I have a question for my readers and friends, on fundamentals of Feminism. While I am not sure how to put in a politically correct way, I am worried that I will end up offending a whole lot of them, especially women including my better half. (Update: Oh… No! She is already offended by the idea of this post).
It’s related to latest incident in Egypt, where a CBS correspondent Lara Logan was roughed up (to be specific, sexually molested) by celebrating Egyptian crowd (obviously men!). There is a whole lot of discussion happening in blogosphere. Was that right for an attractive white (read clearly distinguishable in Egyptian crowd) woman to report amidst frustrated (later celebrating) mostly men crowd of a male centred society (with less respect for women, officially!) without anyone to protect her. What happened was obviously wrong, but could that be avoided in the first place? She is Lara Logan not Lara Croft!
Now my question: Is “Asking for it” still considered as a factor, even a remote or tiny one?
I may look naive questioning like this, but please educate me. I guess, this must have been discussed over and over again in all forms of media, but there are still questions.
Here, let me provide an analogy, feel free to dispute it.
There is a high possibility that money left around will be stolen or robbed (depends where you leave it), even in an established social, political and religious (starting from 10 commandments) understanding that stealing is wrong, someone with a need of it will simply take it, like it or not! You would need a protection against it, that’s why we have a massive industry created just to protect your money! To this day we agree stealing is wrong, while we still protect our money from being stolen.
Well… this may not be a right analogy, but an attempt. Anyway, let me know your thoughts.
Update: I would like you to read one such post on the same topic “Is …” where he reasons out:
Women are the weaker, frailer sex. The average man is physically stronger than the average woman, and absent physical protection (in the form of other men, be they police, military or family) women are COMPLETELY at the mercy of men.
Egypt is a nation resistant to feminism. Egyptian men do not “ respect ” women, unlike the pale, porn-addicted, gelded fembois of America and Europe.
A riot, by definition, is an event defined by its lack of law and order – meaning that the structures that protect women from the predations of men do NOT exist.
Logan is a white foreigner, and is thus despised by the violent hordes who believe their government to be in thrall to hers.
This is George Carlin on “Saving the Planet”, I couldn’t resist sharing it. What a wonderful philosophy ! Never happened to see “Saving the Planet” from this angle until I saw this guy on You tube. Since then, I am accountable for nearly half of total 3 million views 🙂
You got people like this around you? Country is full of them now! People walking around all day long, every minute of the day — worried about everything! Worried about the air, worried about the water, worried about the soil. Worried about insecticides, pesticides, food additives, carcinogens; worried about radon gas, worried about asbestos. Worried about saving endangered species.
Let me tell you about endangered species, all right? Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control Nature! It’s arrogant meddling! It’s what got us into trouble in the first place! Doesn’t anybody understand that? Interfering with Nature! Over 90 percent.. over… way over 90 percent of all the species that have ever lived on this planet, ever lived, on this planet are gone. Whissssshht! They are extinct!
We didn’t kill them all.
They just… disappeared! That’s what Nature does! They disappear these days at the rate of 25 a day, and I mean regardless of our behavior. Irrespective of how we act on this planet, 25 species that were here today, will be gone tomorrow! Let them go… gracefully! Leave Nature alone! Haven’t we done enough?
We’re so self-important. So self-important! Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees; save the bees; save the whales; save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all, “Save the planet.” What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven’t learned how to care for one another, we’re gonna save the fucking planet?
I’m getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. Tired! I’m tired of fucking Earth Day! I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists; these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The people are fucked. Difference. Difference! The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what? A hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we’re a threat? That somehow we’re gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles; hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors; worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages… And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet… the planet… the planet isn’t going anywhere. we are!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet will be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
You wanna know how the planet is doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, “How the planet’s doing?” You wanna know if the planet’s all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilowaia, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.
The planet will be here for a long, long — long— time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself; it will cleanse itself, because that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover; the earth will be renewed; and, if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the Earth plus plastic! The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth. The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question, “Why are we here?” “Plastic! Assholes.”
So! So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that it has already started already, don’t you? I think, to be fair, the planet probably sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And I am sure the planet will defend itself in the manner of a large organism, like a beehive or an ant colony, and muster a defense. I am sure the planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet trying to defend against this pesky, troublesome species? “Let’s see… What might… Hmm.. Viruses! Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh…viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.”
Well, that’s a poetic note. And it’s a start. And I can dream, can’t I? See I don’t worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we’re part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron.” The Big Electron…whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn’t punish; it doesn’t reward; it doesn’t judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while.
Thanks for being here with me for a little while tonight!
.. too many actually. They all are insanely wealthy, highly overpriced/overrated and all these because they have millions of followers! Also, all this fame achieved by them is never justified; obviously something else should have deserved it. I kept on pinging on Religion, I don’t give a damn about Gaga; it’s time for a take on Facebook. 🙂
Earlier I wrote about “why do I hate twitter” (I still do). I claimed tweets being nothing more than shouting randomly at all directions, in other words “spamming“. Facebook is just improvised version of that,. one can shout within his friends group. Anyone who logs in, (apparently to check if there are any new comments on “chooo chweeeet” video, can learn you are standing in a queue for pop-corn. God forbid, what would have happened to the world if he did not have a chance to know that!
My first and foremost issue with Facebook is, it is a “blog-killer”. All my friends who used to blog, which was really picking up in late 90s and early 10s, now don’t have time to blog. Instead time is spent on fertilizing neighbours crops in Farmville or watching “too good… every Indian must watch this” videos. Blogging could have become a real alternative to mainstream media, who apparently require multiple reminders for unbiased and honest duty. Blogging could have dominated internet with citizen journalism. But now it’s official, they have sung RIP for blogging. Tweets and Facebook status has taken its place along with LOLs.
Who are we fooling? Let’s be honest. Do million tweets and likes on “Save Aasia Bibi” do any difference? Even if they are tried in Capital letters? Blogs, wikis and forums run in parallel to media with more strong opinions creating awareness among (at least) netizens. Tweets and Pages really fail to fill in this shoe. Let me remind you again, these new age opinion are weighed more by number of retweets and like, less by content itself. I feel Facebook is fancy but ineffective way to run a campaign and twitter is its disabled buddy.
Agreed that Facebook had a considerable role in couple of social revolution (related to Blasphemy, Iranian stoning etc), but it’s just that Facebook had been there at right time at the right place. What Facebook has done extra which any other social media couldn’t do?
Also agreed that Facebook is a very good way to maintain contact book and way to reconnect old (and new) friends, Facebook cannot claim that for itself. It’s not the first time that someone integrated a messaging engine, contact book and an instant messenger. Facebook did that as any other social network, rest of them just did not get the hype and love, that’s all. There are good things in Facebook; I am not here to list them for being politically correct. My concern is with Facebook-mania, lot of good ventures gets shut down for not being able to gather their due attention.
I hated twitter and now Facebook; don’t call me old fashioned Web1.0 guy. I am not. By the way Web2.0 is sooo Web1.0. By this time we should’ve been in 4.0. But thanks to all those attention and time spent in “share” s and “like”s we are still stuck here. One very such example, Google Wave never got attention it deserved. Now they closed it down, a step backwards and said “sorry, internet is not ready for next version of Web”
One example on “how Facebook groups” are so useless (thanks to Evening Standard, London for pointing it out). There
Mark Zuckerberg Vs Julian Assange – source (jitbit.com)
is a page called “save children of Africa” which was around for few years now. Last time I checked it had more than 1.8 million members. As its name states it is established to raise funds (only interpretation of word “save”) for poor malnourished children in Africa. In all those years of “like”ing and “join”ing it managed to raise little over 13000$!. That’s ridiculous. Simple arithmetic, it is less than 0.001$ per person, not even annual!. Now, compare it with Wikipedia banner campaign that raises its running cost every year without a like button in it.
In last couple of years I got at least 50 requests to join a page called “stripey”. It is created by some concerned Facebook members to save tigers in India. A large group with so many cute tiger photo uploaded. It says, if I join – tigers get saved! And how? No clues so far. No facebook-er does anything more than clicking “join”, or May be, its moral support for tigers on Facebook :-).
Final note, heard apple registered phrase “there is an app for that”. I think Facebook also should register phrases “there is a useless and silly page for that”.
And if you think Facebook is doing great as a product, read this:
The disparity between the number of Facebook users claiming to be concerned about this issue and how little money they were willing to put up says quite a lot about the business. Loads of customers were happy to commit themselves to a click to show how caring they are. Parting with cash is less popular.
Mark Zuckerberg ‘s creation — a nifty piece of kit, for sure — has 500 million users. And revenues of about $2 billion. So all those people who spend all those hours poking and messaging each other are worth only $4 each — in sales, not profits. A year.
It’s hard to think of another business model where so many customers and so much use can equate to so little revenue. If Facebook started charging for its services, how many of those 500 million would stick around? If the answer is zero, isn’t that the true value of the company?
Now, analysts reckon that Facebook may report a profit for 2010 of $473 million. That’s works out as a price/earnings ratio — the traditional way of measuring how highly a company is rated — of 106. By comparison, Apple , a business that has taken the old-fashioned approach of making and selling things, has a PE of 22.
A couple of years back when I was in Chennai, a colleague of mine told our group we should be wearing ties. I need to mention that he had just returned and was just adjusting NRI to RI status change. You must be aware of that stage – “back in US…”, “Idly is £2” expression etc. He announced, tie represents elegance, professionalism, work attitude, etc, Also, “back in onsite everyone wears one!” Then insisted it on us!
We dint accept it for a simple reason – ties are not for Chennai. When collared shirts can bring you blisters; ties over that will be simple invite ‘roast the neck’ situation. Ties are uncomfortable for hot countries, as simple as that. Anyways, he followed up for couple of weeks, and then gave up.
It is not difficult to understand why something like tie did not evolve in India or Africa. Perhaps they were originally designed to avoid cold wind getting inside. It is pointless for rest of the world follow just because the original culture developed it was powerful or dominant.
Back to my colleague, he was clearly confused, like many others – between two words “modernisation” and “westernisation”. Following something from a modern culture is not modern. If that were the idea of modernisation then whole world would be wearing a white shirt, black trouser, black coat and of course a red tie, no matter they are in Amazon or in Papua New-Guinea. I regret I couldn’t convince him on this; I left him with his tie to feel proud.
Six years into the industry and I am happy that I don’t have to wear a tie to work. Hope I will be able to stall it for some more years.
The Bach 