ON TOPIC: Matriliny, Ishq, and solidarity / save the climate, save the world

A statement by women’s groups, students’ groups, progressive groups and individuals, on the eve of December 16:

If we turn to cases filed under the new amendments to the law against sexual assault that were passed in the wake of the movement in December 2012, the scene is dismal. Be it the women in Muzaffarnagar, Bhagana or Bastar, or the women employees of Tehelka or TERI, they all await justice.

The Wire comes out with a compelling article on domestic labourers in the city, and access to toilets.

“Anchita Ghatak, one of the founders of Parichiti (an NGO that works with domestic workers in Kolkata), believes that rather than having been rooted out, casteist ideas about purity and pollution have instead been ‘modernised’ into a more socially-acceptable discourse about class, literacy, and hygiene – a pattern which has been observed in other parts of India. Whereas employers may have once explicitly invoked caste in order to bar domestic workers from using the toilet (as well as from other parts of the house), today they are more likely to claim that their employees ‘do not know how’ to use toilets and are ‘too uneducated’ to learn.”

There is finally a verdict for Suzette Jordan’s rape case.

Eli Saslow’s moving story in The Washington Post about the physical and emotional challenges mass shooting survivor, Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, faces.

In this insightful piece, Surya P. Sethi talks about how the Paris Agreement is nothing more than a feel good statement that still doesn’t allow the bottom half of the world to achieve a certain level of development and tackle the impacts of climate change efficiently.

Have you seen Agents of Ishq yet? On the website of Parodevi Pictures’ new project to “give sex a good name,” Devdutt Pattanaik writes about the day his mother came home.

What ended Kerala’s matrilineal society?

But as the scholar K. Saradamoni points out, “None of these theories appear to have taken note of the fact that matriliny offered an identity and security to women.” Nair women always had the security of the homes they were born in throughout their lives and were not dependent on their husbands. Sexual freedom was also remarkable so that while polygamy was happily recognised in other parts of India, in Kerala women were allowed polyandry. Nair women could, if they wished, entertain more than one husband and, in the event of difficulties, were free to divorce without any social stigma. Widowhood was no catastrophic disaster and they were effectively at par with men when it came to sexual rights, with complete autonomy over their bodies.

What was the first sex question you asked Google? A lovely article on Medium explores the sex education ’90s and ’00s kids got through the internet.

On white debt: Eula Biss’s article in the New York Times explores the debt white people owe to racism.

Once you’ve been living in a house for a while, you tend to begin to believe that it’s yours, even though you don’t own it yet. When those of us who are convinced of our own whiteness deny our debt, this may be an inevitable result of having lived for so long in a house bought on credit but never paid off. We ourselves have never owned slaves, we insist, and we never say the n-word. ‘‘It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill,’’ [Ta-Nehisi] Coates writes of Americans, ‘‘and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear.’’

An article in The Atlantic investigates how slavery is still alive and well. “There are now twice as many people enslaved in the world as there were in the 350 years of the transatlantic slave trade.”

How did Balochistan become a part of Pakistan? Yogeena Veena uncovers the history of nation-building.

Two trailblazing scholars passed away this month: Fatima Mernissi and Benedict Anderson.

Women face trouble within and without homes; Chatura Rao (a Zubaan writer!) writes about abuse, women, and homelessness.

“The girls who come here,” Farida says, indicating with a tilt of her head, the women sitting in the porch, ”have quite some options. Urja [a shelter] helps you choose who you want to be. But many cling to the memory of that one love or marital relationship that went wrong, and refuse to move on. A man-woman relationship is just one aspect of a person’s life. More important is personal growth and developing an independent identity. Not as a woman in traditional roles, but as a human being.”

“The idea that computers are for boys became a narrative.” NPR writes on when women stopped coding.

In Chennai, Living Smile Vidya, a trans woman, has opened her home to other young transpeople.

In October, the same month when her biopic was released (can we pause for coolness), Vidya wrote at length about one of the hardest aspects of her life. Finding a house to live in. Landlords who say no outright, passive-aggressive ones, ones who hide behind ‘this is a decent neighbourhood’, greedy ones. Transpeople spend half their lives looking for a place to live, she wrote. It didn’t matter if you were well-known, accomplished, frequently seen as a treasure of the arts world. Landlords have a way of grinding you down to ‘unsuitable’.

A beautiful piece in Time Magazine on a possible shift in rape culture we are witnessing in the wake of #solidaritywithstoya:

What was astonishing was not the courage it doubtless took for Stoya to type those 55 words and hit send — knowing that she would be accused of lying and attention-seeking, knowing the number of people who would claim that as a sex worker, she cannot expect to claim rape and be believed. What was astonishing, though, what had my heart between my teeth, was the number of people who did the opposite. Even before more former partners and colleagues of Deen came forward with more accusations of rape and violence, major porn studios dropped him as a performer, and many outlets publishing his work and writing cut ties. The hashtag #solidaritywithsoya trended around the world.