Frolicking in the gentle breeze

Nidhi Dutt experienced a little “Eve teasing,” or as you might call it, assault, in Bombay one afternoon.

My colleague and I were piling into a rickshaw, heading back to the bureau. And that’s when it happened. We were suddenly surrounded by a group of boys, barely teenagers.

At first the whole thing seemed harmless, if a little predictable – the cheery interest of a group of bright eyed, smiling boys.

Their approach was not unusual, foreigners and cameras make for an unmissable attraction in India.

But it was only a matter of minutes, possibly seconds, before the smiles turned into a blur of pawing, grabbing hands. Their indecent behaviour was punctuated by cheers, laughter and explicit comments in Hindi.

And that was it. I had been Eve-teased. Or as we describe it in the West, sexually harassed. In broad daylight, on a street in a busy business district of Mumbai.

“Teasing” they call it – a group of boys physically attacking two women. That’s not “teasing” and I don’t think we call that harassment, either, not when it’s unwanted resisted physical contact – I think we call that assault.

This kind of harassment, often described in India as innocent play, is commonplace. Yet this is a country in which the predominant Hindu religion worships female deities and claims to respect women.

Described as “innocent play” is it – being treated as a commodity as public as a toilet? That’s not any kind of play. It’s an assault on women’s autonomy and ability to be in the world without fear.

Christian love

What Jessica Ahlquist has to put up with.

A small sample (all spellings theirs):

  • May that little, evil teenage girl and that judge BURN IN HELL.
  • U little brainless idiot, hope u will be punished, u have not win sh..t! Stupid little brainless skunk!
  • How does it feel to be the most hated person in RI right now? Your a puke and a disgrace to the human race.
  • shes not human shes garbage
  • Fuck Jessica alquist I’ll drop anchor on her face
  • Jessica Ahlquist may have won her case, but she’s going straight to hell.
  • literally that bitch is insane. and the best part is she already transferred schools because she knows someone will jump her
  • I hope there’s lots of banners in hell when your rotting in there you atheist fuck #TeamJesus
  • your home address posted online i cant wait to hear about you getting curb stomped you fucking worthless cunt
  • gods going to fuck your ass with that banner you scumbag

And that’s all I can stand. It’s only a sample from only about 10% down the page.

Dr Gingrich sneers at the crime of speaking French

I hate my country sometimes. Really hate it. Visceral stomach-heaving loathing.

One such time is when candidates for high office tell us that ignorance is good and knowledge is bad. It makes me murderous. Yes, ignorance is good, poverty is good, starvation is good, disease is good, pain is good – and that’s what we have to offer, the candidates imply. Vote for us and pride yourself on not knowing any pesky foreign languages.

Quelle horreur! Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has been skewered in a new political attack ad – for speaking French.

The ad, released by rival Newt Gingrich, seeks to draw unflattering parallels between Mr Romney and another Massachusetts politician, John Kerry. [Read more…]

A few minutes of quiet reflection

Another installment of Heathen’s Progress. It starts with prayer and then generalizes to religious ritual compared to secular ritual.

I’ve recently started praying. Well, not exactly praying, but doing something that fulfils what I think are its main functions. Prayer provides an opportunity to remind oneself of how one should be living, our responsibilities to others, our own failings, and our relative good fortune, should we have it. This is, I think, a pretty worthwhile practice and it is not something you can only do if you believe you are talking to an unseen creator. Many stoics did something similar and some forms of meditation serve the same kind of purpose. My version is simply a few minutes of quiet reflection on such matters each morning.

I don’t see why that should be called prayer at all. It looks to me like thinking, which is not the same thing. Reflection is more like thinking than it’s like prayer, and adding “quiet” doesn’t make it more like prayer. Thinking generally is quiet. [Read more…]

Nirmukta says good-bye to Ajita Kamal

From Nirmukta:

Ajita was raised in the city of Coimbatore, India. His passion for science and reason went back to early childhood.

…

Ajita was an active participant in freethought throughout his years in America, forming ties with freethinkers who would become part of Nirmukta’s extended family. Employing his versatile talents, his contributions towards the cause of reason were manifold: as a prolific and edifying writer, as an insightful interviewer, as an adept podcast host, as an energetic community organizer both on-ground and online, and as a welcoming mentor to many freethinkers young and old taking their first steps towards embracing freethought.

In 2008, he started what would later become our organisation known as Nirmukta.

“Eve teasing”

What? What’s that?

It’s a fun game in India and Bangladesh: stalking and/or taunting women. It has a funny jokey haha name, so obviously it’s totes harmless, even though some women kill themselves to get away from it (silly bitches) and some people get murdered trying to stop it.

Young women often face verbal abuse and taunts in Bangladesh, and sometimes stalked by colleagues at school or other young men.

Some young women, unable to bear the repeated insults, have even gone so far as to commit suicide. [Read more…]

You call that “Light”?

Just what Egypt needs – a mutawiyin like the one the lucky people in Saudi Arabia have.

The radical Islamist Nour party, or “Party of the Light,” has captured more than a quarter of votes in the post-Mubarak Egyptian elections. Nour, which ran second to the Muslim Brotherhood in the polling, is a Wahhabi party, reproducing the ideology of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, under the label of “Salafism.” Its rhetoric presents “Salafism” as pure Islam unchanged by 14 centuries of Muslim history in differing lands and cultures worldwide. Nour is hostile to non-Wahhabi Muslims, repressive of women’s rights, and discriminatory against non-Muslims. [Read more…]

Damn you LEGO

Yet another petition. But it’s a good one. I couldn’t resist (typical woman, eh).

After 4 years of marketing research, LEGO has come to the conclusion that girls want LadyFigs, a pink Barbielicious product line for girls, so 5 year-olds can imagine themselves at the café, lounging at the pool with drinks, brushing their hair in front of a vanity mirror, singing in a club, or shopping with their girlfriends. As LEGO CEO Jorgan Vig Knudstorp puts it, “We want to reach the other 50% of the world’s population.”

That makes my head want to explode, so I signed. [Read more…]