181–190 of 273 posts
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I'm not aware of an obsession with menstruation in any major variant of Christianity.
Woman being unclean during menstrual cycle is part of Abrahamic religions. But I guess this comes from the bigger problem of "sex" being wrong unless it constitutes "breeding".
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The article mentions that commercial napkins sold for 4 rupees despite cotton being 1/4000th the cost, but also says farther down that the locally produced ones sell for an average of 2.5 rupees each. That's a 38% discount: significant, but it doesn't seem like a game-changing difference to me. I imagine that if this catches on, the larger manufacturers will likely just cut their margins to compete. On a more general…
The 2.5 stayed local and made jobs. Its a huge difference. In essence, he gave the locals "permission" to produce these things for themselves. Wealth disparity is an interesting animal. The rich don't consume 1000's of times more resources than the poor despite having 1000's of times more 'money'. The wealth divide seems to function like an insidious form control wherein the uber-rich are able to deny local markets p…
In the meantime, I don't believe the wealthy are exercising a substantial form of control here.
Background: India was without effective sanitary pads for most of human history. Recently, in the past few hundred years or so, some people became fantastically wealthy. At some point, several sanitary pad manufacturers were set up that sold their products, mostly in developed nations and not rural India.
Are you saying wealthy people stopped the people of India from manufacturing their own sanitary pads before this guy came around to the scene? They certainly didn't stop these people after he came around. It looks to me more like there just wasn't anyone who bothered to bring the sanitary-pad manufacturing technology there yet: the wealthy who were interested in the pursuit of money were pursuing easier or more profitable opportunities, and the wealthy interested in making a difference in the world (including those who would just give money away) were unaware of this need.
There are plenty of things that plenty of wealthy people/businesses can/actually do that keep the little man down in plenty of situations. This just... doesn't look like one of them. Poverty is the natural state of Man.
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Don't know about that. From talking with my wife they are very messy and need to be cleaned a lot or they smell, like boiled every day or two - so that's why there are disposable ones and they are more popular. Also you need a lot of clean tissues each time you insert, rinse, and replace it - which brings you right back to the using dirty rags again cause there is stigma to clean and dry them properly in those cultur…
It sounds like your wife is the kind of person who wants her body to be completely free of any sort of body smells and doesn't want to come in contact with any kind of body fluids. Those are exactly what I was referring to when I said there is cultural resistance. My community are "pro-natural" and don't have issue with the smell, nor do they use tissues. They just use their hands and believe that vaginas and menstru…
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last time I checked, these rural villagers do not have running water which affects how they bathe, clean clothes, prepare food etc. Add in religious rituals and you have some powerful persuasion to do things in a way that seems backwards to us.
These are the same areas that unfortunately still have honor killings. Regardless, cultural judgements are not an absolute truth, and so other ways, no matter how extreme or foreign, can be tolerated. The frontier that can be helped is hygiene and self-sufficiency. If can start a sexual equality revolution in India, build a bazillion of these machines. A 3d printer as it were.
As an Indian, I can see what pain this guy went through. Fighting the society to build a start up like this, with this kind of taboo attached to the product? All the best trying to build a start up at the first place. You are almost treated like you are doing it because you absolutely are incapable of doing anything else. And having the gumption to fight years of laughter, isolation, mockery and ridicule to only chas…
Yeah but I made an app to send your friends links with one less click!
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Thank you, quite right. The ongoing fight by (a slowly shrinking segment of) American society to continue blatant persecution of gay people is one of our most shameful failings. And I agree, the Church (big C) is largely responsible.
> blatant persecution of gay people // There is an active agenda attempting to legally force people to alter their actions to match others beliefs, "persecution" you might call it. Except it's not against those who have sex outside marriage it's against Christians - people who claim to uphold liberty of conscience simply will not allow Christians to express their views on marriage. Marriage, in Christian terms and hi…
That must be why you never hear anyone objecting to gay marriage any more.
[/sarc]
They are making an educational book in comic book format to dispel the massive amounts of myths around the topic.
This is something that makes me both proud and sad about my home country India. We are still struggling with some of the basic problems that the developed world probably solved 100 years back. It makes me even more sad that just 60 years back India was hardly behind any other developed country. Arunchalam's example is also a classic case of how Indian government has destroyed India's entrepreneurial zeal. When Arun i…
> "Use iodized salt in food else your children will be born retarded".
"In India, the entire population is prone to IDD due to deficiency of iodine in the soil of the subcontinent and consequently the food derived from it. To combat the risk of IDD, salt is fortified with iodine. However, an estimated 350 million people do not consume adequately iodized salt and, therefore, are at risk for IDD. Of the 325 districts surveyed in India so far, 263 are IDD-endemic."[1]
> People used handmade soaps and herbal alternatives for soap.
Handmade soaps are fine. The ads never said you should only use big-brand soaps. Just because it's called "herbal alternative", it does not mean that it is effective. Each family or each region has its own "herbal alternative". Are you saying that they are all as effective as soap?
> 5 different types of leaves, gargling with hot water mixed with a mixture of 15 different kind of powders
I have visited villages for various reasons. Most people I came across used one of three methods: neem twigs, salt, charcoal ash. Neem has some antimicrobial properties, but those who cleaned with salt were ruining their teeth. I doubt that ash benefited their oral hygiene. I dare say these villagers are better off with modern products.
> The reality is, even in rural areas the level of hygiene is way better.
Better than what? If you're comparing villages to urban slums, sure. Are you forgetting that in villages, most people crap out in the open? And don't using soap afterwards? And did you read this article about women not using sanitary pads?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you, quite right. The ongoing fight by (a slowly shrinking segment of) American society to continue blatant persecution of gay people is one of our most shameful failings. And I agree, the Church (big C) is largely responsible.
The Catholic Church teaches against persecution of gay people. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avo…
But just discrimination, like trying to stop them marrying someone they love, even in a purely civil ceremony which objectively speaking is none of our damn business -- why, that's just dandy.