Is feminism inherently negative?

[Jon Miller]

Kid, the issue is that intelligent women aren't breeding because it isn't advantageous in today's capitalist sociaety.

Jon Miller

[molly bloom]

Why India may be in need of a dash more feminism:

Thousands of young girls are sold into prostitution in India every year. Many are abducted into the job when they reach puberty and never escape it.

But one mother has decided to fight back. Sky's India correspondent Alex Crawford has been to India's poorest region, Bihar, to join her attempt to save her daughter.

"Occasionally you meet people who make a real difference. In Meena, Ruchira and Tinku, the Sky News team met three.

Meena is a rarity. A woman sold into a modern day sex slave trade, still thriving in the economic phenomenon which is India, but who managed to break free.

Ruchira and Tinku are the two charity workers who she turned to for help - and who would challenge the system, pull the strings and fight for justice for Meena.

Meena - like so many others - found herself 'sold' into bonded labour while still a child.

For a few rupees she was bought by a family who put her into prostitution.

They were part of a secretive and little-known group called the Nutt community, where every female is put into prostitution.

Here a girl child is welcomed, unlike throughout the rest of India, because of the money she can earn the family by selling her body.

Grandmothers, mothers and their daughters are all involved in the family business. What they earn can keep an entire extended family alive.


All Nutt women are prostitutes

Meena remembers being locked in a completely dark room for what seemed like weeks.

If she resisted, she was beaten, starved, denied everything. There simply was no other way. She worked as a prostitute and she lived. If she didn't, she died.

All her earnings were handed to the brothel keeper and she was just one of a number of young women working in the house.

She was eventually 'married' to the son of the brothel keeper and bore him two children. One was a boy, the other, crucially a girl.

But Meena ran away. She managed to escape but she left behind her two young children. Her daughter was only five years old.

She managed to rebuild her life, married and had a further two children, both girls.

But she couldn't forget her other children. She knew her daughter Naina would be reaching puberty now.

For the past two years she has been travelling back to that house, the house where she was imprisoned, to try to rescue her daughter.

Each time she's been beaten by the brothel keepers and her own daughter has renounced her.

Naina won't even recognise her as her mother. She feels abandoned and she's told repeatedly her mother only wishes her harm, wants to sell her body too.


Ruchira Gupta is a ferociously tenacious woman who founded the anti-trafficking non-governmental organisation Apne Aap.

Her organisation runs shelters for trafficked women, has creches for children of Nutt families and tries to educate and inform the women about alternatives.

Ruchira and her doughty co-worker Tinku Khanna are determined to help Meena and no amount of Indian bureaucracy or corruption is going to stand in their way.

First they have to persuade the Superintendent of Police in Katihar to mount a raid on the brothel. No easy task.

To mount a raid, one has to admit there is a problem and although the red light area is just a half a mile from the police station, the police deny its existence.

Secondly, once a raid has been organised, they have to ensure it's kept secret because a last-minute tip-off could mean the girls are spirited away.

Thirdly, they have to gain custody of the girl and any others found.

In the past, Ruchira's organisation has organised police raids only to discover the morning after that the girls have 'disappeared'; freed, due to a hefty bribe paid by the brothel keepers.


Naina is taken from the brothel So, after hours of negotiations, a raid is organised. The Sky News team film everything - a presence Ruchira later says gives the NGO workers protection from both the brothel keepers AND the police.

They are far less likely to be attacked with a Western film crew rolling all the while.

[...]

We think it is all over. We are so wrong. Next morning, the decision we think is a foregone rubber-stamped conclusion, goes against Meena and Apne Aap.

The Chief Judicial Magistrate has been informed Naina's father is contesting custody.

He says Meena is a prostitute so he is reluctant to handover custody of a young girl to her for fear she too will be put into the trade again.

He orders Naina be sent to a remand centre in Patna. The charity is distraught.

They fear she will be handed back to her father and disappear into the Bihar countryside again.

An agonising few days go by. Ruchira is pulling out all the stops. She simply won't give up.

One has to wonder what would happen if there wasn't a redoubtable charity fighting for this girl.

This story does have a happy ending with mother and daughter reunited but so many do not.

Thousands upon thousands of girls are on their own, imprisoned in sex slavery with no-one to help them."

:: You can find out more about the charity which helped Meena rescue her daughter at www.apneaap.org

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13576170,00.html

Yes, I know it's Sky News, but I found the footage compelling when I saw it.

It made me think of my nieces- and how they had been able to have a childhood without being forced to sell their bodies for sex.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

Obedience is a virtue.

No, in certain circumstances obedience can be a virtue. It can also be quite dangerous.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Putting aside for a moment how false I consider the above statement to be, it has been argued that men, by being less emotional are able to be objective and rational and therefore should be in positions of power. The argument being that women, by being "overly emotional" cannot judge things rationally and therefore should not be trusted in those sensitive roles.

And I suspect that the men who made up that argument had conveniently forgotten about the behaviour of men at sporting fixtures, in betting shops, in car show rooms, or in pubs.

Or at chucking out time...


Cool, calm collected rational man:

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Is feminism inherently negative?

Originally posted by Ned


At least in the US, the movement in its hey day was lead by lesbians and ugly women who were definitely anti-man.

Were any of them:

Jews

British

Socialists

Zionists


All of the above ?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


Ned is a right wing nutjob to you.

Fixed in the interests of historical accuracy.

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Is feminism inherently negative?

Originally posted by Ned


The left IS anti-family.

From the Soviet Union, a medal for motherhood.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


Rufus, why don't you give us a list of all the pro-family laws the Dems have passed and/or support and explain why they are pro-family.

The American Democratic Party are 'the Left' ?




Only to

a right wing nutjob

A classic Nedism . That Henry VIII and his divorces- what an out and out Commie!

1882 Married Women's Property Act.

A typical piece of social engineering by Commies!

Or Gladstonian Liberals, as the case may be....

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned

Divorce for good cause has always been in the law and should remain.

Uh huh.

Since when ? Since before or after the Reformation ?

I don't think it was terribly easy for women to approach the Pope and ask for divorce, or even an annulment.

Nor to petition the English Parliament with a private bill.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


I know the difference between classic liberalism (i.e., a concern for the poor) which has its origins in Christianity and socialism which speaks of the "social contract," class warfare and economic equality. The classic liberal would be pro-family. The socialist is anti-family because the socialist wants everyone to be dependent upon the state.

The Christian Socialists:

http://www.thecsm.org.uk/

A typical anti-family, anti-business Communist:

23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

The Gospel according to St. Matthew

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
True, but why did men develope the institution of property rights for themselves, but women did not do the same for themselves.

Because the men were stronger, duh.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Great! Men acted like animals. Are you proposing that it's a good thing that we have always acted like animals and that we always should. That anyone who proposes acting differently is destroying society? That's ridiculous. Having a civilization means that we no longer act like animals.

We are animals, duh. Using it as a pejorative in this debate is idiotic.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Pro-slavery advocates said that freeing slaves would cause economic collapse because of the loss of property for the slave holders.

And if they had been correct - that without slavery our very society would implode or disappear - perhaps we should have kept slavery! But they weren't and we didn't.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Kid, the issue is that intelligent women aren't breeding because it isn't advantageous in today's capitalist sociaety.

Jon Miller

If they don't want to breed they shouldn't have too.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


We are animals, duh. Using it as a pejorative in this debate is idiotic.

If you are making any progress towards whatever you are trying to show us I have missed it completely. Human beings are different from the other animals.