July 02, 2012

Betrayal of feminist dreams by women in power

MARRYING THE FUTURE - The best way to remember Nora Ephron Ruchir Joshi, The Thin Edge - The Telegraph. Sunday , July 1, 2012 
The fact is, women in control, whether corporate or political, have not always brought emancipation for women (or people in general) and we can justifiably shudder at the betrayal of different feminist dreams by women in power from Indira Gandhi to Margaret Thatcher to Benazir Bhutto to Jayalalithaa, Mayawati and Mamata B.
It’s a truism worth repeating that feminists are not always socialists, just as the converse is true, that feminists aren’t always for gay rights or for a better environment or for many of the other things that progressives love to clump under one large utopian umbrella. 

Hard power of soft diplomacy IRA PANDE - In conversation with journalist Shankkar Aiyar, Albright held her audience captive for almost an hour and a half, holding forth on a range of issues from world politics to her 'pin-messages'. Listening to her clear answers and her courage in taking on some nasty questions head on, one realised that an intelligent career diplomat makes an impression that no waffling politician can. Highly educated and brought up in a diplomat's home in London, this Czech-born woman is by now a world citizen and at home in Europe, the Middle East and Asia

Tamil writer and independent researcher C.S. Lakshmi (Ambai) remarks that “born to dance” is a phrase mostly used after the dancer has become successful. Girls take up dance for several reasons… In Ways of Seeing, John Berger argues that the social presence of a woman is different from that of a man. He writes,
“A woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman’s self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself.”

Should women dress modestly? from Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother ...railed against women for tempting men with their seductive and skimpy clothing, and sought to sequester them and restrict their dress choices. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother said that the primary cause is not the external agent (women) but the gap in the human consciousness which needs to be sealed. This article examines their insights on this ...

Fundamental groups are plotting a planned and systematic attack from Savitri Era Open Forum - Mar 7, 2012 ...especially women, expose their lower bottom on the body by wearing shorts and go out on the streets, even to the markets? How many traditional Indian ashrams serve non-vegetarian food to their inmates? This is a reality in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and a big attack by some fundamental groups who are plotting a planned and systematic attack to the ver...

Peter Heehs does not criticize Sri Aurobindo where he deserves to be criticized from Savitri Era Open Forum - Apr 2, 2012 ...to the women’s movement (and even the Mother only seems to give it very cursory attention), and I’ll probably attribute to this to basically conservative Hindu background, but we have to acknowledge that despite this background he made a number of progressive statements about women’s intellectual, physical and other capabilities that were not genera...

Get rid of heteronormative and gender essentialist biases from Savitri Era Open Forum - Apr 2, 2012 ...men and women will become like each other before the end of days. And it is hardly a coincidence that the radical feminist and gay liberation movements happened after the Shakti entered the Earth’s Inconscient, and the world was infused with a certain atmosphere due to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s spiritual work. People were filled with ideas of li...

Creative people easily rationalize their dishonest behavior from rainbOwther - Apr 25, 2012 ...thinking about women. Same doesn't hold true for females, researchers say Comments (30) BY RHEANA MURRAY NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, March 13, 2012 Seen in movies like "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," sometimes men don't know what to say in the presence of a woman. Men just can’t think straight when women are around. Researchers are study...

Non-marriage based communities from rainbOwther - Apr 25, 2012 ...on International Women’s Day from Kafila by Nivedita Menon MARCH 8, 2012 - Excerpts from my forthcoming book Seeing like a Feminist (Penguin India/Zubaan Books). Women have to learn to remake themselves completely, but even more significant is the fact that the entire period of their lives before this singular event of marriage, is spent in antici...

Oedipus complex may not apply to other cultures from rainbOwther - Apr 25, 2012 ...women-military-combat-roles But I do have concerns about women in front-line combat, I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission, because of other types of emotions that are involved," Santorum continued. "It already happens, of course, with the camaraderie...

Understanding women on spiritual basis from rainbOwther - Nov 14, 2011 ...Women in Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy Deepak Sharma, Associate Professor, SGND Khalsa College, University of Delhi, Delhi – 110005 The present paper attempts a study of the problem of feminism as a spiritual problem with special reference to the philosophical traditions of Sri Aurobindo. By Aurobindo’s philosophy we mean the writings of Sri Aurobindo... 

Sri Aurobindo makes this point in a chapter of The Human Cycle entitled “The Suprarational Ultimate of Life”—the longest chapter in the book, whose extensive revision indicates the importance he gave to it… As instances of vital ideals of this kind, he continues, we need only note, however imperfect and dim the present shapes, the strivings of love at its own self-finding, its reachings towards its absolute—the absolute love of man and woman, the absolute maternal or paternal, filial or fraternal love, the love of friends, the love of comrades, love of country, love of humanity.
It is relevant to note that one of these ideals, “the absolute love of man and woman”, is the theme of the ancient story of Savitri and Satyavan. If Sri Aurobindo, instead of completing The Synthesis of Yoga and other works, devoted most of his literary energy in his later years to an epic based on this legend, it was evidently because through this tale of the victory of love over death he could symbolise a truth that was central to his message… Moreover, the debate between Savitri and Death provides an opportunity for bringing out the significance of the ideals which Sri Aurobindo saw as signs of a suprarational influence… In Book Ten, Canto Two, “The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal”, and in “The Debate of Love and Death” which follows, he takes up precisely the question raised in The Human Cycle. 12:02 PM

1 comment:

  1. [You write, “Films offer us not a critique of our political narrative of sovereignty and law but rather a constant re-presentation of this narrative.” Could you elaborate and provide some examples of films of the last three years that do that?
    Popular films are generally not trying to make policy contributions to our political debates; they are not trying to engage in a revolutionary reconstruction of the state. Rather, they are keeping before us the founding myths of the political order.] Interview with Paul W. Kahn, Author of Finding Ourselves at the Movies by Hope Leman
    http://criticalmargins.com/2014/01/29/interview-paul-w-kahn/

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