Sunday, March 9, 2008

Womyn in India

A female friend of mine, and advocate for womyn’s rights worldwide, was sexually assaulted on a bus while she was trying to get some sleep on an overnight bus to Agra. She awoke to find his hand up her skirt. Screaming and punching; she fought the guy off. The other men on the bus, of whom there were perhaps 50 or 60, just laughed at this. To them it was all a big joke. The few other women remained awkwardly silent.

So, there a number of things wrong here. The population is seriously skewed in India, with 47.5% women, when normally it’s closer to 51%. Female infanticide is partly to blame for this, because “good Indian families do not want girls.” Okay, I’m not actually quoting anyone, but you get the idea. And 60% of their women are being married off there at 12. It is as if by 15 they are old and unmarriageable.

Womyn worldwide are outraged by these sorts of statistics. (Frankly 0.1% of a population in Canada is a huge amount of people. 3.5% in a country like India is… forty million people! 40,000,000 – See all those zeroes? That certainly scares me. That’s more unmarriageable men than the population of this country. Don’t believe me? Go to Wikipedia, look at India’s demographics and punch up the numbers on a calculator.) I think everyone should be offended by these statistics. Especially Indian men! Think of all those lonely men who can’t find wives, because there aren’t enough to go around. And forget the dating scene, man. Try the schoolyard.

Surely they must see what a disservice they are doing themselves. Of course they do, but the small number of them with any power already have they 12-year-old wives, so what they hell do they care? It’s all very messed up. It has to change.

Also, lesbians don’t really have a voice in India. Obviously there are lesbians, so why not recognize them, love them, educate them, and give them some clout in the political world and in the economy? Lesbians like to spend like everyone else, it’d do the economy good. And it’s great for population control, which, let’s face it, India is in dire need of. We could have like a lesbian Bollywood festival MCed by Ellen DeGeneres or something like that. Lesbians love that shit.
Well, that’s my rant for the day. Hope you enjoyed it, or learned something, or felt something, or were reminded of another completely unrelated story, or whatever.

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