Do you?

You know her. Or someone very like her.
She’s about 14, and maybe she’s your maid’s daughter.
Or maybe she lives in the flat next door, or the large house across the street.
She’s studying, your maid says proudly, she’s not going to be married off till she finishes her Intermediate, at least. Nowadays, even girls must [...]

The politics of abortion - II

Part I of this piece reviewed the Indian law on the regulation of reproduction, and I ended up making the point that if the law were to be based on autonomy, it would decriminalise both abortion and the use of PNDTs. While I agree with Rohit’s statement that the best way to reduce female [...]

The politics of birth control - I

Blr Bytes recently sent me this link, and it provided me with the impetus to write about something I’ve been meaning to address for a while: birth control. Rohit’s article is partly a response to Pamela Philipose’s piece in the Indian Express, but is also a well-argued case for legalising sex-determination, on the same grounds [...]

Of Myths

Some time ago, I blogged about Naomi Wolf’s essay, The Porn Myth, and I asked what was wrong with Wolf’s statements about Dworkin. Of course, Andrea Dworkin has been one of the most controversial feminist philosophers ever, and Naomi Wolf is herself a very popular and well-respected feminist, so let me caveat this post:
 
What [...]

And a link

Blr Bytes sent me this quite a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to blog it and forgetting. So, who’s going to be the first to figure out what’s wrong with what Naomi Wolf’s saying about Andrea Dworkin?

For a change

I’m not ranting at the ToI for their ‘reporting’. I’m ranting at the Supreme Court for giving them this to report.
Let me clarify something. I don’t think anything deserves the death penalty. But the law, as it stands, says that the ‘rarest of rare cases’ do. And to make sure that the death penalty is [...]

Should we have a woman President?

It’s Friday, again, and a perfect chance to write about the campaing for “India’s first woman president”. 
My first reaction to Pratibha Patil’s nomination was, of course, “Oh, wow! A woman President, finally!” And over the past few weeks, I’ve read quite a bit about her in the papers: all her faux pas, all the reasons [...]