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Its not a pithy phrase you idiot- its referring to a very material reality of what women go through. Rape kits dont contain argumentative props- they contain very real evidence of the oppression that women go through. Not everything is a debating tactic. You are just going ad hominem because you do not have the truth on your side and nor do you have any argument on your side. So all you can do is say that im ranting and crazy and mad and hateful and all this other nonsense. I dare you to point out where Ive engaged in ad hominem. No one here represents anyone else but themselves. You don't represent women either. Women are more than capable of speaking for themselves- and this particular woman is. You dont seem to understand that marginalisation should be based in material reality and not in imagined word magic.
You think you know what progress is and what positive change is. Progress has never been made by the people who deny material realities and never been made by people who prioritise "positivity" and feelings over facts. I will keep fighting. Thanks!
Aside from that- a generally good principle of debate is that the person making the assertion needs to prove it- if you make the assertion that gender-neutral parental leave would help women- you need to provide convincing proof of the same.
No one has made anyone the spokesperson here. Who made you spokesperson for women? Should we all shut up until official spokespersons are elected? Its up to people to generally support the point of view that aligns with their interests.
It is unlikely that most people here would understand or appreciate what you are saying and have gone through and/or are still going through. It is similar to (though different in more ways than one) the reservation debate. I cannot say that I fully understand the troubles that women in this country and society have to undergo every step of the way (though I do and always will keep trying to learn), but I have gone through several kinds of experience to learn why such protection is still very much the need of the day. Despite many of those protections having been there for quite some time, their effect is barely visible in the larger society. I don't even know where to begin about the efficacy of the existing rape laws, or the lack thereof. There is just no comparison between the two genders in the kind of treatment that they receive in society, daily lives, career. See, I don't know whether anything I write here will be of any help at all. However, I just wanted you to know that you don't have to fight this war all by yourself, there are allies outside your gender who stand firmly beside you. I don't have to approve of your every word, every piece of argument, every precedent cited, because it is not anyone's place including mine to stand in judgement of the way you choose to fight. The cause that you are fighting for is good enough to keep supporting, that's all. Change rarely arrives in a pretty fashion, nor does it have to.
Ive explained my reasoning perfectly clearly. I do see dalit men being jailed for no reason at the behest of savarna women yes. I think that's awful and it should stop. But women as a sex class have proven again and again that this happens to them. How did they prove it when theres no law? The illegality of rape is not what makes it objectionable! If rape laws didnt exist women would still be able to tell you that they've been raped. your brain got fried or something?
Women proved it historically through the wounds and bruises on their bodies, the bitten-off flesh, the torn away insides. They proved it through unwanted babies having abortions in back alleys, they proved it through medical testing when they were lucky and death. there are thousands of dead women to prove- this is a violence at affects this sex class. Thats not rubbish like you think it is.
I'm afraid progress doesn't mean we stop asking for empirical evidence from people when we want to make criminal law. I can invent a crime tomorrow and throw my inconvenient wife/girlfriend/ side chick in jail tomorrow? yes please. Like I said- men who are raped by men have a sodomy law that covers non-consensual acts. There is no empirical proof that women rape men as a society wide pattern. The fact that you think its hateful to ask for that proof before we make a law- should tell you how keen judges and juries would be to throw women into jail given the chance.
Im not bigoted for pointing out that society distrusts women and believes men. Centuries of rape cases prove just that.
Why do men getting paternity leave affect women? Well the government only has so many resources. We dont live in a world of magic. Companies only have so much money. If they have to grant paternity leaves so the dude can sit at home, change a diaper maybe once a day and ask his wife to make him coffee/ lunch/ dinner whatever- then that money is gonna come from somewhere- its gonna come from money set out for maternity leave. these resources are finite. they wont simply increase the corpus when they go gender neutral. I'd rather we do more for women who actually do- empirically- take care of infants. Than make weak policies hoping that men will be on their best behaviour and take care of their babies. "People who dont want to contribute" Which people are those? Are they not negligent fathers? lots of women bragging about changing a diaper once in a whilfe after giving birth? Or are they in fact the primary care giver of the child? If the negligent fathers will be negligent anyway why should we spend money on them and enable them to not contribute by working at home or at the office? Why is that a good strategy? Where is the movement of fathers who want to take care of their babies? I really don't see it. There are some good fathers but as a sex class in this country- the average indian uncle barely lifts a finger to take care of a new born.
People who actually want to take care of their babies will do so regardless- fathers arent physically destroyed by childbirth, they dont have to breastfeed- theyre fine- this is should not be the priority of any feminist movement. We do criminally little for mothers as is- Id rather we spend our time and resources there.
Why are anti rape laws and laws about protecting women in family law and all of that connected? Because they take into account sex based oppression! What about this is confusing to you? Women would not lose out on much if you didnt give paternity leave- Youre assuming that based on nothing- based on men saying "gee honey I wish I could help but I gotta go to work" and then take off and go to the gambling den and spend his time and money on his vices.
When you want to make all laws gender netural- which is the claim i was responding to- you are then gonna take away rights for the female sex. the additional protections we get because we are oppressed as a sex class. this is not rocket science.
People like me are the reason feminism exists- because the thought of there being sex-based oppression and violence and the thought of standing up for women- doesn't make us so uncomfortable that we have to scream out "What about men poor woobies". We're not pick mes. We are able to look at the sex based oppression squarely and advocate for real victims. If people like me did not exist- you would have a feminism thats just about mens rights. I dont really care if you call me rabid or if men call me rabid or insane or a witch. I dont seek to appease my oppressors, i seek to defeat them.
The examples of protection that you gave has got no bearing whatsoever to allowing anti-rape laws for men. So your continuous claim of being right is just that, a false claim. You wear not being nice as a kind of badge, but it only makes you a jerk and does not add any value to your arguments at all. Nor are you right at all for the reason already stated.
You made a colossal assumption of the anti-rape laws involving women being jailed at men's behest. That really makes your entire argument biased, coloured and illogical. Unless you are habituated at seeing men being jailed without due process at women's behest because of the existing rape laws.
Women had to prove rape happens again and again before getting rape laws that they want? How did they prove anything at all until the laws were in place? Of course the laws are not perfect and there should be a continuous struggle to make them better. What you are saying that until those laws are perfected, nobody else should get any law at all, which is a rubbish argument.
Nobody taught me that only women have to be nice. Being a nice human being is actually something for every educated individual to strive for. You being a lousy person does not make you a better feminist or even a right one.
You keep contradicting yourself in your own statements. Women have to prove it before court beyond reasonable doubt before they get justice, but men won't have to because their word will be taken as gospel truth? Claims like this only prove your ignorance about how the legal process works.
As for paternity leave, your entire argument seems to be based on depriving others of something that you won after a struggle. That's not really how progress works. Going by that logic, for winning every step of progressive legislation, you would have to go through the same struggle that women have had to go through to win suffrage. Early struggles ought to make the lives of subsequent society better, it's not a rite of passage as you claim rather sadistically. If you don't give paternity leave, then the women would also be the ones who would be adversely affected by it, since the men would therefore have no choice other than to leave child rearing entirely to the women, even those men who actually want to help. How does depriving men of paternity leave help women get more rights or make their condition any better is a question to which only your fertile imagination may produce any answer. You seem to treat maternity leave as something that will be reduced when paternity leave will be given. Which is mind-boggling in terms of ignorance. If you are offended at the thought of men getting leaves for of a child, because women had to wait so long to get that, then that's just frustration speaking, because logically speaking, men have had to wait longer and the wait is still going on. People who don't want to contribute to the household won't do so regardless of whether leaves are given or not. People who actually want to won't be able to do so unless they are given leaves. You should reexamine your sense of logic if you don't get that.
You keep trying to talk about additional protection for women and conflate it with anti-rape laws. One wonders why because nobody claimed that these protections should be done away with. Which part of this additional protection of the examples that you have given would be in conflict with such law exactly? Or do you want additional protection for people who may commit such crimes? That's the same double standard that you glibly accuse others of. Throughout your supposed argument, you merely come across as a rabid individual, whose only point is that you have had to earn rights through struggle, so why should anybody else get similar rights without a struggle that's deemed acceptable by you? Even if it means that women would also be the ones losing out in the process like your claim about paternity leave showed. People like you are the reason feminism gets a bad name and also the reason why rights that might otherwise have been won with logical arguments become increasingly difficult to be attained. There is no use engaging with you because you look at everything through your jaundiced narrative regardless of whether it fits or not.
So women have to prove that assault happens over and over and have to do a whole me too thing and still not really get rape law that works for them - but anecdotal evidence is enough to start jailing women at mens behest ? That seems like feminism to you ?
Whoever told you women have to be nice has done patriarchal programming well. Women are allowed to be angry and resentful of their oppressors. It doesn’t decrease their moral worth and it doesn’t make them less rational. Women don’t have to be nice any more than men do. I’d rather be right than nice anyway.
When men do a me too - we can talk about lifting gendered protections on women. It’s just wrong to claim that one doesn’t need to prove empirical truths to move for law reform. Like the world doesn’t revolve around your feelings. Women have proved that rape happens time and time and time again. And they still have to prove it in court with impeccable evidence instead of being taken at their word. Putting people in prison is an awesome exercise of state power - not something we should do because of mens feelings.
Women fight for generations to get maternity leave because passing another human through a key hole feeding them from your body and then taking care of them so they don’t choke on their spit and die should not make them lose their jobs. And men should just get paternity leave because hey - maybe if we do that then they might become contributing members of the house hold ? Let’s assume they’ll be their best selves despite everything we know about how men behave and gendered division of labour in households ? That doesn’t smack of double standards to you?
You’re not making laws for Sweden - you’re making laws for this country. It has to be influenced by empirical evidence for this country.
You not going ad hominem is a a good way to have a discussion with someone who disagrees with you - but it doesn’t make me less moral than you because I haven’t gone ad hominem either.
How does this matter get connected to the rest of the issues that you spoke of I do not know. There are problems that exclusively affect women. Such as dowry deaths. Creating exclusive laws for those has got no bearing with this. As for your talk about men getting menstrual leave or maternity leave, there did not seem to be any point in it to respond to. I for one would like for men to have paternity leave, because that is meant to pass the message that looking after the child is the responsibility of both the mother and the father.
I do not wish to go ad hominem, so I'll stop here. My only point is that there is nothing in feminism that prevents an anti-rape law to be made where men can be considered as victims of such heinous crime and not only perpetrators. If you believe that there is no such incident happening, then no case will be filed under such law. Not considering that men can be victims of sexual offences is actually patriarchal, last time I checked.
Men raping men exists - that’s why we have an anti sodomy law. Can still use it if they’re forced into non consent stuff by other men.
Dowry deaths ? Do men get protection there ? What about acid attacks ? Stalking and voeuyrism and harassment ? What about anti discrimination stuff at workplaces ? Should men get maternity leave ? Should they get menstrual leave ? Should men be in lactation rooms ? How much of its welfare resources dedicated to programmes on women should the state spend on men?
Why do you think men are underprivileged by the patriarchy ? Does the empirical evidence prove it ? Or do you just not want to hurt their precious feelings ?
We have laws like this because we have sex based oppression.
There was definitely a more conservative claim that could be made- but 20 petitions all went overboard wanting everything and not considering that we do have very gendered laws in this country because we live in a very patriarchal society which puts women at a disadvantage. Who gets maintenance in a same sex relationship? who can be charged under 498 A? what happens to prohibited relationships? All of that needs to be worked out if you want marriage- and thats something no court can legitimately parse through. We will need a UCC to have same sex marriage become a reality.
This is not just about SMA, almost all gender laws should be removed!
vishakha guidelinesprocedure for appointment of election commissioner.
but the fact is courts should not make laws, they don't represent people, they have no accountability.
living in a country where courts make law is like living in a monarchy. They are not accountable, you can't question them (contempt of court), you can't remove them.
(until it all falls apart when the judge rules in favour of the UCC or holds that Gyanvapi sits atop a demolished temple 🤣 )