A false sense of security

Conversation with gay friends a few years ago:  "don't be fooled by the rainbow lighting in the white house. the world is not as pro gay rights as we are led to believe"

We all learned that the folks who went and registered themselves under DACA were naive. They were signing up to be on a round up list when the administration changed.

See the same thing with the MeToo movement. Women are being lulled into a false sense of security and are coming out and naming accusers. 

All those so called Twitter supporters might as well be bots who are echoing election messages for money. People who are sitting on their couches with their laptops, typing frantically on social media, offering their words of support and hashtags, cannot do anything when it comes to actually backing these women all the way to get justice. 

The country(ies) are run by the rich class that is actually part of the problem. The political class, is definitely part of the problem as power has corrupted folks into thinking they can get away with anything and usually it is a case of people scratching peoples back. 

The media will move on to the next best thing, be it toilet paper intentionally left on DJT's shoes as he boards the next plane or Melania's faux pas in Africa. 

Meanwhile the poor women will go through being shamed all over again, be forgotten with the next news cycle and the same guys who were accused will come back to their day jobs using their money, power, influence to haunt their accusers and make them disappear. 

The ones that set the example are always the creeps. Very rarely do we see justice (which again seems disproportionate) for a Cosby or a Weinstein. 

The most powerful man in the world today thinks it is okay to grab women by their body parts and he is still out there. 

So many folks were named as part of the metoo movement. The standard Modus Operandi for the perps seems to be :

1. Why did you not come forward earlier?

2. How come you cannot remember details clearly?

3. If 1 and 2 are answered, they plant a fake accuser whose credibiilty can be questioned and then use that to say "all accusers are not credible" 

4. shaming using multiple methods

Have seen this over and over and over again. 

My kid came and told me "who will believe us if something like that happened to us? no wonder no one comes forward and accuses anyone because no one will believe the woman!" and my answer was "I will definitely believe you. I am your dad". 

It is a sad day if your daughter has doubts on the world when it comes to people believing a woman's word against a man. 

Sincerely want women to band together on this. Women need to believe other women. 

Ladies, if you know a woman who believes "boys will be boys".. "locker room talk" etc. please convince that person that it is not acceptable and it is wrong. Maybe a woman can change the mind of another woman?

Nothing is worse than a mother endorsing such behavior for a son or a wife endorsing such behavior from a husband. 

I grew up in a very male chauvinistic society. Then I ended up in a country where women think they are in much better shape than any place in the world, only to see again and again that it is not much different. 

To all those brave women who are coming forward and naming accusers, the world is not ready for you. My kid is right. One man believing her is not enough. The world will come back and get you. So think twice before you come forward. All those retweets won't save you as they pale against money, power and influence in the real world.  It is not a million candles burning for you. It is one candle and a lot of mirrors. That one flickers and dies and it is total darkness. 

The most powerful country in the world saw a circus to nominate a SC judge who will decide many cases that determine the fate of women and we saw what happened.  There is no chance for ordinary people to get any justice. 

Wait a few years, till something big happens. Something real. Not Twitter rage. Some new laws and regulations when it comes to meaningful investigations and consequences for folks found guilty. A time when a woman goes in front of a panel of people where the percentage of women on the panel is same as the percentage women out there.. even then you should think twice.

A sincere request to all those who are encouraging the women who have come forward for more details on their revelations, or asking more folks to come forward.. please stay behind them to the end. Retweeing might make you feel you have done the right thing, but you are actually doing more damage to people because at the end of the day they face all the conquences while you will still be on your couch with your laptop doing the same thing. 

This post is doing the same on the other side of things, and that is not lost on me.  I am on a couch writing this, but someone needs to caution these women that they are not being backed up as they might think.

The world is not ready for Metoo

Wish it was!

Those Three days - Part 1

This is a long post that has been cut into little segments for the sake of clarity. For a preamble see here.

The post(in many parts) are my views on what a woman is entitled to when she has her periods. If your fingers are already itching to type something or other in the comment box, I request you read through the rest of the post.

Why should a guy, any guy for that matter write about something that seems to be a very girly topic? Well, this is a daddy blog site and to cut to the chase, it almost feels like there are somethings where this dad might not have a say in how his little girls will get to live their life when they are not little girls anymore and that is the reason behind writing this. At least my little girls get to know that their dad started the "Vote No on Theetu" movement long before they became women.

On a tangential note, everyone from airline passengers to credit card holders is getting a nice crisp "bill of rights" these days. So why not women who have restrictions imposed on them roughly 10% of their adult life?

"Theetu" is the Tamizh term for well, I do NOT have a single english word for it. The closest we can come to any description is "quarantined" or "contaminated" or "segregated".. hopefully that gives you the general idea. A girl is considered to have theetu when she has her periods. Anything she touches becomes "theetu" as well. The exact rules of what "any" includes is not defined in any guidebook. Based on personal experience and inference, here is the high level list of things that we know can catch a "theetu"

1. other humans on contact including kids >1 year old

2. clothes belonging to the woman and other people in the house when in contact with her/her clothes, even if it is a mere brush. Van der walls forces based contact is enough if a widowed great grandmother is present in the house.

3. Any furniture when covered with cloth (as derived from #2)

4. Any vessel that the woman drinks from or eats from.

5. Anyone drinking or eating from utensils shared by woman with Theetu or by induction kids who stay with woman with theetu

and an equally high level known exceptions to the rule. These exceptions will be accepted 90% of the time by other visiting families..

1. Breastfeeding babies are exempt. They can be handed back and forth from the theetu woman.

2. New clothes that have not been washed (from the time they were purchased from the store that is) are exempt.

3. Rexine and other shiny vinyl or synthetic fabrics. That would explain why every Brahmin family in Chennai would have a couple of rexine covered pillows around. Number of pillows would be proportional to the maximum number of women in the house becoming theetu at any one time.

4. Plastic utensils. (any Materials Science major would know even as a child that plastic : Utensil :: Rexine : cloth )

5. Naked kids < 3 years old (this exception's acceptability varies)

6. Any rules valid inside the house are not valid outside the house.

There is a third set of rules on acceptable boundary conditions for theetu rules in the space time continuum. In what can be crudely described as Sundar's law of Universal theetality, where theta represents the ... forget it. Time to be serious again.

1. Theetu is always usually restricted to a corner of the living room directly across from the TV so that the woman can watch TV.

2. Theetu will also be restricted to a particular bedroom in the event the woman has kids <3 years old or still has a breastfeeding baby.

3. The woman/ girl is not allowed to enter the room or space which is designated as prayer area as well as the kitchen or cooking area.

4. For the most part they will be confined to the verandah

5. Theetu boundaries do cross over to your neighbors house if they observe theetu but magically disappear if the neighbor says "we do not follow the rules".

6. All theetu disappears when the woman reaches the street. However when she enters another relatives house who observe the rules, the force field becomes active again.

Given the 5 basic rules, the 6 exemptions and the 6 boundary conditions that have passed self-consistency checks over decades of observation, we are now ready to proceed to the next part.

The history of theetu... which will be covered in Those Three days - Part 2.
(preview, apparently south Indian Tamizh Brahmins are not the only ones who do this. Orthodox jews, south pacific islanders, some folks from central and south america and mexico also follow similar rules)

The posting will continue, interspersed with other regular happenings...

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