"You Sound Like a Girl" ----Grrrl!

I crack down on anyone who makes sexist remarks around me (unless they are senior citizens - you know, old dog, new tricks, etc.). But as my son gets older, I am finding it harder and harder to counter the kind of casual sexism that prevails in age groups as young as eight- or nine-year old boys. On a playdate, recently, as I did the mommy thing and popped corn and cut strawberries, I suddenly heard this cry, "You sound like a girl!" Aaargh! I almost dropped the knife and rushed out to reprimand the boys. What is wrong with sounding like a girl, eh? Don't your mothers and sisters sound like girls? Then, instead, I decided to talk to them while they ate their snacks, but as they played, the other mother came by and in the general conversation, the little episode was forgotten. And I know that somewhere in my son's brain there has been planted the lesson that girl=bad, inferior, laughable, silly. I need to be a more vigilant mommy.

Need for More "Pub Bharo" Campaigns

What is it with these damn fool people? Just weeks after women in Mangalore were assaulted for not wearing Indian clothes, a woman in Delhi is turned away from a disco for wearing Indian clothes, and not western clothes. Honestly, what is going on? Women in India need to do another "pub bharo" campaign to protest against this dishonoring of the sari, the dress that women of our grandmothers' generation wore when they fought for freedom, the dress in which Indira Gandhi ruled for 17 years a huge country of every religion imaginable, the dress in which police officers and constables maintain law and order, the dress in which farming women plant their crops. I have seen my mother and her friends dance the foxtrot in their elegant chiffon and silk saris. Thousands of Indian women dance in saris at weddings. Now, suddenly, it's not good enough for a tuppeny-ha'penny discotheque? Bah!

Government Slogans I like - "Pub Bharo"

Recently, young women in Mangalore and decent people everywhere were aghast at an incident of moral policing, Taliban style, in Mangalore, Karnataka. Young women enjoying an afternoon with friends were roughed up and assaulted by self-appointed goons claiming to protect public morality. The response has been uneven on the part of the state government, but I like the call to action launched by the Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development, Renuka Chowdhury. This is in no way a call for a slide into mass alcoholism, rather an assertion that everyone - man and woman - has a right to socialize fearlessly. And this free socializing of men and women is really what angers the goons of the Sri Ram Sena, not the alcohol. Down with the moral police!