReadToday

November 22, 2018 /

In the chaos of gender equality, there seems to be some confusion creeping in. Most people are thinking and working only towards the idea that women are born to do everything men can. But if we think of it as women are born to do everything men can’t, a whole new dimension opens up.

Strong women don’t play the victim. They don’t seek pity from others. And they don’t point fingers to make themselves feel better. They STAND and they DEAL.

My personal thought – The latter quote need not just apply to women. Applies to any strong person.

Setting things right

March 16, 2015 / / 11 Comments

I want to set certain things right. In my own terms. This is not a topic that’s unheard of or unwritten of. Yet, even the most civilized of the lot make the same mistake time and again and that pisses me off.

I am a feminist. And there comes the question, define feminism. Let me put it in a way that everyone would understand and hope (I’m an optimist) that people would get it.

The first line on Wiki’s page about it is: “Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women.” Do we see the word equal? Do we understand what it means? Then why is Feminism considered a taboo? Why are feminists being looked at as if they are aliens invading the planet and exclaimed at as “Ooh! You are a feminist!” with that sarcastic tinge in the tone?

I like it when a guy walking before me allows me to go forward as I am in a hurry because he doesn’t want to be a hindrance to another person irrespective of the gender. Not because I am a woman.

I like it when a guy gives a lady his seat in the bus not because she is a woman but because she is pregnant or carrying her baby in one arm and struggling to keep her feet planted.

I like it when a man stands up for a woman to protect her when she is helpless because she is also a human. Irrespective of gender, the helpless should be protected. Again not because of the gender but because that’s what a decent human being would and should do for another human being.

I like it when a man helps his wife in household chores because there is no work label associated with the gender. We eat irrespective of the gender right? Or do you not eat because you are a man? So why not do the dishes too?

I like it when a man refrains from making cheap gender based jokes because jokes should never be at the cost of someone’s feelings. It holds the same for jokes made on guys too.

Image Source: plus.google.com

That is feminism for you. Feminism arose because the natural equality that should be present for any human being started getting skewed. If all of us had extended that courtesy of being sensible and unbiased, there would have been no need for feminism. Society and biased people are the reasons & root causes for feminism. When you see someone and judge them based on their gender or when you try to label a person based on gender, you create the unbalance and hence the need for feminism.If you don’t like feminism and terms alike, stop being skewed and biased.

So next time before you judge a feminist, rethink what she/he stands for. He/she stands for equality not for chauvinism of any gender. A feminist stands up to maintain that balance which the others chose to ignore. A feminist thinks about the human being and not about the gender. So I will proudly say again, I am a feminist! Are you?

Until later 🙂

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