Under the cringe inducing headline “ Study links lesbianism to career” ,   the TOI quotes a dubious study from un-named NGOs in Chandigarh that : ( I am not making this shit up – this is a direct quote!)

A study by two NGOs to understand the nature of lesbian behaviour in the city has found that most women take to this alternative sexuality while staying in hostels of educational institutions or working at call centres and marketing companies

Apart from personal choice, the reasons for these women’s (sic) turning lesbian were found to be an abusive childhood or being widowed or divorced.

There is zero mention of genetic predisposition and makes the whole issue of homosexuality sound like a lifestyle choice as opposed to a congenital orientation.

This sounds like it was dictated by the far right – defense of marriage act types in the US …

Anyways, I matched their “checklist” against my personal history and:

- Stayed at hostel of educational institution : Check

- Working at call centers or marketing companies : Check

- Abusive childhood : No

- Widowed or Divorced : No

Does this mean there is a 50 % chance I am going to play for the other team ? But, but …I love Bruce Willis ..so that can’t be true? Can it ? Can it?

Who writes this crap?

© Runa for Über Desi, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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I sat through part of the unwatchable “Outsourced ” on NBC out of a sense of obligation – believing I needed to review it for Uberdesi. I wish I could have that 30 minutes of my life back! While “Outsourced” plays up every disgusting stereotype, the nadir was when the white, male lead sniggers at hearing the name “Manmeet”. He says something like “Man meat? That must be embarassing to use on the Internet”. That was it for me – I switched off the TV. If the actor/director had even bothered to research the way the name is pronounced ( munn- meeth ) the so called “pun” would not even hold up. ( As an aside: the presumably ABD actors like Amisha Nagarajan – of “Bombay Dreams” fame – should be ashamed of themselves for participating is such an obviously offensive show. It can be done right : ref: Raj Kootrapalli ( Kunal Nayyar) of “The Big Bang Theory”.”Outsourced” is plain wrong. I wonder if the ABD actors spend their time sniggering at their unfortunate DBD cousins and congratulating themselves on being so different?)

Making fun of ethnic names kind of shows that the writers have reached the bottom of the barrel. What is the wit in making fun of something that the unfortunate target has no control over? And who decides that only Anglo Saxon names are normal?

Remember Sanjaya Malakar? And the way the American media had a field day with his name? Even Brian Williams – who I respected up till that point – made a joke about it on Letterman. ( and then followed up with a half -assed apology you can read here )

I remember last Christmas when my family attended a party at the home of non Indian friends. A slightly inebriated guest asked my husband and son their names and then said “Why do you Indians have such weird names? Why can’t you name your kids Tom or Jack?”. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable we felt .

I confess that in India I used to snigger every time I passed by an Opticians shop in Colaba called “Lund & Blockley” for obvious reasons. But I would not dream of making fun of someone’s name. Here is my proposal (sarcasm :ON) With the issuance of a Green Card, lets change every Indian male’s name to “Tom” appended by a digit : Tom1 , Tom2 , Tom3 etc.Women can be Jane. And when Non-Indians visit India : lets call everyone “Sanjay ” since that is one of the few desi names that the American tongue does not mangle beyond recognition.Women can be Mahalakshmi. ( sarcasm:OFF).

There may be some hope on the horizon. This article in the NYTimes states that fewer immigrants are changing their names to fit in.

The rationale was straightforward: adopting names that sounded more American might help immigrants speed assimilation, avoid detection, deter discrimination or just be better for the businesses they hoped to start in their new homeland.

Today, most experts agree, that traditional immigrant gambit has all but disappeared.

Of course: this pertains only to last names. We still have a ways to go before an Anol or an Ashit can introduce themselves without encountering ridicule.

© Runa for Über Desi, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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For those of you who have been following “House” half as obsessively as I have – you should know that this weeks episode had a major shocker. Dr.Lawrence Kutner (our very own Kal Penn) committed suicide. I knew that this was going to happen almost a month ago . The Ausiello files predicted the death of a major male character on a leading TV series, I narrowed it down to “House” and I just knew that Kal Penn’s time had come. How,you ask? Elementary,my dears – its all because of the EMC theory-a theory that while not strictly scientific-has loads of empirical evidence to support it !

EMC stands for “Expendable Minority Character“- iin other words the hapless African American, Asian or desi who meets an untimely death all for the greater glory of the main star. Hollywood has perfected this to an art form.Take any action movie with a white hero and his essential minority sidekick. Four times out of five after umpteen blasts and mayhem, the EMC *must*die , with aforesaid hero weeping over him.

I think this works for Hollywood because they get their “token” character on screen to ward off any suggestions of lack of diversity and also get to kill off a cast member to inject pathos without alienating what they imagine to be the predominantly white audience. Its gotten so bad that the moment the EMC comes onto the screen- I start a countdown. The nadir was last year’s “Wanted” where the token desi was killed in the first two minutes of the movie.

I got news for Hollywood. The racial makeup of this country is changing and rapidly at that.

By the middle of the 21st century, non-Hispanic whites will make up a slim and fading majority of Americans. Hispanics will be nearly one-fourth of the U.S. population. Blacks, Asians, and American Indians together will make up close to one-fourth of the population.

(link)

Killing off EMCs (who are no longer so much of a “minority”!) is likely to turn off the audience. Also, tokenism is dead. The country is celebrating the election of its first African American President and its time to let go of tired beliefs.

Coming back to Kal Penn, personally I thought the entire storyline was manipulative and sucked big time. I see absolutely no upside to showing a suicide that happened for no apparent reason. There is no learning to be had from Kutner’s death. No warning signs that could educate an audience on what to look for. I do know that there are real suicides that happen without warning signs – I just see no discernible benefit in showing one on primetime TV – except as a sensational way to boost ratings.The creators of House are emotionally exploiting the audience, reaching a new low with the creation of a site where viewers can mourn Dr.Kutner – something that I think is in the worst taste possible. Kal Penn himself ought to be ashamed to be part of something that sensationalizes a very real issue. After all, this is the same actor who did some work for NAMI ( National Alliance on Mental Illness).

Yes, I know that Kal Penn asked to be released for his contract to go work at the White House ( bizarre and a subject for a completely different post!) but I still think that the way his exit was handled screams “Exploitative Manipulation of Ratings!!”

With heavy hearts, we bid goodbye to Dr.Kutner – the latest in a long line of unwept, unsung and unremembered EMCs , who have sacrificed themselves at the altar of Hollywood.

© Runa for Über Desi, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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The Times of India says so (link)

Studies show that a woman is raped every 35 minutes in India; female child mortality is higher than male by 25%-50% in India, Bangladesh and Nepal….. the average South Asian woman’s risk of dying in childbirth is a hundred times greater than for a woman in an industrialized country

Before we start congratulating ourselves on living in the US of A, lets pause to consider that the USA is also one of the few countries ( along with Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, Nauru, Palau and Tonga!) that has failed to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. (link)

Whats more disturbing  is that it is no longer just  the Right that is standing in the way of the ratification- but also so-called Liberals. The Conservatives claim that it could lead to legalized prostitution ( like that’s a bad thing!) and removal of restrictions on abortion. The Left is worried that in a rush to ratify it, a number of  potentially damaging exceptions for the US are likely to creep in. Damaging because the US will be ,in effect , telling the world “Do as I say, not as I do “.

Me? I am sad that we even need to be discussing the signing of a treaty that would guarantee equal rights for women.  Women make up more than 50% of the population yet the fact that we have to even discuss granting them Equal  rights shows how strong the patriarchy is . It has influenced even women’s groups such as the Rightist (and wrongly -named!) Concerned Women for America to oppose the treaty because it is like – and I quote them – “The Equal Rights Amendment on steroids”. And what is wrong with that?

The fact is that all this opposition in born out of fear. Fear that centuries of systems -political, social and religious – that are rooted in the patriarchy will no longer have a legal leg to stand on once this treaty is passed. The treaty requires that that signing nations “embody the principle of the equality of men and women in their national constitution or other appropriate legislation.” Other so -called controversial elements include the question of easy access to abortion and contraception that the treaty provides. I do not believe that the signing of CEDAW will magically solve all women’s issues ( Saudi Arabia signed it and women can’t even drive there!). But signing it will be a start to working towards true Equality – a start towards accepting that women are NOT second-class citizens of the world.

I’ll be happy about Women’s Day when I know that the world is working together to ensure that women have full rights over their lives and their bodies without society, the government and the family  telling us what is right for us.

© Runa for Über Desi, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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The conventional wisdom drilled into us when we – oh so often – encountered that loathsome breed – the roadside Romeo was -Don’t respond. Don’t acknowledge the insult. Don’t make eye contact. Keep your head down,keep traveling like nothing happened – like no-one was saying filthy things or passing lewd remarks. Later in college when I lived in a  girls’  dormitory we were locked in at 9 am like caged animals “for our own protection against anti-social element “. Random boyfriends would tell us “Don’t dress provocatively because you will attract the wrong element”. Not once did anyone in authority suggest that the problem was with the Roadside romeos, with the anti-social elements, with the “wrong kind” – whatever that was. The onus was always on us. We were women -we were to be subjugated, controlled and made to fit into whatever the ( male?) view of a “good” girl was.

So I did all those things- kept my head down, did not make eye contact, wore only  sarees to office. But surprisingly (!) they did not work. The Roadside Romeos continued to spout filth. I have been groped in Buses and trains. When I was in a sales job, corporate clients made unwanted passes at me. Being a “good” girl just did not work. It made me feel helpless and powerless.

Come 2009 and Muthalik and his lumpen friends demonstrate their vaunted masculinity and deep pride in some amorphous concept of “culture” by entering a pub and roughing up girls in broad daylight and proudly calling the media to witness the event. And sadly and equally predictably there has been an outpouring in the columns of the press of a peculiarly vile kind: articles about how we need to endlessly navel-gaze and figure out if “pub culture” is acceptable in India ( 1, 2) . See Dr.Acharya’s statement – The State thinks that this is a good time to discuss whether “pub culture” is acceptable or not.   This is akin to asking a raped woman what she was wearing – an attempt to blame the victim. Somewhere,tucked away amidst all that angst over the “attack on Hinduism” that the columnists’ perceive in any criticism of the Mangalore attacks surely, surely they must express some shock and disgust at the violence perpetrated on the Mangalore women? No ? Where is the outrage at this breakdown in civility- this utter contempt for the rights of an entire gender?  Are women not citizens with full rights? Are they to be marginalized and remain silent ?

Why blame the Consortium of Forward and Loose Pub – going women who want to send pink chaddis to the Ram Sene? When no one seems willing to unequivocally condemn the Ram Sene , what is wrong with some women getting together and making a symbolic protest? Don’t underestimate the power of symbolism. The Dandi march  ended with a symbolic fistful of salt . We understand the symbolism of unhappy workers wearing black bands to work. Rosa Parks sat down on a bus and started something that culminated in the passage of equal rights for all. The chaddi is not a chaddi but a response. Personally I think its a good one – in one sense an “emasculating” gesture. We are not ashamed of being women , of wearing chaddis or  taking them off, of sending them to those who want us to shut up and stay home.

The Pink Chaddi is this group’s answer to the Ram Sene’s hooliganism. The issue is NOT Valentine’s day- the issue is whether we let a motley crew of goondas decide what is “acceptable” behavior. We choose not to retaliate with violence of our own. The Pub Bharo is symbolic. Sure, it may not resonate with everyone. But then the Ram Sene did not attack everyone. The Ram Sene started this with  direct action against women sitting in a pub. The message they want to send is this: You are a woman. You are not allowed to sit in a Pub. The fitting reply then is this: Go and sit in a pub if you choose to. Because you are a full fledged citizen of India, because no-one except you has the right to make that choice for you.

The State has its share of blame but the State did not beat up women. The State has not yet declared Valentine’s day  verboten. The Ram Sene did. And Pink Chaddis or Pub Bharos and the greater fight for equality are not mutually exclusive. It does keep the issue alive and will not let the Ram Sene’s hooliganism be forgotten like so many atrocities are.  The Ram Sene did what it did. Now women need to do what they want to do. If it means sending a pink chaddi or downing a beer – so be it. No one is trying to take the focus away from the larger issue of civil rights. It put the focus squarely back on the issue like no amount of speech-ifying by politicians can. No one is saying this is the only way to protest . Send a greeting card, speak up , do something- anything that makes you feel empowered. Being a “good” girl is NOT an option.

The schizophrenic attitude of India towards females has long manifested itself in the Madonna/Whore objectification of women. Either they are worshiped as Shakti or else vilified as sluts. There is no in-between – no possibility of women being treated as people first, gender-specific objects later.  If the Ram Sene had beaten up a group of boys and that group  fought back with blows of their own – we would not be having this discussion. Because Boys will be Boys – that is also accepted wisdom.

Our own misogyny is so internalized that the thought of women actually answering back with Pink Chaddis or Pub Bharos is uncomfortable. But dissent means getting out of your comfort zone. Because silence is NOT an option – it is never an option.

Update: Its not all fun and games – see this!

© Runa for Über Desi, 2009. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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