Did you say Hoe? Well, I say - So?

Every now and then — actually more often than I care for — I hear one woman say to another ‘you’re such a prostitute.’ We’ve also seen it used in a million celebrity fights— most recent (to my recollection) the Sinead/Miley open letter wars where Sinead O’Connor sincerely urges Miley Cyrus to ‘not act like a prostitute.’

During these moments, I’m less shocked by whatever these women are actually doing to incite this manner of insult — Miley’s twerks are no Helen of Troy war starters now are they? — and more curious as to what’s so wrong with the profession of prostitution that merits such widespread social disdain.

I don’t know very many sex-workers, but that’s not to say I know none. Admittedly the women I know do not fall into the mean average of what one finds or expects to find when ‘sex worker’ comes to mind. Frankly, however, I don’t think anyone falls into such strictly labeled boxes anyway.

My friends are young women who’ve made an active choice to pursue this profession. Some are simply sexually ambivalent and use the money the same way I used my bar tending wages or my call center pay — carelessly and to buy shoes. Others got into it with full knowledge of the monetary benefits and use what they earn to fund side businesses or pay off their college loans and mortgages.

I’m proud to call these women my friends. They’re smart, tough, imbued with innate common sense; they’re sensitive and kind. It’s a joy to watch one of my friends talk to a stranger at a bar — she could make a death-row inmate feel valued and at ease five minutes before execution. I’ve seen her take genuine interest in the war stories of an old guy who every other girl there made rude faces at and wrote off as creepy. The veteran was better for the kindness she showed him, and she — one of the best writers I know— better for her accepting attitude because now she has a story or two in her arsenal. More importantly, for her, even the grubby old man drinking himself to death in a mid-western bar deserved respect.

But my objection against the stigmatization of prostitutes is greater than just the fact that they do not deserve to be stigmatized in the first place. It’s that the choice held against them is not the only choice they make — this is just their profession. They’re no more defined by what they do than my lawyer friends are defined by what they do in a courtroom all the livelong day. This constant slut-shaming rhetoric that seems to go hand-in-hand with discussions about the profession ignore a very basic fact — These women are more than how they chose to express or use their sexuality. They are more than just their jobs. They’re actors, musicians, writers, mothers, friends, and advisers. And a lot, lot more — just like everyone else in this world.

I’m aware that my friends are simply one end of the spectrum. For every one like them, there may be 8 women who are being forced into prostitution, drug addiction and exploited by their pimps. The stories of these women are gut wrenching. They face constant violence against their persons, and have no one to turn to for justice.

It’s at this point that I ask: Is it the prostitute who’s to blame for this? Is it the john?

Here, I put forth it is neither. The fault lies not with the customer or the profession. The fault lies with the law. If anything, this stigmatization— the criminalization of prostitution, society’s two-faced hatred for sex-workers, and this constant slut-shaming rhetoric plays an insidious role in propagating the exploitation of women. It creates a lose-lose situation for any woman or girl who is brought into the profession against her will. On one hand there’s her pimp, on the other the long arm of the law.

If anti-prostitution laws and this anti-prostitution attitude were to be removed from our legal and social discourse, I strongly believe women in the field would be able to exercise a larger degree of control over their bodies — and whatever they choose to do with this freedom, who is anyone to judge them?

Morality has proved time and again to be subjective. Who is to say that having an avenue where one can safely express one’s sexuality won’t benefit our society?

Six news stories that deserve more attention than the 'royal baby'

All week, ‘royal baby’ nonsense has taken over my Facebook and twitter feeds, and even the newspapers I like to read. All week, people have been posting stories or status updates about what this baby’s name should be, or what presents it will get. I even read an article this morning about the fact that it’s being called a baby and not a fetus. Another story purported to tell me 7 things I didn't know about the royal baby - what could there be to know, it's just been born for crying out loud!

Here’s my frank opinion about the royal baby: I don’t see why it’s so royal. Britain is a bloody democracy; to a large number of the people so enthralled, the royal family actually serves as nothing more than a reminder of a long gone and not at all proud era of colonialism. I neither care that it’s born, nor do I think that its birth is a news worthy story.

However, since all we seem to read now are lists and snippets about 'the royal baby', here’s a Buzzfeed inspired list of some shit that is important, that happened, and you may have missed over the past week’s baby fervor:

1.     Bradley Manning’s trial: Bradley Manning is a 25-year-old American soldier (read: kid) who’s been charged under the US Espionage Act, and has been in jail for 3 years now. His trial began 8 weeks ago. He admittedly leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan war to Wikileaks. He says he did so to spark a public debate. The prosecution in this case is claiming that Osama Bin Laden could have read Manning’s leaks and by this twisted logic, Manning aided the enemy. The judge has refused to set aside this charge of aiding the enemy.

Manning isn’t even claiming to be innocent — for one, he is not. However, he is quite rightly asserting that the interpretation of the law in his case is absurd, and that the punishment that’s about to be doled out to him is disproportionate. If he’s charged with aiding the enemy, Bradley Manning will get a life sentence.

Why you should care: Such a wide interpretation of the Espionage Act effectively means no one will ever talk to a journalist again. Anytime a whistleblower comes to a reporter, and the reporter prints his story, the whistleblower is essentially aiding the enemy.

2.     CBI autonomy: The CBI has to ask for sanction from the government to investigate senior bureaucrats. The same senior bureaucrats that make up the government, or are members of the party that is the ruling government at the moment. Does that seem right to you? So far, the government’s lawyers have been asserting that giving the CBI autonomy will open the doors for a police state and/or lead to these officials being harassed — the same officials that are responsible for the Coalgate scam.

Why you should care: Because you want senior officials in your government to know they’re open to investigation by a third party that does not answer to them. Because you want a government that is less corrupt, and corruption can only be tackled by public accountability.

3.   RTI is being changed to exclude political parties from its ambit: A major share of funding for political parties comes from voluntary donations — and it is not you and I, or any individual citizen making these voluntary donations. It is naïve to deny that the sources of these funds assert some influence over the views held by political parties and their MPs. As such, the funding of political parties is information that pertains directly to your democratic rights. All the functioning democracies in the world have a system in place to keep tabs on political financing, but India does not. We might have been able to file an RTI application to ask political parties (clearly public bodies) to disclose their election financials, but a recent Bill calls to amend the RTI to take political parties out of the Act’s ambit.

Why you should care: Transparency in government starts with transparency in political finance.

4.     The Rupee is expected to fall to 62 against the dollar in the next two weeks: Our merchandise exports are decreasing while our imports are increasing. To curb the fall, the government is opening up foreign direct investment into everything from telecom to defense. DEFENSE!!! The other sectors that the government is opening up includes retail, courier services, credit information companies. But please let me repeat this for you, because it is important — DEFENSE! That it’s on a case-by-case basis means nothing; when was the last time a tender went through the Indian government without involving bribes?

Why you should care: If you don’t care that our defense system is now open to foreign investment, then care because your holiday abroad just got a lot more expensive.

5.     Chinese human rights activist Xu Zhiyong, a prominent lawyer and professor known for his support for greater government transparency, was detained (again) on July 17th. He was held on suspicion of “gathering people to disturb order in a public place.” Hundreds of people have come together in Beijing to ask for his release.

Why you should care: This is a quote (you can find it on Wikipedia) from Professor Zhiyong that explains better than I ever could why you should care about this man: “I wish our country could be a free and happy one. Every citizen need not go against their conscience and can find their own place by their virtue and talents; a simple and happy society, where the goodness of humanity is expanded to the maximum, and the evilness of humanity is constrained to the minimum; honesty, trust, kindness, and helping each other are everyday occurrences in life; there is not so much anger and anxiety, a pure smile on everyone’s face.”

6.     Suspension of Five MLAs revoked yesterday: Five Maharashtran MLAs were suspended from the legislative assembly after their arrest in March for beating up a police officer. Why'd they beat him up? He stopped and fined one of them for over-speeding on the Sea-Link. These MLAs had their suspensions revoked yesterday. 

      Why you should care: The reason given for reinstating these violent thugs into office: since the police office who was beaten up was back to work now, the suspensions should also be revoked.  

The courts must be crazy

Since leaving the legal profession, I’ve found myself defending Indian judgments more than ever before. Sometimes it is much needed; legal orders are easily misinterpreted and misquoted by the media, leading an average person to think all judges are crazy. Other times, the average person is spot on- the judgment put forth is as close to crazy as can be. Today, I find myself wishing I could call the latest spate of supposedly women-friendly judgments passed by the Delhi High Court, and most recently the Madras High Court, crazy. I really, really wish I could. Crazy would be better than insidious.

In case you haven’t read, last week the Delhi High Court ruled (albeit in a matter of anticipatory bail) that promising a woman marriage to obtain sex is tantamount to rape- an archaic sentiment that was reasonably overturned by the Supreme Court this year. Today, the Hindu carries news of a Madras High Court order stating that pre-marital sex is all one needs to establish the relationship of marriage. Even if these observations are obiter dicta, some lawyer, some lower court is going to bring this up again, for sure. For a brief moment, let's put aside the legal implications of these judgments - those are mind-numbing, to say the least.

On the face of it one might think that these judgments have been passed to protect a woman but let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? In two fell swoops, the court has made its message quite clear: “Women need protection from licentious men, and women only have sex in order to get married to the man.” To follow the thought to its logical conclusion, women are so desperate to get married that they are being easily duped by men into having sex with them on the basis of just a promise. Follow it a bit further; a sexually active woman who doesn’t want or expect marriage is a bad woman, a loose woman, a woman who is asking for it.

Both judgments are examples of a type of sexism: Benevolent sexism; particularly difficult to counter purely because, as the name suggests, it appears to be so affable.

The term was coined in 1996 by Peter Glick and Susan Fiske. In 2012, the University of Florida conducted an in-depth study into the theory, and found that both men and women are equally prone to benevolent sexism. The idea was summed up perfectly by Dr. Kathleen Connelly, PhD the lead author of this study, as the perception that "women are wonderful, but weak" It’s inbuilt into social norms that feminists have long fought against, without much help from (even) other women.

When faced with top level judges enforcing this idea by insisting that women need protection from men who make false promises; by insinuating that sex between two people is anything more than that because it automatically leads to the women assuming there’s a deeper, long-lasting commitment, what are we to think?

Connelly states that “several studies have shown that when women read benevolently sexist comments, for example, they tend to perform more poorly on cognitive tests, express feelings of incompetence and weakness, and even experience greater dissatisfaction with their physical appearance. Not to mention, it might even perpetuate current inequalities—disparities in pay, for instance—that women still experience.”

An excellent example of the hazard of this kind of sexism was given in the Scientific American blog. It’s such a good example that I’m quoting it verbatim below:

“For a very recent example of how benevolent sexism might play out in our everyday lives, take a look at this satirical piece, which jokingly re-writes Albert Einstein’s obituary.

To quote: He made sure he shopped for groceries every night on the way home from work, took the garbage out, and hand washed the antimacassars. But to his step daughters he was just Dad. ”He was always there for us,” said his step daughter and first cousin once removed Margo.

Albert Einstein, who died on Tuesday, had another life at work, where he sometimes slipped away to peck at projects like showing that atoms really exist. His discovery of something called the photoelectric effect won him a coveted Nobel Prize.

Looks weird, right? Kind of like something you would never actually see in print?

Yet the author of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill’s obituary didn’t hesitate before writing the following about her last week: She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.

But Yvonne Brill, who died on Wednesday at 88 in Princeton, N.J., was also a brilliant rocket scientist, who in the early 1970s invented a propulsion system to help keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits.”

Sometimes, I wish I was making this shit up.

Recently upon joining a new work-place, I was told by someone to reign in my enthusiasm, to be a quieter, more subtle version of myself. “Don’t talk so much, don’t be so loud-mouthed with your opinions,” is what I was told. The example of a much quieter woman was given to me as the epitome of how a female should behave in an office. Never mind that the example/ epitome and I are totally different people. I’m not a quiet person, I am opinionated. I know a lot of men who are quite similar, and receive no criticism about it. In fact the person telling me so was pretty much, even if he didn’t realize it, foisting his opinion of what is correct behavior unto me- making him not very different from what he was telling me not to be. Had his mother told him to behave like an entirely different person, she’d be smothering; but when a man says these kinds of things to me, he’s being protective, he’s offering advice- never mind that I didn’t ask for any advice from him.

The sad truth behind this kind of benign sexism is that it’s not just the men that exercise it, but women as well. Think about the last time a friend of yours bemoaned that she earns more than her spouse, or Carrie Bradshaw cried over the lack of chivalry in this world without so much as a thought to how this so-called chivalry came about? What is the point of me lifting weights in a gym if I can’t even open the door for myself? Why am I working to make money, if the man is supposed to pay for my dinner?

To be honest, I’m plain ol’ riled up. I did wonder briefly if I would have been less irritated had these same courts stood up for the Verma Committee suggestions, and not buckled under pressure like they did. It might have been easier to stomach some of this, if India wasn't one of the only countries where marital rape isn't a crime. If the court didn't have the authority to rule on intimate matters between people then, I can't believe they think they do now. I certainly don’t need Justice Easwar to protect my hurt feelings or pride from every guy out there who lies. To put a rest to this line of thinking, let me be honest, women lie too. Oh, yes we do; and we lie to get sex too. Take a breath Judge- People, in general, sometimes lie to get what they want; the world is not a fair place, pretending that it is will only help prolong a stereotype that’s both insulting and condescending.

Never mind where I like it

 All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach 
- Adolf Hitler


Last year, it was a barrage of facebook pages with headings proclaiming "Blue!" or "Green" or "Black!". Meant to be a reference to the colour of the page owner's bra, supposedly the campaign left 'men everywhere wondering' (and some women, I'll have them know!). It caused a momentary stir, it caught the attention of the Daily Mail, perhaps the Sunday Times. We learnt later it was to 'create awareness' on the subject of breast cancer.


I admit I'm not quite aware about breast cancer and I agree that there's always room for a bit more learning. However when my fifty year old aunt puts up "Purple!" on her facebook status, we are in treacherous 'too much information' territory. Did I really need to know that she's wearing a purple bra... did anyone?

Today, its the "I like it..." statuses, telling us where each woman likes to keep her bag, though at first glance it seems like the woman is referring to where she likes to have sex...'I like it on the kitchen counter (invariably extracting a 'ooo saucy!' comment from some budding comic)' I will concede that when I googled the reason, I was given a cursory reminder about the presence of breast cancer. Can I be honest though? It was just that; Cursory.

It's not that I don't want to show solidarity with my fellow females. It's not that I've burnt my bras during an ill-advised 'I wish i was born in the 60s' phase or that, half the time even I don't know where I've dumped my bag. It's simply that, I just don't see the point.

Yes, people googled the facebook status prank. Yes, they learnt it was in support of a breast cancer charity. Did they learn anything further? (apart from me, who learnt that her aunt may have a funky side). Perhaps it was just me, but once I figured out what the statuses meant, I was done. There was no useful information about breast cancer to be found in relation to the campaign. There was nothing about how to detect it or how to combact it. Not so much as a measley hyperlink.

So I have to ask myself, apart from causing a two second stir and providing amusement to a few people on the day, what did the campaign achieve? I also have to ask - given the severity of the situation, where 1 out of every 22 Indian women are likely to encounter the disease, shouldn't there be a more serious approach to disseminating information about it? Shouldn't providing comprehendible intelligence in an accessible manner take up more of our time and attention than where we may or may not like to have sex? (plus lets just face this grown up fact - sex is sex - whoever it was fun with on the bed, it'll be fun with, on the kitchen counter.)

Do we really need to bare our bras and resort to sexual innuendoes of the high school variety to draw attention towards a serious and important public health issue?

And my other problem with these campaigns: in great specificity, it's this particular line that was also passed on to me:  "Ladies unite while keeping the men guessing."

It's a cute take on the usual 'Battle of the Sexes', I'll give you that but that's exactly what it implies - the two sexes are most occupied when engaged against each other. Maybe it's just me but isn't this is just a slightly pathetic reflection on our sub-culture?

The primary targets of this campaign may be women, but its been designed to get just as much attention from men. Which means, someone studied the two demographics and came to the conclusions that women bond best when its against men and similarly a focus group indicated that these innuendoes were the only effective way to capture male attention for the campaign see also beer commercial set in a car wash cliché. Now perhaps these things are all true and it's me whose being slow to catch on but this seems like a stunted view of our society, of men and women and is tantamount to gender profiling.

If I believed that this was true, then I would also have to believe that the glass ceiling still exists or that all good looking women sleep their way to the top or that every time a man holds the door open for me he does so with ulterior motives.

Yes it's all very cute, but isn't it expecting just a bit too little from our intelligence, time and sense of humour?