Guest post: We have had so many candle light marches

Originally a comment by Nini Thomas on “In our culture, there is no place for a woman.”

“India’s daughter” is being banned, great job by our government, kudos!!! Looks like this has invoked more furor than the rape case. The views expressed by the rapist is not new, these views have been expressed by so many people across India. This just goes on to prove that our so called culture is more worried about Log kya kahenge (What will others say!!).

We have had so many candle light marches, but it has failed to light our hearts and remove the darkness in our mindsets.

Our biggest achievement as a country was the successful mission to Mars, I hope that this mission helps us get a better insight on how men think and feel… maybe next mission should be to Venus to know where things are going wrong for women.

Even today I have seen mothers telling their little boys as young as 5 years, “Boys don’t cry, Boys don’t cook” and the words of wisdom for girls are “ Don’t play with boys, don’t talk loudly, help your mothers in the kitchen etc.”
I don’t have anything against girls entering kitchen, or talking softly, but are we not engraving this gender divide in our families by saying so…

Even today if a women is married off, and she has to by all means reduce the amount of time she spends with her family, after all she no longer belongs to that house. I know women who say that they don’t like going to house town for vacation because, they need to spend more time in husband’s house, and if they wish to go to their house, it’s a favor and not a right.

Women should not express opinion on any topic when men are talking. It is a sad truth that working women are not as liberated as it looks, they shoulder dual responsibility; work at office, come back and do the work as a housewife, mother and wife. In case she can’t handle it, she can quit the job and sit at home, after all her salary is supplementary and not so important. When will we understand that job does not always boil down to money, it much more…but when will we understand.

Yes I do have lot of fury within me, but it’s for me to decide how I vent it out, either I burn the whole world, or mold the next generation by inculcating better values in my children. Fathers, respect your wife… Respect other women in your life – mother, sister etc…. Mothers, be an example to your daughter, and show to your son’s how they should treat women.

Women time to rise and say I don’t want to be treated like a down trodden, I don’t need reservations, I will rise and stand, yes it’s right to raise your voice, we don’t need others to talk for us, we need to dust off a lot of age old taboos, and open our minds and say “No one can screw our lives, we have control over it”!!!!

Indian culture has no place for women is a statement which encapsulates the views of how women are looked at….

Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed

Here’s another persecution on religious grounds.

We, African youth and defenders of freedom and human dignity, with the support of human rightsliberty and freedom defenders, have learned with great sorrow that the death penalty has been imposed on Mohamed Ould Cheikh Mohamed Mkhaitir who was accused of apostasy despite his multiple recantations of the statements in question.

This heavy sentence was imposed based on assertions that Mohamed Ould Cheikh Mohamed Mkhaitir “spoke lightly of the Prophet (PBUH)” in an article published on Mauritanian websites on December 30, 2013. In the article, entitled “Religion, Religiosity, and the Blacksmiths”, Mr. Mkhaitir demonstrated how the “Zawayas”, or marabouts, manipulated historical facts cited by Muslim scholars to justify their dominance over the “blacksmiths”, of which he is a member. He accused Mauritanian society of perpetuating this “iniquitous socially inherited” cultural order into the present. [Read more…]

Two living, breathing human beings

A “godless science-researcher” wrote an impassioned, humane post about the murder of Avijit Roy, who was his friend.

Hacked to death. Hacked. To death. Two living, breathing human beings, returning home after their day’s work, set upon by murderous assailants who dragged them to the pavement and hacked away at them with machete-like sharp instruments. Two human beings, a man who has succumbed to his deadly injuries, and a woman, who sustained severe injuries to her hands and forehead as she tried to protect her companion. Two human beings, my friend and his wife.

[Read more…]

You have to know where you are

No doubt most of you are aware of the head-shaking and puzzlement and alarm, and sometimes just plain anger, about Jamila Bey’s address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as a representative of American Atheists last week. Debbie Goddard has thoughts and questions about it at Skepchick. Rai Rhoades is unpleased at Rhoades to Reality. James Croft has big doubts at Temple of the Future.

Quoting James:

American Atheists’ overtures to CPAC and to the Republican Party make me uneasy. I can’t help the sense that this is less about promoting atheist visibility and acceptance, and more about cozying up to powerful people  under the cover of a completely unrealistic image of “conservatism”. It’s as if not only do they want conservatives to be OK with atheists, but they want atheists to be OK with conservatives – and they’re willing to overlook the very troubling record of contemporary conservatism to make their case.

As if to prove my point, at one moment in her speech Bey looked out into the crowd and said: “I see people who love this country and believe in the equality of all people.” [Read more…]

Only then will she eat the leftovers

The New York Times reports on a new study that finds Indian women are far more undernourished and underweight than women even in poorer countries.

You know what this results in? Undernourished babies, lots of whom die in or out of the uterus.

That’s the thing about hating women – it has some knock-on effects that even non-women don’t want. It’s hard to get the amount of hatred that should be directed at women exactly right. [Read more…]

The crucial W

Wednesday night last week Cooper and I took our post-dinner walk down to Kerry Park, which is a little pocket park on the south slope of Queen Anne Hill with a sweeping view of the southern Cascades, Mount Rainier on the few days it’s clear enough, downtown, the harbor, and Puget Sound. If you’ve ever seen a postcard or generic photo of Seattle, it was taken from there. It was a beautiful windy night with clouds ripping across the sky. When we got to Kerry Park we found people arranging big illuminated squares on the grass, squares that held letters, one per square. While Cooper sniffed all the things I looked at the squares to read the message (upside down: I was standing at the top of them) – and got NET NEUTRALITY NO.

NO?? That seemed incongruous. The NO people would be at corporate dinners or on the phone to lobbyists, not messing around in Kerry Park at night. Huh. Then here came someone carrying another square. Ah. “Is that the W?” I asked her. “I hope?” It was, of course.

They asked us – the random people in the park at that moment – to help hold up the sign and be in the photo. Fun! So I wrapped Cooper’s leash around one of the railings and beed in the photo.

I found the photo at the Northwest Progressive Institute.

Net Neutrality Now!

(Photo: Rick Barry/Broken Shade Photo)

I’m behind the L, looking lumpy because in a hoody jacket.

Hicks would stare out the second-floor window

The New York Times has more on the Chapel Hill murders.

A motive for the shooting may never be known. But interviews with more than a dozen of the victims’ friends and family members, lawyers, police officers and others make two central points: Before the shootings, the students took concerted steps to appease a menacing neighbor, and none were parked that day in a way that would have set off an incident involving their cars.

If those accounts do not prove what kind of malice was in Mr. Hicks’s heart, the details that emerge indicate that whatever happened almost certainly was not a simple dispute over parking.

[Read more…]

They have a “2 Witness” rule

It’s not just Catholic priests. It’s not just Catholic priests and Amish patriarchs. It’s not just Catholic priests and Amish patriarchs and yoga gurus. It’s not just Catholic priests and Amish patriarchs and yoga gurus and FLDS patriarchs.

It’s also Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Candace Conti was repeatedly sexually abused by such a nice friendly man when she was a child.

It is really hard for kids to speak up when they’re abused. But the Jehovah’s Witnesses make it a lot harder.

They have a “2 Witness” rule, which says that anyone who accuses an adult of abuse must have a second witness. [Read more…]