My Benetton Heart and Supremacist Dick

Oh, John Mayer, your music certainly leaves a lot to be desired but your recent comments and the consequent media storm surrounding them really sheds light on the need for celebrities not to voice racist-tinged opinions at the communal square.

In a recent Playboy(Playgirl?) interview, John Mayer was asked if black girls threw themselves at him. Yes, the interview was being completely set up for entertaining sound bites. Mayer replied that he has a 'Benetton heart but a supremacist dick.." Wow.

It's not unnatural for different races to feel comfortable dating their own kind. For example, desis are often conditioned to select a mate from their own creed, as long as the significant female counterpart was of a 'fair and lovely' stock. Generations of desis propagate the notion that it is far easier to be with someone of similar backgrounds in order to better understand cultural and social indicators. I have had many discussions with peers and older patrons who have dissected, analysed, interpreted, and preached marrying your own kind.

However, yes, there are souls who dare to break away with tradition and venture forth into the land of inter-racial/cultural relationships. And they have existed remarkedly well without any sign of disintegration of their respective races.

Which brings us back to John Mayer's comments. To each his/her own. He has the prerogative to prefer a certain type of women, be it blonde, busty, blue-eyed etc. But he has absolutely no right to express his preference in such a crude manner whereby he alienates and discriminates against an entire race of women.

There have been many fierce and eloquent reprisals of John Mayer's comments emerging from all quarters. But the fact remains that a white guy should not get away calling his dick a supremacist. The word alone epitomizes generations of hatred, murder, bloodbaths, and stigma surrounding the color of skin. How can anyone dismissively label their body part with that noun and expect people to be entertained?

I suppose by now, John Mayer, must have learned from his callow actions. But his comments have uncovered a fact that is sadly the truth. Men and women tend to prefer to date from their own races. Is that an issue? Not necessarily. As long as advocates of these intra-racial dating phenomenon refrain from flippantly using discriminative language to justify their philosophy.

Rationalizing Rape and Perpetuaters

A fifteen year old high school girl gets gang raped on school premises while waiting for her father to pick her up. In response to a posting of this story on a site, many commentators started speculating on the victim’s looks, gauging her intoxication level, and whether she had herself provoked the rape. (Broadsheet)

Needless to say, their speculations were deeply troubling in light of the evidence and account of the rape emerging.

Rape has to be undoubtedly one of the worst forms of violence against women. It is hard to imagine a young girl being brutally sexually violated by multiple men while others gather around jostling, laughing, and even taking pictures. And no one thought of calling law enforcement then and there.

Instead two hours later, the police came to find the girl unconscious and in such a critical condition that she was air lifted to the nearest hospital.

I remember in psychology 101 class, we learned that in the event of encountering violence, we should scream fire as opposed to help me I’m being raped. Human beings are more prone to run to someone’s help if they hear there are faced with natural disasters as opposed to violence perpetuated by other human beings.

That perplexing theory came to mind when I read about this incident in several news trades. How can so many people just stand around watching a girl being violated? What compelled them to witness and not report? What fear, hesitation, depravity prevented them from compassion?

Now, what becomes of the girl? What becomes of her life as she is left to reel from the psychological, emotional, and physical effects of her rape?

But far greater emphasis must be placed on the men who perpetuated this heinous crime. What compelled them to brutalize a hapless young female? What motivated them to resort to forced sexual violence? What form of perverse joy did they deprive from encouraging their peers to repeatedly engage in sexual violating the girl?

It remains to be seen how this rape narrative will be pieced together to make sense.

Are we hardwired to prefer young children?

Roman Polanski’s capture and imminent battle against US for raping and drugging a thirteen year old girl in the 1970s bounds to be in the same breath as the trial of the centaury. But his capture raised the phenomenon of sexual intercourse with minors that gripped and incited the media into a frenzy.

On the heels of myriad media discussions of Polanski’s behavior appeared Kate Harding’s of Broadsheet infamous piece that asked us as judges to not not forget that Roman Polanski raped and drugged a thirteen year girl against her wishes. http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest/index.html
She raised several pivotal points about the act of adults having consensual and/or non-consensual sexual intercourse with minors. Points that were furthered verified and validated by more news pundits.

In comes MacKenzie stating that she and her father had a long-standing consensual sexual intercourse interspersed with drug abuse. She stated she still loves him dearly.

Both these accidents involving celebrities throw light on to the severely cloaked and veiled phenomena of child abuse. All over the world, the statistics for child sexual abuse is astounding. It happens everywhere, all the time,, to people who you know.

Even with strict laws targeting pedophilia, this phenomenon refuses to die down. This refusal to efface begs the question, are human beings sexually hardwired to prefer young children? A creeping thought that will send many of us to immediately cringe and dismiss it. Yet, why is it that we always hear of young children being raped, sodomized, molested by men and women in times of wars, peace, inside their own homes, by uncles, aunties, brothers, friends, neighborhood kids and so forth.

The western world still fights in curbing this war against pedophilia, but how does it look in our part of the world? Or even in our country? We inhabit a society that refuses to disclose and discuss sexuality out in the open. A woman exposing her kneecaps is deemed open to whistles, shouts, curses, and angry glares from passersby on the streets, But behind closed doors, the worst forms of sexual debauchery are being conducted upon hapless victims. Oftentimes, the prevailing ocean of silence prevents victims from voicing the violations they encounter. Oftentimes, the newspapers decline to print such material. Voices are lost. Crimes are largely ignored.

I often think if we are unconsciously but deliberately breeding a nation of sexual perversity and sexual abuse.. What are the odds that someone that I know has been sexually molested and/or groped at by an acquaintance at a young age? What seeds of self-loathing and fear do those episodes trigger in those victims?

Pro-Choice Death

A recent news item on NY Times and on Broadsheet about end of life decisions spurred me to contemplate on the issue.

As a person who firmly believes and advocates pro-choice in terms of controlling and deciding things that are good for my mental and physical well-being; having that same prerogative for choosing death never occurred before.

During a bio-ethics course in college, the case of Terri Schiavo was broached. She was a young woman completely surviving through life support. Essentially, her body was dead. Her family wanted to maintain her on life-support, probably hopeful that a breakthrough in modern medicine will bring their daughter back into their arms. Her husband, on the other hand, wanted to ensure she received a dignified death. The husband and her family fought an epic battle that riveted the American nation and even had the then President Bush interjecting his perspectives.

Undoubtedly, at this point in my life, I feel having the ability to choose what is good for my body is an essential human right. But does that same right encompass death as well?

In a hypothetical scenario where my body is ravaged and riddled with cancer, and I opt for death to ease myself of the pain and the inevitability of demise, am I right in doing so? Can I say I am in the "correct" frame of mental health to declare I choose death? Am I doing justice to my family and friends in wishing for death? What of their desire to be with me till the end?

Perhaps these question are of those nature that will be constantly debated and never fully answered. I cannot truly imagine how Terri felt, or how her husband and family felt when they hotly contended their views on her right to life and death. Neither can I predict how my loved ones will react to my pro-choice inclinations if I experience a similar fate.

But it certainly does make sense for a person to wish for a dignified death in any manner he/she deems appropriate. Who are we to deprive or thwart them from this basic right?

Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan

It is disconcerting to see how the failing war in Afghanistan is flashed across various media now. The failing war efforts, the failing war strategies, the failing tactics, the failing counterinsurgency, the failing troops morale, and the failing public support have gripped worldwide nations.

In the midst of this gloom, there are signs of revival in the form of General McChrystal new strategy in successfully combating the Taliban. However, we have yet to see if the US will whole-heartedly embrace this new vision.

Undoubtedly, failing to rid the Taliban from Afghan lands will lead to a global turmoil that will quickly spread into Pakistan and nearby conflict-riddled regions. Hence, winning the war in Afghanistan is imperative. Yet I wonder if the US public is willing to dispense more troops, invest more time and effort into a war that has claimed so many lives and seem far from over.

Not that there have much of a choice. It behooves the US to complete a war that was foolishly and ineffectively initiated by the Bush Administration. But at what costs.

Twenties and Spiritual Awakening

I recently came across a piece on NY Times on the emergence of young females fashioning themselves as self-help gurus. Although their fees are hefty, these females guarantee advice on all matters of the heart, mind, and soul.

Reading the piece made me think of the path of self-enlightenment that has infected my friends and I. Maybe this is a late-twenties phenomenon. My closets friends and I have been for quite some time exchanging, extrapolating, and discussing ideas and ideologies from spiritual books to enlighten our current need to further evolve into better human beings.

Lessons we learn from these profound books are swiftly disseminated among each other, quietly reflected upon, and are used to deal with challenging times, situations, and/or people.

But I wonder where this need to be spiritually awakened appears from? We can all attest that we have had degrees of experiences, ranging from trifling to harrowingly soul-challenging; some experiences similarly shared; others we can only empathize and locate a common understanding and compassion. But all of our shared and unique experiences are compelling us to tackle literature that will awaken and enhance our spiritual re-birth.

Knowledge that I see us quickly dispense to people who come to us for advice. Knowledge that allows us to ignore and gently expel negative energies transmitted by people who are struggling and drowning in their own self-imposed negative nightmares. Knowledge that allows us to stop reacting to situations as we once would and did but now coolly assess the circumstances and find positive solutions.

Our quest to become spiritually enlightened is having a profound impact on how we collectively display ourselves on the public domain. As well as an incredible effect on how we regard matters that are beyond our control, and make peace with not having control.

I suppose it must be a late-twenties stage. That need to nicely sum up the experiences we have had and make sense of the direction we are taking. But it certainly does feel rewarding to know that females out there around the world are collectively on the same path as we are on spiritual awakening.

Bangladeshi, Female and Doubly Marginalized

On the hot trail of a new research on violence against marginalized women in Bangladesh, I met with a few individuals who are physically disabled. One of them is legally blind, and the other is bound to a wheelchair.

In the midst of discussing the forms of violence encountered by physically disabled females, I realized as females we are accustomed to many modes of violence and discrimination, whether subtle or overt, but that very violence must be further amplified for the physically disabled.

A personal account I heard from one woman is of her dismissed from her graduate programme in a reputed national university. Her discharge came about on account of her failure to show her face at the Registration Office. The Office is located on the fourth floor of the building. She is in a wheelchair. And there is no provision for physically challenged people to move in, about, and out that building.

When asked why she didn’t pursue legal action against such blatant discrimination. The woman cited her university professor encouraging her to let the matter slide.

Why?

Regardless of her facing such an outright violation of her basic human rights to education, why would a supervisor, a supposed mentor, telling her to drop the matter? How does her silent retreat into the cloak of invisibility from the public domain aid her right to have access to education?

But this is just a single case. There are multiple and diverse forms of violence faced by physically disabled females in our country. The deeper and the more rural areas one ventures into, the worse the transgressions. Disturbing as it is, one must wonder what other forms and shapes violence against them take. Are physically disabled women also prey to sexual abuse and violation? And if so, what coping strategies and legal provisions are available for them to pursue to redress their grievances?

As an eminent legal expert in our country stated once, females are already marginalized in Bangladesh, but if they happen to be ethnic, religious minority or physically disabled, they are doubly marginalized and susceptible to violence without any chances of pursuing legal actions.