Afraid of a Woman

for International Women's Day - a link to a song I wrote about street harassment and corruption in society. Street harassment and sexual violence happens in every country, everywhere. When I tell people who harass me on the street to leave me alone, I get called a bitch, a dyke, or a whore who's asking for it. That's why I'm pretty sure they are more afraid of me than I am of them.

They can’t keep up, they can’t keep up
I smooth the grade out, but they still can’t keep up
I don’t need them, I want my freedom
I've got to leave them like I just don’t hear them

You don’t know what you don’t see because
They just tell you when to keep your eyes shut
You don’t know where I’m coming from
You want my money and you want my freedom

I know what you say to my back every day
You’re just afraid, afraid of a woman
afraid of a woman, afraid of a woman (2x)

They just watch me, they just watch me
I smooth the grade out while they still just watch me
I don’t need them, I got my freedom
I keep on walking like I just don’t see them

You don’t miss what you don’t have because
They just give you what they tell you to want
You don’t know why you think you need them
You give them money but that’s not freedom

I know what you say to my back, I know every day
You’re just afraid, afraid of a woman
afraid of a woman, afraid of a woman (2x)

You just break,
break when you’re under
the feet of a woman
the feet of a woman
You’re so afraid, it looks like you’re running
away from a woman
away from a woman

now I’m free, I’m free, I’m free

I am woman, hear me roar

It's been nearly a year since my last post. I always like to jump back into things with a big splash, so here I go. March is Women's History Month, and that seems apt for what's been going on lately in current events. American conservatives are hell-bent on making women's rights history. They are also extremely interested in the contents and goings on inside of our uteruses. (Uteri?) I wonder if any women's groups have considered a nation-wide uterus drive so that we can donate some uteruses to all those poor male Republican politicians who don't have one. Perhaps if they had one of their very own they wouldn't be so gosh darn interested in what's happening in ours. We'll send them a pocket pussy too, and a transvaginal ultrasound wand, and they can have a big party.

In honor of Women's History Month, I'd like to take a brief trip back down memory lane, to revisit my own history as a female person. Because it's the year 2012, and for all that we've accomplished as a human society, there is STILL a ridiculous amount of stupid crap that is tolerated, encouraged and taught about women. I'm not even talking about problems like poverty, war, drought, famine, global warming. Just about a gender. But yet there are so many socially inept weirdos and ignoramases out there who still don't get why feminists are always pissed so off.

When I was a lot younger, like middle school and high school-age, I was pretty much convinced that all men/boys were assholes. In fact I didn't really do any dating of boys, other than bringing one to a few high school dances, until I went to college. For this, I got called a lesbian and a bitch a lot in high school, which further cemented my conviction that ALL MEN/BOYS ARE ASSHOLES. Most of my close friends were all girls, and the only guys I was friends with were of the non-threatening Drama Club-type. Then I got a little older, a little wiser, a little more sure of myself. I graduated from college and became close with some male friends. I became less distrustful of the male gender, dated casually, and was more comfortable around men in general. I became of the mind that not all men were assholes, that in fact they were human beings with feelings and thoughts, and it was entirely possible that most the time their feelings and thoughts were not about sexing/subjugating women.

I became comfortable with what I thought was the status-quo; my experience in life was that I, enjoyed equal standing with the men I knew and associated with, and that the woman's movement for equality in America was largely successful.

Then, when I was 27, I joined the Peace Corps and worked as a volunteer for two years in the former Soviet Union. As a young American woman living in a male-dominated community that had little to no contact with other foreigners, I was treated like shit on a daily basis by men and viewed by most men as either a sex object or a money-dispensing machine in the form of a person (but not really a person.) And my experience wasn't even that bad compared to the women who were born there. As in many former Soviet Union countries, corruption is rampant, unemployment is high, education is bad, and the women do all the hard work. In my host country, a lot of men don't have jobs, but they like to pretend that they do. They get up in the morning and dress in these very fancy, pressed shiny suits and ties, and they wear shiny, pointy shoes. They go down to the main square, and they stand around all day talking to each other and smoking cigarettes and blatantly staring at any women who are walking around doing stuff, like carrying heavy groceries or going to work. In the evenings they like to go to each other's houses and sit around playing backgammon and getting drunk while being served food and waited on hand and foot by the lady of the house. Eventually they go home and their own wives wash and press their shiny suit so that it's ready for tomorrow's day of doing the exact same thing. The wives, and the daughters and sisters, they do the actual work. They tend the garden, clean the house, wash the clothes, cook the meals, clean up after their husbands and brothers and sons, and often also work outside the home by selling things at the market, or teaching at a school, or working at the post office. During a conversation with one of my female friends who lived in my host country, I was sharing how betrayed I felt by an incident with a man who I thought was a good person, but he did something that revealed he had no respect for women at all. She told me, "No men in my country are good." I said, "Really?? You don't know a single man you think is good??" She briefly conferred with her niece, and then amended her answer to say that she did know ONE, the neighbor of an aunt who lived in the capital. "He has good character," she says. One guy out of a few million, apparently.

So yeah, I lived there for 2 years, and came back to the U.S. last year. Despite my recent high powered check with reality, for some reason I was expecting to be met by a lovely hot shower of women's empowerment and power to the people and rainbows in general. Instead I came back to this:

- Santorum is no longer just the frothy mix of semen, lube, and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex, but an actual forseeable presidential candidate with the first name Rick.
Points for American women at large: 0
Points for the Republicans: 0
Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

- Newt Gingrich is no longer just a fat, ass-faced, hate-spewing butt turd who was kicked out of Congress for breaking the law, infamously left his recently-diagnosed-with-cancer-wife for a younger woman, and became widely regarded as a lying hypocrite and sack of shit, but an actual forseeable presidential candidate.
Points for American women at large: 0
Points for the Republicans: 0
Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

- Mitt Romney is no longer just the most obvious representation of wealthy elitism, corporate greed, power-hungry 1%-ishness EVER, combined with the some of the most asinine mental retardation EVER PERSONIFIED, but an actual forseeable presidential candidate.
Points for American women at large: 0
Points for the Republicans: 0
Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

- The Susan G. Komen Foundation announced that it's de-funding a Planned Parenhood program that offers free breast cancer screenings for women who don't have health insurance or otherwise can't afford them. Again, this funding was NOT for abortions. It was for BREAST CANCER SCREENINGS, which, as the nation's biggest breast cancer charity, Komen would seemly want to fund as much as possible. But no, instead they decided to out themselves as an anti-choice, politically conservative breast cancer charity -- in the most retarded fashion possible. The backlash was quick and overwhelming. And the whole thing was over a yearly grant of $500,000. Using the Komen Foundation's decision as a fundraising ask, Planned Parenthood received $4,000,000 in donations in about a week or so. Then, the Komen Foundation, having realized that it had just done one of the stupidest things in history, announced that it was "just kidding" and un-de-funded Planned Parenthood.
Points for American women at large: 10
Points for the GOP: 0
Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 1

- Republican-controlled Congress held a special committee meeting to decide whether birth control should be given to women for free under the Affordable Care Act. Since it was conference on women's rights, they invited a panel of old white men to testify. They also prevented the one woman who was invited to speak by the Democrats from actually attending. The woman, whose name is Sandra Fluke, is a law student who was going to share the story of her friend who was prescribed birth control for a serious medical condition, but couldn't afford to pay for the medication because she didn't have health insurance, and because the friend didn't take the pills she was prescribed she became very ill and lost one of her ovaries. But no, no, no! We don't want to hear about that sort of thing! We are already quite sure that sex pills are for whoring, not for preventative health care! Silly. Women should stop worrying their pretty little heads about this complicated man-stuff. Then, Rush Limbaugh went on the radio and called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute. He said (click here for audio), quote:

"What does it say about the college coed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps. The johns, that's right. We would be the johns — no! We're not the johns. Well — yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word. OK, so, she's not a slut. She's round-heeled. I take it back."

He also said, to "Miss Fluke" and "all you feminazis... If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

Despite all this, a vote in the Senate for free birth control under the Affordable Care Act just passed, 51-48. Which means it almost didn't pass.
Points for American women at large: 0
Points for the GOP: 0
Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

- Lawmakers in Virginia got a bill to the state senate for a vote that would have made any woman seeking an abortion in Virginia legally required to submit to a medically-unnecessary and invasive and rape-y procedure called a transvaginal ultrasound. This involves a 6 inch+ shaft being put inside a woman's vagina so that a picture of the unborn fetus can be taken with an ultrasound machine. Many doctors, women, and people who are not ignorant religious zealots protested this bill. It was ultimately vetoed by the Republican governor of Virginia who either decided that women have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies or that it was too politically dangerous in an election year to let blatantly stupid legislation like this pass.
Points for American women at large: 1
Points for the GOP: 0
Points for the human race at large, as a species deserving of existence: 0

Happy Women's History Month, everybody.

Jaisalmer

On the eastern edge of Rajastan, 150km of desert between it and the border of Pakistan, is the ancient fort town of Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer felt as deeply Rajastani as we could find. The fort of Jaisalmer, built of golden sandstone with intricately carved and decorated exteriors, is thought to be the oldest "living" fort in the world; the palace is now a museum but hundreds of residents, as well as plenty of barnyard animals, still live inside the fort's high walls and narrow streets. With plenty of plush fabrics, furniture, and antiques for sale all around you, walking through the fort and the bazaar below feels you've been transported into the pages of 1,001 Arabian Nights. And, if you feel like you need some extra help to get your mind in the right frame, you can pay a visit to the government-authorized bhang shop! Bhang is basically fine powder of pounded cannibis that can be served mixed into lassis (smoothies), or in cookies, chocolate, and other treats. Bhang is traditionally consumed by Hindus on special holidays, but obviously now has mass appeal for tourists -- it's totally legal, and inexpensive! At the bhang shop in Jaisalmer, you can buy special "camel packs" -- a sampling of all the bhang treats to take on your camel safari. But if you come to Jaisalmer just looking for a bhang lassi and a camel safari, you'll miss out on the real magic. You need to give yourself a few days of just wandering around and taking in all the atmospheric streetlife of a place that truly lives up to the image outsiders have of Rajastan. This is a place where you feel like you've really travelled deep into India! Weeks after we left, whenever we found ourselves stuck somewhere where the honking, insanely chaotic traffic, pushy crowds and smelly trash heaps had pretty much obliterated the atmosphere of India, we found ourselves wishing we could just go back to Jaisalmer.

Jodhpur

amazing Rajastani architecture at Mehrangarh Fort

The street... watch out for motorcycles, scooters, cows, pedestrians, vegetable carts, and poop.

Mehrangarh Fort at night

Blue houses below the ramparts of the fort

colors of Rajastan

The Blue City!

Jodhpur… the Blue City; an ancient city once ruled from a high fort by Rajput kings and queens; also the namesake of those silly puffy pants worn by posh horseback riders, which were originally made here. The massive Merangarh fort towers over the city from its site on a sandstone peak. From the fort you can really see why they call it the Blue City … every neighborhood is speckled with houses and buildings painted in the same shade of milky, periwinkle blue that really stands out against the beige color of the surrounding desert scrubland. The city is criss-crossed with narrow, winding streets that are filled with bazaars of every category. Besides the overwhelmingly impressive fort, I loved the energy, hustle, bustle, and shopping delights brimming over the streets of Jodhpur. Don’t go to Rajastan without visiting the Blue City… despite the traffic congestion and pollution, Jodhpur was one of my favorite places yet! (Just don’t look too closely at the black stuff in your Kleenex when you blow your nose at the end of the day.)

Pushkar & Monkey Poop

The holy lake of Pushkar, where Lord Brahma dropped a lotus flower and created the lake in its spot.

A lake-sized pot of milk being boiled for making delicious masala chai (spiced tea)

Tourist bazaar (bad hippy clothes)

Pushkar is a holy temple town with a mythical lake where Hindu pilgrims pray and bathe. It’s relatively small and very quiet compared to everywhere else we’ve been in Rajastan. Our hotel, the Paramount Palace, upgraded to us for free to a really nice room with a balcony and views of the town. However, we found we were disappointed after all the hype we heard about Pushkar – other than the Brahma temple and the small lake, there wasn’t much else to do in town except browse the tourist bazaars of handicrafts and Indo-western clothing. We spent most of our time relaxing in our room and at the rooftop restaurant in our hotel. The most exciting thing that happened in Pushkar was when I opened the door to the balcony in our room one evening and came face to face with a monkey that was sitting on a chair. Judging by the expression on the monkey’s face and my own racing heartbeat, we were both equally surprised and dismayed/scared shitless by each other’s sudden appearance. I quickly shut the balcony door and left the monkey alone…and in the morning discovered that he’d left plenty of poop on the chair outside as thanks for my trouble.

Bundi. Boom.

Entrance to the Queen's Bath - aka Temple of Awesomeness

The step well just keeps going down....

Faded grandeur inside the once mighty palace of Bundi

Bundi Palace, with fort walls behind

Bundi is another small town with a mighty history in southern Rajastan. It’s busy, colorful place in a paradoxical state of complete decay and steady commerce. In this sense, it’s a typical Indian town. The pipes from the houses empty directly into overflowing street sewage gutters, and cows, pigs, goats and dogs wander freely, living off of (and adding to) the piles of garbage and excrement in the streets. Meanwhile, merchants sell their wares, women dressed in dazzling colors and flowing skirts gracefully dodge speeding motorists, temple bells ring and the scent of incense floats in the air. We visited the ruined palace at Bundi, taking in views of the town below from the high ramparts and peering at the much-faded but still grandiose frescoes covering the walls of the palace rooms. The highlight of our visit, however, was seeing the 17th-century step wells commissioned and built by members of the royal family of Bundi. Step wells are square-shaped, immense underground recessions with carved stone walls and long flights of stairs leading downward nearly 50 meters to pools for bathing. The wells are open to rain and sunlight as well as underground reserves of water. Entering the Rani-ki-Baori (the Queen’s Bath) in Bundi was like walking into Indiana Jones’ Temple of Doom, but in the best sense possible! It was like stepping into a vast, underground cathedral for water worshippers. An incredible amount of workmanship and vision went into creating these step wells – one of the most striking and truly awesome sights in India….in the world!!

Chittor - the greatest fort in Rajastan!!

Chittor, in southern Rajastan, is an enormous medieval fort on a long stretch of cliffs above the town of Chittorgarh. It is famous for being the final stronghold of Rajputana warriors and royalty who never surrended to the invading Moghuls. Rather than surrender, the fort occupants chose death by their own hands. The women submitted to self-immolation (burning themselves alive) while the men voluntarily rode out to certain death in hand-to-hand combat with the much larger invading army. Fast-forward 300 or 400 years – we arrived at Chittor around 10am and feasted our eyes on a stunning vista of ruins stretching on for several miles: fortified walls and ramparts, a huge palace complex, ancient temples, towers, bathing pools and mansions. Chittor is truly worthy of its reputation as the greatest fort in Rajastan.

Udaipur

Tripoli gates at the City Palace, looking towards the heart of Udaipur

Beautiful Lake Pichola, built by a Maharaja of Udaipur

****************

During our last month in India (I can't believe we've been here 2 months already!) we're hitting up the Big 5 old cities of Rajastan: Udaipur, Pushkar, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Jaipur... and all the whistlestops in between.

Udaipur definitely lived up to its reputation as one of the Big 5, and of the most romantic cities in India. 4 thumbs up! (from both of us.)

Jet Airways: It Still Sucks

We made the indescribably regrettable decision to fly Jet Airways again, this time from south India to north India. If you've been reading this blog you will know that I should've known better than to fly Jet Airways again.

Our flight from Mangalore to Udaipur via Mumbai was supposed to take about 3.5 hours. With Jet Airways we arrived in Udaipur 9 hours later after enduring a horror-genre version of the film Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It was more just like Planes, A Stupid Carrier Called Jet Airways, and Automobiles. I'll spare you the details and just let you know that Jet Airways really seems to get a big kick out of making my life as difficult as possible whenever it gets the chance.

Gokarna Vacation

We left Hampi on an overnight sleeper bus to the coastal town of Gokarna, Karnataka. At around 2am the bus stopped and everyone who wasn't continuing through Karnataka to Goa was told to get off. We were then told another bus was going to pick us all up and drive us to Gokarna. We waited for about an hour in the dark next to a lamppost on the highway until the next bus showed up and then dumped us at the Gokarna turn-off to the beach, which was still about 4 kilometers away. So we found ourselves dragging our bags down a steep cliff trail to the beach at 4:30am with a cell phone flashlight. When we got down to the beach all the guesthouses were of course, shut up for the night, so we snuck inside the gated patio restaurant of the nearest guesthouse and laid down like miserable hobos with our stuff on the floor until around 8am when we were finally able to check into a room.

We had planned to stay for 3 nights at the beach in Gokarna but ended up staying for 6 because we needed to do...nothing. It was the best vacation from a vacation I've ever had.

Hampi

It took us about 9 hours and two buses to get to Hampi, and long before we reached it we were both grumbling that this darn place better be worth this mind-numbingly, insanely uncomfortable journey. Riding on these buses feels like you’re sitting in a hot tin can, bouncing over miles and miles of broken tarmac. After a while I started to think I was going to have serious brain damage from it slamming against the inside of my skull. On top of the physical discomforts of the bus, I had caught a cold a couple days before, and I spent most of the journey constantly blowing my nose with rough toilet paper and then rubbing Carmex on my nostrils because they were so sore and chapped. I must have looked like a crazy person to the other passengers. But we finally got here, and with no amount of begrudging-ness I can say that the journey was definitely worth it. Hampi is a village/town right next to the ancient ruins of a city of temples from the 1500s, called Vijayanagar. The entire region is littered with huge volcanic boulders from which the ancient temple city was sculpted. There are about 13 kilometers of ruins to explore, so we decided to spend 4 days here to take it all in.

On the other side of the river from Hampi is another smaller village with guesthouses, so we decided to stay there to get away from the noisy bazaar area. The only problem with this is that you have to take a “ferry” (aka, a motorized rowboat) jam-packed with people, bicycles, and motorbikes to go back and forth from the village to Hampi. The boat supposedly stops making trips at 6pm. Our first we headed down to the “dock” around 5:30 thinking we had plenty of time before 6, but this was a grave underestimate of Hampi's boat-riding population. There was a huge, jostling crowd on the steps waiting to get into the boats. There was no queue or any type of organization, except for a very skinny man with a plastic broomstick which he used to splash large amounts of water on people to keep order. The whole thing got way too frightening, so we decided to take our chances on hiring our own boat after all the 6pm hoopla was over. When we returned an hour later the crowd was mostly gone, so we got sped over to the other side in semi-darkness but in comfort. All in all, though, the Indians were much more friendly and accomodating than some of the surly-looking tourists waiting to go over in the boat. We think some of these dippy-hippy types who come over to India with their dreadlocks and lame tribal tattoos give us normal tourists a bad name. As far as we’re concerned, these losers can go back to Granola Mountain and leave India to us!

Belur & Halebid

About 4 hours north of Mysore are two ancient Hoysala-era temple sites in the towns of Belur and Halebid. These temples were begun to be built sometime in the 11th century. One of them is still in use today, and both are extremely impressive. We actually took over 200 photos of the detailed stone carvings covering the outside and inside of the temples… it’s hard to stop! The temples were truly an epic scene, it reminded me of something out of an art history book. We were lucky enough to see it up close and in the flesh. One of the highlights of our trip thus far.

Mysore

schoolgirls in Mysore

typical street scene


at the Maharaja's Palace

getting catty in the Maharaja's garden

man hand-rolling beedis

lady rolling incense sticks (the black stuff is honey-based)

Being in Mysore got me to start thinking, “Whatever you say about India, at least it’s never boring!” Mysore was the home of a dynasty of maharajas, and the architecture of the city gives it an air of faded grandeur. As we’re starting to discover about almost everywhere in India, Mysore is a small town with a big city feel. I guess that’s just how it goes in a country with a population of over a billion people. Whether it’s a big tourist destination or someplace seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the towns here are all chaotic places that never stop moving, and seem to constantly be on the verge of bursting at the seams with people, traffic, animals, sounds and colors. But just when you’re on the verge of overload and need to get out of the crowded streets, you notice something really intriguing (or something that just smells delicious) and you have to move in closer to the thick of it to have a better look.

At Home in Bangalore

We left Kerala on Wednesday on a 9 hour bus to Bangalore. My very good friend Kristen, who I hadn't seen since I left California for Peace Corps/Azerbaijan in September 2008, was coming to Bangalore for a business trip and invited us to stay with her at her 5 star hotel! We arrived, in awe, at the Leela Palace in Bangalore. The lobby literally looks like a marble palace and the room has Persian carpets (and a telephone next to the toilet in the stunning bathroom.) We spent the evening reveling in the comforts of Kristen's luxurious room while she went out for a business dinner.

In the morning, Kristen's Indian work counterpart, Deepak, took us all out on a tour of some of Bangalore's sights: the shopping district, the Bull Temple, and the cave temple. Deepak also took us to his parents' house so we could catch a glimpse of home life in Bangalore. We arrived unannounced, but the house was uncluttered and spotlessly clean. They showed us their puja room, with shrines and offerings to the Hindu gods and we got to put puja dots on our foreheads with the red kumkum powder. His mother wanted to feed us and insisted we try some treats she had made, because hotel food is "bad." The hospitality and the familiar exchanges of conversation reminded me so much of my friends in Azerbaijan that I felt tears come to my eyes. This was a place that felt like home, not the 5-star hotel built for rich tourists.

Next destination, Mysore...