Stray thoughts and something of a rant.

I woke up to something about Gloria Steinem on my Facebook feed. Gloria Steinem, famous feminist writer, who said girls were with Bernie because that's were the boys were. Following which Madeline Albright joined in to also wag her finger at young women who might not vote for Hillary, saying they would go to hell for not standing with a woman. Hillary Clinton- who is most certainly not standing by a lot of women by continuing to be associated with Bill Clinton- notorious harasser of women.

I want to see her stand by women like Monica Lewinsky, barely out of school when the President of the United States coerced her into being a little silly. Someone whose life has become public fodder in the worst way, and probably will be infamous till she dies. How on earth are you supposed to survive this? How are you supposed to beat off the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful person in the world? Shouldn't we be protecting young, and older women, from this kind of predator instead of parading him about for his political value. Stand alone, without him, and tell me again about your feminism. I would listen.

Today there is a massive strike across India. I am excited about this because we need to stand together and fight. We have the numbers, if only we could collect somehow and exercise them. I'm not at home, and despite the questionable ways in which nearly every union functions, I think unions are terribly important. We need checks and balances to the system. Our government can't be allowed to run away with every sector of our economy and just hand it to a small group of industrialists. Why on earth does the BJP want to privatise the railways? At least with the Congress their economic policies were outlined in terms of classical neoliberal theory. The BJP don't seem to bother with trying to rationalise anything- cows and Bharat Mata ki Jai is all. 

It also made me annoyed that so many of my Indian friends appeared to be complaining about being unable to get to work. Think a little bit about why people are striking. Join them. Show some solidarity with people less better off that you at your amazing arts collective, or great IT job. A higher minimum wage will help a lot of people out, and you want people to eventually have enough money to buy the nonsense that you are selling right? Many more were out at brunch (which is probably why Nandan Nilekani lost that election in Bangalore- people who might have voted for him seized the opportunity of the election to go on a 3 day weekend break instead). I saw pictures of people at the Oberoi, enjoying high tea, celebrating the bund; the incongruity of which might render you speechless so here I am to point the finger for you. I like high tea, and the Oberoi too, no actually I have never been at the Oberoi though I imagine it is nice, but there is a time and place.

How to keep yourself from being masturbated at by strange men

You may think it is enough to build walls, put up a roof, and live in the house, to keep yourself from being jacked off at by random men. But this is not enough. Should you be lucky enough to have a garden, put a gate around it, make it high, but this will not keep someone from sitting on the road and playing with his penis at you.

You may think that this is not related to you at all; it’s just a man caught at a stray moment on a road that has a decent amount of tree cover on a hot afternoon. This is not true. You know this because he is sitting right outside your gate directing his gaze at the young woman working inside the house, at her desk, doing accounts, The light is on, and you can see her typing. This is obviously highly arousing (perhaps you will want to make this her fault- she was provoking him by poking at her calculator).

But for the last few moments his gaze has been on you, and because you are weighed down by the bottles of detergent and club soda that you carried home from the store on foot, you aren’t really paying attention to his hand rapidly moving up and down. When you notice him pointing his penis towards you unfortunately the instinct is to shriek and run inside. An instinct you have to fight to reach into your bag to hunt for your phone. Should he threaten you, you could run into the house and lock yourself in, but should he overpower you and come into the house with you, there is little you can do.

And then before you know it he does, and he takes off around the corner, leaving you with the unpleasant image of being threatened by some strange dick, and the fear that this situation could escalate to something even more physically threatening.  The police are no help. You did not have the presence of mind to take down a full license plate number, and without this they do not want to interrupt their Sunday afternoon nap. You have the last two digits, but that is not enough.

The men who look after the neighbouring house for some fancy politician type do not care much, they have a camera trained on the road, perhaps they can get me a license plate off the footage, but they seem bereft of all expression when I request the footage.

This has happened before, another man who works on the road tells me. That time this guy hung around for 45 minutes, and frightened a group of young girls returning from school. But no one complained. We do not know if it was the same guy. He was wearing a helmet, so I have at once seen too much, and not enough of him to be able to recognise him.

The police return my call after 30 minutes. If it happens again please let us know. Again we will interrupt our snooze to hear you complain. He didn’t do anything to you right? So why do you care? Let it go madam, we have other things to do.

It seems like there is very little you can really do to keep yourself from being masturbated at without your consent.  Perhaps by next Sunday afternoon, which is really the only time the road is this deserted in daylight hours, I shall buy a gun (look I married an American, it was bound to show eventually). A girl can dream.  

Scary stuff

Today my mother called me to tell me she had heard of a boy with a PhD from the U.S whose parents were looking for a suitable girl. She wanted to know if I was interested in her initiating a conversation about me filling that position.
I wanted to know if she knew anything more about him (she didn't), and if just a PhD from the U.S was my going rate.
Impasse.