Category Archives: Feminism

Feminism

Sexualized workplaces, predatory men and the rage of women

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Listen. Can you hear it? That low growl on the horizon, coming closer, growing louder? It’s the dam bursting its bounds. It’s the quiet shriek of convivial silence being ripped apart.

The silence around the normalizing of a range of behaviour from the apparently casual to the outrightly violent. The laughing sexual innuendo; the misogynist jokes; the well-known ‘displaced squeeze’ of the upper arm, the shoulders; the repeated, relentless expression of romantic or sexual interest despite clear NO’s; the grabbing of the breast, the unwanted kiss, the out-of-town work trip ending in physical assault, presented as flattering interest; and through it all, the clear invocation of the power relationship.

You look great, Sir, retirement suits you, says a younger female colleague to a Professor visiting his former institution. Really, he smirks. Two other people told me this, and they are both women. What do you think it means? She smiles uncomfortably and hurries out of the office of the male head of the institution in whose presence this comment is made.

Continue reading Sexualized workplaces, predatory men and the rage of women →

Bad ideas, Culture, Feminism, Genders, Identities

Ka Tvam Baale? Kaanchana Maatha! Or, the University of Calicut experiments with the Grotesque!

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Now let me confess, it is high-time in life that I got an award — I am 46, nearly. It isn’t really a question of whether I desire it or not. If you are in the business of reading and writing in Kerala then you MUST receive some award by mid-career — it’s a bit like experiencing nausea and tiredness in early pregnancy. You MUST have it, it is the surest sign of being pregnant, and sometimes to enjoy people’s kindness towards a pregnant woman, you need to get vomiting soonest possible. You can’t get into a conversation about pregnancy with other women without being able to recount your experience of being nauseous and tired. Continue reading Ka Tvam Baale? Kaanchana Maatha! Or, the University of Calicut experiments with the Grotesque! →

Bad ideas, Feminism

“Equality is like gravity – we need it to stand on this earth” Joss Whedon

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WHY DO YOU CREATE STRONG WOMEN CHARACTERS?

A question Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) gets asked every single time by reporter after reporter (a question that Indian reporters may be spared from ever having to ask any man – or anyone – in TV or cinema here?)

This video gives you Whedon’s answer:

 

Everyday Life, Feminism, Genders, Violence/Conflict

Will Logarani Be The Last Victim Of Violence Against Women? Cayathri. D

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GUEST POST BY CAYATHRI D via Ground Views

All photographs by the author, or sent by the author (in the original post)

Around 5pm on 17 October 2013, within the Jaffna municipality, one of our friends (a male youth resident of Jaffna) came to our home (a few friends were gathered there) looking very disturbed.…

READ MORE HERE

Culture, Everyday Life, Feminism, Movements

Storm in a Calm IIT Campus Over a Sexual Harassment Case: Pronoy Rai

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Guest post by PRONOY RAI

The serene, picturesque campus of the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati has been witnessing some very noteworthy events in the recent past. According to reports in the popular media, a professor at the institute’s biotechnology department was accused of sending obscene text messages to his PhD student over her phone. Though the professor pleaded innocence, claiming that messages were sent from his sim card that was stolen, the local police found this hard to believe. The professor has also been accused of harassing the student during other instances on campus. Upon receiving the advice of the ‘Working Women’s Committee’ of the institute, the professor was recently suspended. This narrative constructs for us a simple, fair story of a just state-society system. A person breaks the law, and he is disciplined, as one would expect in a fair democratic society. If only that was the case.

The suspension of the professor was not immediately followed by the submission of the report, let alone the filing of complaint at the institute and with the local police. On August 13, Amingaon police in Assam arrested the professor for sending obscene text messages to a student. The arrest happened because the student had to file a FIR in order to request a telecom company to reveal the identity of the owner of the phone, from where the obscene messages being sent to her, were emanating. The delay in the inaction of the institute administration is unjustified, but perhaps not very inexplicable. Continue reading Storm in a Calm IIT Campus Over a Sexual Harassment Case: Pronoy Rai →

Debates, Feminism, Violence/Conflict

The Many Avatars of Fear: Amrita Nandy

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Guest Post by AMRITA NANDY

I have recently come to the US for a year. My “settling down” has happened under the viral shadows of the Rose Chasm debates. (See HERE and HERE)

Personally, the online exchanges struck a chord for me because I too, like Rose, am a student who is new in a foreign country and to its culture, trying to feel at home, adjust, mingle, accommodate and, most of all, make sense of some new experiences.

Before you point out that this juxtaposition of Rose’s context with mine is too simplistic and reductive, allow me to say “of course”.

Of course! A comparison, contrast or parallel of our respective experiences is not where I am headed to.

This is merely my account of being an outsider in America. More precisely, this is my attempt to engage with the articulation of fear in its many avatars and contexts.

Yes, fear!

Continue reading The Many Avatars of Fear: Amrita Nandy →

Feminism, Identities

Goodbye Sunila Abeysekara

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Sri Lanka’s top UN Human Rights award winner Sunila Abeysekara died at a private hospital in Colombo on Monday afternoon after a long battle with cancer.

A founder of Sri Lanka’s feminist movement, Ms. Abeysekara was a leading socialist activist for minority rights, women’s, workers and peasants rights. Recently she was prominent on Lankan human rights issues at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. She was also a noted Sinhala folk and opera singer. Ms. Abeysekera, daughter of the late Charles Abeysekara, a noted human rights and social activist, founded Inform, a rights-based NGO. – Ends-

(Sunday Times ,Sri Lanka,  Monday, 09 September 2013 19:02)

It was late 2002 when Delhi witnessed a public meeting of a different kind at Rajendra Bhavan. Hundreds of people from different walks of life – activists, writers, political workers, young students – had gathered there to witness the unveiling of an interim report prepared by an international panel of feminist activists which had visited Gujarat between 14th and 17th December, investigated the violence – particularly the physical and sexual – inflicted upon women since 27th February 2002.

The interim report prepared by the ‘International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat’ unequivocally stated : “this violence, which reflects a longer and larger genocidal project, in our view constitutes a crime against humanity and satisfies the legal definition of genocide, both of which are crimes of the most serious dimension under international law.” (http://www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/reports/iijg/interimreport.htm)

The panelists included leading feminist scholars and activists from different parts of the world.

It was the first time that one had a chance to listen to Sunila Abeysekara. Continue reading Goodbye Sunila Abeysekara →