Monday, July 10, 2017

10LADs and women

It was about a year ago.  The hot summer days.  The Republican nominee for the presidency said that the news anchor at Faux News "had blood coming out of her wherever."

That was merely an addition to lots of other words and phrases he had used to describe women: Fat. Pig. Dog. Slob. Disgusting animal ...

Ah yes, the good times they were.  And they kept on coming.  And it keeps on coming, well past his advice on pussy-grabbing, thanks to 63 million Americans.

With him as the president, I have no right to comment on the state of affairs anywhere else in the world.  Those who live in glass houses ... and I am stark naked in my glass house :(

At least in the years past we pretended to worry about morals.  We Americans could claim the moral high ground as an aspiration.  But, the day to day reality now makes utter hypocrisy out of any moral finger-pointing.

The fact that we now occupy a stinking swamp having come down from the high ground does not mean, however, the world's problems have gone away though.

Consider, for instance, the death of an 18-year old girl in Nepal.  Even by itself, that death is a tragedy.  And then to think about other young women like here, only because they menstruate--you know, the "blood coming out of her wherever"--makes it terribly, terribly tragic.  All because of "a tradition known as chhaupadi that sequesters menstruating women from their families.":
The Supreme Court of Nepal ordered an end to chhaupadi, which is linked to Hinduism, in 2005. But it is still practiced in many of Nepal’s isolated villages, particularly in the west. A bill is pending in Parliament to formally criminalize the practice. Many people in rural villages believe that menstruating women are impure and can bring bad luck on a household. Under the chhaupadi tradition, the women are kept from taking part in normal family activities and social gatherings or from entering houses, kitchens and temples....
The practice has its dangers: Women must often brave winter cold or summer heat in rude huts where they are vulnerable to human and animal intruders.
Vulnerable to animals like snakes that bit that 18-year old woman who died a day after that unfortunate event.

All because of "blood coming out of her wherever."

Visualize this.  A kid might write to the President complaining about anything--from homework to stress to world peace to whatever.  From anywhere on the planet, for that matter.  (An uncle of mine wanted to name his home "White House."  So, he wrote a letter to President Eisenhower requesting his ok  And he received a formal reply stating that the President had no problems with that.)

Now, think about a Nepali girl who wants to tell the American President about this chhaupadi issue. ... you can fill in the rest!

Don't ever think that I am exaggerating such an aspect of the Presidency.  That's what the 10LADs in the subject refers to:
At the beginning of his first term, President Obama said he wanted to read his mail. He said he would like to see 10 letters a day. After that, the 10LADs, as they came to be called, were put in a purple folder and added to the back of the briefing book he took with him to the residence on the second floor of the White House each night.
Caption at the source:
In the Obama White House’s hard-mail room, each intern and staff member read and categorized 300 letters a day.
The reporter asked Obama "how he might advise Donald Trump on what to do with the mail if he were to become president."  Obama's response:
He laughed. “You know what, this is a great habit. But um, it, uh,” he said about the idea of a President Trump reading constituent mail. “I think it worked for me because it wasn’t something I did for anyone else — I did it because it ... sustained me. So maybe it will sustain others in the future.
“O.K.?”
No letter from a Nepali girl about "blood coming out of her wherever," will ever be read by this president.

Maybe those girls will write to the real leader of the free world, who personally knows well about "blood coming out of her wherever."


2 comments:

Ramesh said...

I hadn't heard of the Nepal girl. So so sad. An absolutely horrible tradition that was, and even now is, widely practiced in the Indian sub continent. Not perhaps with such drastic consequences, but nevertheless, with all the connotations of "impurity". What crap !

It is a real pity, that this social evil has actually been more propagated by women than men.

Sriram Khé said...

yes, this "impurity" talk is all crap. terrible the practice is.