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India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

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Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#71

Post by eshvk »

Sven7 wrote: post #67
sid6376 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this culture of misogyny and treating women as sexual objects in almost all places in India I have lived in. Not trying to counter your point, just saying that this observation could have been written by a woman who spent her time in Kolkata/Chennai/Bangalore/Mumbai rather than in Pune. In fact Pune in some respects is much better than some of the cities I mentioned above.

I agree. But just a word of caution, if we are talking about misogyny and treating women as sexual objects, lets also talk about the porn industry(which today is as responsible for the existence of the internet, as advertising is for Google). Is there a difference when the developed world spends countless hours objectifying women from the safety of their homes through technology?

I will bite. Women in Pornography are paid to do that (mostly). Women who get raped on the streets of Delhi aren't paid to do that.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#72

Post by jalayir »

The issue of women's safety in India has come up several times, and here's how I look at it. India is a very lawless country, and has always been so, and women have historically lived in seclusion. It's rare for women to walk around in lowly bazaars unescorted. It's certainly not something foreign women should do while in India. A good thumb rule for the safety of a particular location is to look for the presence of large numbers of Indian women. In India, there exists a large population of criminal and vagrant men, who would not think twice before perpetrating some monstrous deed on an innocent woman.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#73

Post by lnanek2 »

lia_memsql wrote: post #59
[deleted] wrote: post #49

[deleted]

You can't deny that there are a large number of Indians who work in technology and start-ups. Engineers and others who work in the tech sector (especially in Silicon Valley) almost certainly know and work with more Indian or Indian born people than people in almost any other profession. Learning about the culture they come from and how they treat foreigners and women is absolutely relevant to people who care about an…

Agreed. I work with, hire, and work with companies that hire many Indian contractors and out sourcing companies. Even the cafeteria where I work just added an Indian food area which always has a huge line. Discussions about outsourcing success or failure and which country to go with are very common.

I also encounter a lot of Indians in business development positions, so you are more often to encounter them when going around talking to other companies than you would just going around your office. I've also read articles that Indians in general are much more widespread in companies than say Asians, who often stick to their own companies, and are steadily moving up the ranks. So you're probably more likely to have an Indian boss or C-level at some point than say an Asian one.

I don't know if I picked up anything useful from the article, being male, but some of the replies have been interesting, like the discussion about the lack of space in the cities and Indians being honest in general about crowding around something interesting, etc.. Might have a useful input or two into how I interact with my Indian peers in the tech sector.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#74

Post by lnanek2 »

jjoe wrote: post #32

Could the controversial head scarf (or even the full on attire) be the only way women can preemptively protect themselves in such a "raw" environment?

The article does mention she covered up. Maybe just as much as an Indian women would generally, though, and not as far as that? That said, Indian women do seem to generally where long dresses that cover everything, compared to here in Cali where we are flooded with short shorts. There was even an article recently about panties on mannequins being against the law in some cities because it offends sensibilities.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#75

Post by VladRussian2 »

speeder wrote: post #41
devindotcom wrote: post #13

Something I noticed while in India myself, which may help explain (not excuse) some of the behavior (please note I am not discounting the author's perspective at all): I'm a little over 6 feet, blond hair and green eyes, and when I and my family were visiting India (Mumbai and a few other areas around Maharashtra), we got stared at really, really hard. Like everyone around us literally stopping on the street and doin…

I lived once with 6 indians that came to Brazil on a contract. One wanted to learn portuguese, and knew english really really well, and loved to talk (also he knew like 6 indian dialects, he really liked languages), and he was married. Talking with him, and later with the others when he was nearby, I learned that this is a kind of new thing, and they are confused... Seemly the merging of a traditional patriarchal cul…

>Seemly the merging of a traditional patriarchal culture

which wasn't a piece of cake either, reminded me about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoolan_Devi

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#76

Post by sridharvembu »

As an Indian, this makes me really really ashamed and sad and angry. I would apologize to her as an Indian.

To understand what is going on in Indian society, I recommend this book by Naipaul, written over 20 years ago, but still very relevant: "India, a million mutinies now" http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55676.India

Basically India is in an utterly chaotic transition from an old established hierarchy where your caste and gender fixed your place in society to something that looks very different.

One part of the societal transition is that there is a vast horde of (mostly male) migrants to major cities in India and these men are absolutely not rooted in anything. They are away from their villages, their families, their social networks. For most of these young men, the social system, particularly gender roles, they experienced in the villages is very different from what they see in a big city. You put a lot of young men in that situation, they think anything goes, particularly when they see a foreigner or an urbanized Indian woman. They think of her not as a person, but as an object - but it is a different kind of objectification, where they feel inferior to the object, it is unattainable to them, so they act with cruelty and savagery. That is what is different between this form of objectification and normal patriarchal behavior which would try to be patronizing and protective towards women.

Those very same men, in their own village, would not do the same thing to a foreigner, because normal social restraints would apply. In a vast urban space, they feel the protection of anonymity and feel they can get away with anything.

The only short term solution, being tried in states like Tamil Nadu, is a massive increase in female police presence, both uniformed and plain-clothes police officers in public places in big cities. This does improve security for women where it has been tried (Chennai is an example of such a city). I hope her post serves us a wake-up call for the governments in India to think of measures like this.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#77

Post by tptacek »

rm999 wrote: post #66
rayiner wrote: post #12

I feel bad for what happened to this poor woman, but it just goes to show you the disconnect between academic romanticization ("South Asian Studies" major at U. Chicago) and the cold hard light of reality. And that reality is that people flee these countries for a reason. People don't just decide to uproot their families and leave everything they know 10,000 miles in the rear view mirror for nothing. What bugs me are…

>people flee these countries for a reason ... massive cultural and social advantages Woah, there's some serious ethnocentrism in your comment. I know 100s of people who have moved to the USA from India, including my parents, a lot of their friends, and a large number of friends and colleagues. These people tend to be very progressive for India and still very few think Western culture is objectively better than Indian…

Am I expected to be O.K. with misogyny in the service of "traditional values", or are traditional values beside the point here? A lot of "traditional" values turn out to be wrong.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#78

Post by Nursie »

Sven7 wrote: post #67
sid6376 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this culture of misogyny and treating women as sexual objects in almost all places in India I have lived in. Not trying to counter your point, just saying that this observation could have been written by a woman who spent her time in Kolkata/Chennai/Bangalore/Mumbai rather than in Pune. In fact Pune in some respects is much better than some of the cities I mentioned above.

I agree. But just a word of caution, if we are talking about misogyny and treating women as sexual objects, lets also talk about the porn industry(which today is as responsible for the existence of the internet, as advertising is for Google). Is there a difference when the developed world spends countless hours objectifying women from the safety of their homes through technology?

Looking at pictures and movies of women voluntarily engaged in sex acts is in no way equivalent to groping them in the street, attempting to rape them or depersonalising them and treating them as objects.

It's just not.

Re: India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear

#80

Post by eshvk »

rayiner wrote: post #12

I feel bad for what happened to this poor woman, but it just goes to show you the disconnect between academic romanticization ("South Asian Studies" major at U. Chicago) and the cold hard light of reality. And that reality is that people flee these countries for a reason. People don't just decide to uproot their families and leave everything they know 10,000 miles in the rear view mirror for nothing. What bugs me are…

> What bugs me are people, largely motivated by financial interests, in my opinion, who downplay the massive cultural and social advantages we still enjoy in the west over places like India. We may be dealing with demographic challenges and sometimes sclerotic economics, but I'd take France in decline over any BRIC country on a supposed upswing any day of the week... But the almighty dollar is the most important thing, right? As long as there is money in doing business in India (or the Middle East), we can just chalk all this up to "cultural differences" that we must be "accommodating" of.

I don't know whether it is financial. I think there is a "grass is greener across the pacific" type of attitude. I have spent 2/3rds of my life in Africa and India; it is jarring to hear from these rich clueless Americans of how wonderful and peaceful these places are; how any problems they have are all due to the evil white man. It strikes me as a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Girl [1] type approach taken at the nation level. It is especially interesting considering that there is cognitive dissonance amongst immigrants. They claw their way here and then romanticize the old country once they are securely out.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Pixie_Dream_Girl

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