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...

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...

आज २७ फेब्रुवारी. कविवर्य कुसुमाग्रज यांचा जन्मदिवस आणि मराठी भाषा दिवस. त्यानिमित्त मला आवडणाऱ्या एका मराठी लेखिकेच्या पुस्तकाचं विवेचन इथे करते. गौरी देशपांडे- मराठी वाचणाऱ्या साऱ्याच वाचकांना हे नाव जितकं परिचित आहे तितकच फार जवळचं देखील आहे. मी सर्वप्रथम गौरी देशपांडे यांची एक कथा शाळेत असताना अभ्यासली होती- कलिंगड. आणि कित्येक दिवस मी त्या कथेच्या पुढे अजून काही असेल का म्हणून उत्सुक आणि अस्वस्थ होते. दहावीत असताना वाचली होती म्हणून त्यांचं सर्व लिखाण वाचून काढायचं हे ठरवलं. पुढची चार- पाच वर्ष त्यांचं असं काही वाचनात आलं नाही. नंतर 'आर्किटेक्चर' शिकताना कॉलेजच्या ग्रंथालयात मराठी पुस्तकांचं कपाट दिसलं. आणि पाहिलं पुस्तक जे मी घेतलं नी वाचलं ते गौरी देशपांडेंचं 'मुंबई-तळेगाव-ग्रीस' असा प्रवास करणारी 'मुक्काम' हि दीर्घ कथा/कादंबरी. त्याचं दुसरं पुस्तक वाचलं ते म्हणजे 'आहे हे असे आहे', आणि त्यात मला परत एकदा सापडली ती 'कलिंगड' हि कथा. मी चार-पाच वेळा ते पुस्तक वाचून काढलं परीक्षा सुरु होण्याच्या काही दिवस आधी, एप्रिल मधेच आणि त्या कलिंगड...

“ You are not your bra-size, nor are you the width of your waist, nor are you the slenderness of your calves. You are not your hair color, your skin color, nor are you a shade of lipstick. Your shoe-size is of no consequence. You are not defined by the amount of attention you get from males, females, or any combination thereof. You are not the number of sit-ups you can do, nor are you the number of calories in a day. You are not your mustache. You are not the hair on your legs. You are not a little red dress. You are no amalgam of these things.  You are the content of your character. You are the ambitions that drive you. You are the goals that you set. You are the things that you laugh at and the words that you say. You are the thoughts you think and the things you wonder. You are beautiful and desirable not for the clique you attend, but for the spark of life within you that compels you to make your life a full and meaningful one. You are beautiful not for the shape of the vessel...