Indian couples have a strong cultural preference, bordering on obsession, for sons over daughters – despite the strides in education and employment that women have made over the last few decades. Education and wealth have nothing to do with it – in fact, some of the worst-affected areas are in India’s wealthiest cities. However discomfiting a possibility, the real culprit might be Indian culture and tradition itself.
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All Man's Land - Rakesh Mani - Project Syndicate - 0 views
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The expenses and pressure of the dowry system, and the fact that, in most joint families, only sons inherit property and wealth, contribute to this favoritism. Perhaps just as important is that sons typically live with their parents even after they are married, and assume responsibility for parents in their old age. Daughters, who live with their in-laws after they marry, are viewed as amanat – someone else’s property. In short, sons represent income and daughters an expense.
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Many have argued that Indian women should stand up to their families and refuse to abort their daughters. But Indian women want male children just as much.
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"What should be done when a woman uses her power over her own body to discriminate against female fetuses?"
Would We Have Gay Marriage in New York Without Wealthy Backers? | The Utopianist - Thin... - 0 views
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I still think it makes for a powerful example of how much sway wealth has over the political process. The Republican senators that voted in favor of marriage equality — after having previously voted against it two years ago — said they changed their minds and were now able to vote their conscience. Only the promise of vast amounts of campaign financing and support allowed them to do so.
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To be fair, the Times story details a number of ways in which our democracy functions beautifully — the part about the Queens senator who said he’d vote in favor only if more constituents wrote to him supporting the measure than opposing it, and did so after organizers helped mobilize his district was especially encouraging
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The income inequality gap continues to widen, the rich are getting richer, and their access to the levers of power in the political arena continues to broaden. And gay marriage, while largely considered a progressive goal, is a cultural issue — it doesn’t force the wealthy to mobilize their assets against their interests.
Labor rights, environmental protections, health and food regulations — these are the arenas that leave me more concerned in the long-term.
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I was struck by this paragraph from the lead story in the Sunday edition of the Times, which charts the unlikely path New York's marriage equality bill took to passage late last Friday night (read the whole thing, by the way, it's a wonderful snapshot of modern American politics in action:
"…the donors in the room - the billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, joined by hedge fund mangers Cliff Asness and Daniel Loeb - had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure. And they were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with libertarian views.
Within days, the wealthy Republicans sent back word: They were on board. Each of them cut six-figure checks to the lobbying campaign that eventually totaled more than $1 million"
In other words, if a particular billionaire hadn't have had a gay son, we might not be looking at legalized same sex marriage in the most populous state yet.
NY State Stands to Make $391 Million Thanks to Gay Marriage | The Utopianist - Think Bi... - 0 views
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NYC is hoping to capitalize on all of those couples by promoting wedding deals and venues on its NYC I Do website. The rest of the state looks to make a cool $391 million during the same time period, a point some state senators drove home in the hours leading up to the crucial vote.
So far, appeals to basic human rights and dignity have failed to win over many state and federal legislatures in the gay marriage debate. Maybe it’s time gay marriage proponents start appealing to their wallets instead.
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A 2007 study by then City Comptroller William Thompson estimated that marriage equality would add $142 million on a net basis to the city's economy during the first three years after the legislation was passed. Most of that income would come from the increased number of visitors, who would travel here to either get married or attend a wedding. The study estimated that more than 56,000 couples would travel to New York from out of state to marry here
Metro or Bi? Digging Deeper into Modern Masculinity - 0 views
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t wherever I look there are discussions about ‘‘the objectification of women’s bodies” or “sexual violence against women and girls” or “pornography and women”. It has reached a point where I have to ask, without irony, “what about the men?”
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it’s not as though men just became narcissistic. Simpson says it’’s clear that men had a capacity for sensuality and vanity – a desire to be desired – but for most of history it has been closeted. Men were to be warriors or laborers or empire builders. They weren’t meant to be beautiful. The Victorians codified a sexual division that decreed women were beauty and men were action. But now that men have been encouraged to get in touch with their vanity and sensuality it seems there’s no stopping it!
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Metrosexuality differs from other incarnations of male self-love, in that it’s reliant on consumer capitalism. In other words, if you want to look hot: buy more stuff. But that narcissism, ever-apparent for the metro-man who needs mirrors like Narcissus needs the pool, is not necessarily a negative, argues Simpson.
“The rise of male behaviors, practices and tastes characterised as metrosexual are made possible in large part by the decline of stigma attached to male homosexuality. While this stigma made life difficult for homosexual men, it also had an instructive, not to say repressive, effect on all men.” In contrast metrosexuality means masculinity is no longer black and white, “no longer always heterosexual and never homosexual or always active never passive, always desiring never desired, always looking never looked at,” says Simpson.
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"Contrary to what you have been told, metrosexuality is not about flip-flops and facials, 'man-bags' or 'manscara'. Or about men becoming 'girlie' or 'gay'" says Mark Simpson, the man who coined the word "metrosexual". "It's about men becoming everything. Quite simply, metrosexuality is men's "desire to be desired". Men in contemporary society are now able to admit to wanting to be beautiful and to be appreciated as "objects of desire" in a way that was previously reserved for women."
Human Impersonators « Guardian Watch - 0 views
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According to Moore’s latest Graun column, ‘here’ is ‘this new aesthetic of femininity where everything is meant to look as fake as possible. Hair, nails, tan, teeth, tits.
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My response would have to be in the form of another question: did anyone ever want to feel like a natural woman? From the geishas of Japan to the ‘Dandizette’s’ of Victorian England, from flapper girls to cowgirls, from the Pussycat dolls to Babes in Toyland, I don’t believe that the ‘natural’ woman has ever been a popular concept in culture.
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‘Artificially enhanced femininity is on display everywhere’ writes Moore. ‘Older women pay to look younger. Young women start altering themselves very early on. One result is a kind of glazed uniformity. You see it in porn. You see it in all those late-30s, Botoxed faces that look neither old nor young, just done.’
Comparing that paragraph to this one by Simpson about men taking steroids, I don’t see much difference:
‘The vast majority of males taking “the juice” are not doing so to be stronger or faster or scarier, all traditionally masculine ambitions, but simply to look more attractive in the gym, on the dance floor, at the beach, or in their online profiles — to look, in other words, like male strippers: Stud-U-Like. Or what is much the same thing, Vin Diesel.But steroids, like transexiness itself, can have a paradoxical effect. In addition to testicle shrinkage and erectile problems, in large doses they can turn into estrogen in the body, which causes “bitch tits” and female fat distribution: Stud-U-Like into Chick-U-Love. Perhaps this is why Sylvester Stallone looks more and more like his mother, Jackie. Given his recent steroid scandals, the tagline for his new Rambo movie, “Heroes never die…they just reload,” probably refers to syringes rather than ammunition’
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