The Rebelle blog

"One of the things the women’s movement does is to make you feel pain. You have to have a lot of courage to accept that if you commit yourself, over the long term, not just for three months, not for a year, not for two years, but for a lifetime, to feminism, to the women’s movement, that you are going to live with a lot of pain. In this country that is not a fashionable thing to do. So be prepared for the therapists. And be prepared for the prescriptions. Be prepared for all  the people who tell you that it’s your problem, it’s not a social problem, and why are you so bitter, and what’s wrong with you? And underneath that is always the presumption that the rape was delusional, that the battery did not happen, that the economic hardship is your own unfortunate personal failing. Hold onto the fact that that’s not true: it has never been true." — Andrea Dworkin, “Feminism: An Agenda,” from Letters from a War Zone, 1988 We would have hoped that 16 years into th...

I first heard this song in late October two years ago. Then on International Women's Day on March 8th last year, a casual talk on the portrayal of women in movies and literature on twitter set a discussion going. There is always a Penelope waiting for an Odysseus, who remains faithful and protects her virtue keeping suitors at bay, while her husband is away. Why? Why do we never find an Odysseus who waits for his Penelope when she is not ready? Do we ever find representation of women as other than waiting damsels in distress? This song titled, "Ek Radha, Ek Meera" from the Raj Kapoor directed movie, Ram Teri Ganga Maili speaks of the anguish Meera and Radha go for loving the same person. I am not going to dissect the song, but hearing it over and over, one can't help feel a bit sorry for Meera. Torn between bhakti (devotion) and love, these two represent women from all ages and lands. Why, it is Descartes himself who wrote something on the lines of how both...

http://theladiesfinger.com/2015-is-ending-where-are-the-women/ And while we read this article, I am also reading about the murder of Allison Baden-Clay, 43, a Brisbane resident who was killed by her husband in April 2012 and now the court verdict is out wherein he won the appeal against his murder conviction instead being accused of manslaughter. So yes, such judgements get passed not only in India but everywhere in the world. A woman is murdered and all the court does is convicts her husband of manslaughter, not murder. How convenient for the judiciary! The Reeva Steenkamp murder verdict proved how blinded the legal system is! Her cold blooded murderer got away with an 'accidental self-defence' argument. He'll live the rest of his life, alive and doing things while that young woman will lay forgotten. That is what is happening with women! We don't exist- we don't matter, unless we speak up. At least a voice is a reminder to the other gender to look around and s...

So I read a very interesting article today that showed a cerebrum divided into two parts- the left and right. The article was decoding women's skills based on their brain parts. Accordingly, a woman's left brain functions include number & math/scientific skills, written & spoken language, analytical & logical reasoning, objectivity and right side of body control, whereas, her right brain functions include music/art awareness, intuition, creativity & imagination, Face recognition, emotions, subjectivity and left side of body control. It almost made me laugh because it seemed absurd to imagine one side of my brain trying to work difficult math problems and failing at it while scaling through a foreign language smoothly without any difficulties. Having studied anatomy in school, I was always even then very curious as to why the brain shows different usage in men & women. Is it because men rule the roost and really put in a good use of their brains while wom...

This is one of my most favorite books on Essays by Women. This list of contents was written by someone on Goodreads and I am happy to share it here because its important to have access to some of the most brilliant minds in Journalism. Not all of these articles are written by Journalists. Feminists and Social Thinkers and Writers like Susan Sontag, Alice Walker, Erica Jong, Sylvia Pankhurst, Betty Friedan, Joan Didion, Rebecca West have written searing pieces that ought to be read by all men and women, alike.  I read this book, way back in 2010 borrowed from American Library and still remember sharing my views and discussing articles while reading,  with women co-passengers   during train journeys. They were all pretty excited about the title of the book. I remember talking about Godhra Riots and Women Journalists like Teesta Setalvad who took up the fight on behalf of the victims. Its all fresh in my memory. I long to read this book again. Its tricky to find it in b...