Navigating Solutions and Darkness

Going to leave this here before it gets lost on Facebook so I can come back to it whenever I need to. What (the always amazing) Sneha R says: "Nidhi Razdan and others who are minimizing some of the experiences related on Twitter are being myopic. A "bad date", the gender neutralizing term used for the Aziz Ansari story, most often stems from the man's behavior. And it's not "unpleasant", as the words suggest, but weighted by inequality. The man rarely feels unsafe no matter what the woman's behavior. This thinking, that draws a line down a page and divides "SH" and "not SH" into two columns, is as linear as it gets. And rather like the simplistic thinking men have on the subject. It completely fails to take millenia of inherited emotional trauma into account. And is incapable of the slight complexity of thought it requires to hold both criminal cases of rape+harassment and narrative cases inside the same head. This is...

I wanted to write yesterday, but I was too tired and too drunk. Slept for ages. Before that, we talked for hours about how we feel re-traumatized when just reading about accounts of sexual harassment and assault. About the feeling of helplessness as we realize over and over that even the men in our lives who could be considered understanding are separated from us by such a vast ocean of disparity. They've never experienced any such thing, and they probably never will. And these are the ones who do not wilfully follow a pattern of harassment towards every woman they meet. Those guys are farther away, beyond any hope of redemption. As I see a lot of what we term victim blaming in comments and opinions (from dudes, mainly, but also women) I think about how these people do not, in fact, understand how consent works, or what sex feels like for women. They can never even imagine the subtle shift from control to lack of control that may occur - a crucial, very interesting point in tim...

Blogtober 2018 is turning into Feminist Blogtober 2018. Lol @ *Nudes Give Me A High* Comic Guy,* and thanks to all the women who brought the truth of his actions to light. *Attributed to Twitter user @Alp_enliebe. There's a guy I really want to like. I say really want to like because sometimes I like him, and sometimes the alarm bells in my head blare too loud to be drowned out. When I talk about his latest exploits, people inevitably ask me that cringe inducing question: "Why do you still talk to him?" Some of them, they know why. They know whom he reminds me of, albeit in a diluted fashion. "He gives me insight into the average kind of guy," I tell them. "The kind of guy who isn't bad, bad, but not good, good either." The enablers, y'know? The ones who profit from male privilege without actively hurting people and without doing anything to dismantle the sources of their privilege. "It's rare that I am attracted to anyone," ...

Trigger and content warning: non-consent, rape I told myself I wouldn't do this but ya know what I'm doing this. https://m.timesofindia.com/home/sunday-times/why-they- didnt -report-sexual-assault/articleshow/66009845.cms I gave an interview about what happened to me this year, and it's time to unpack my feelings of self-blame. I kept thinking about how I'd put myself in those situations. The things I'd done to contribute to those scenarios. And then I listened to someone blame herself, for not being as cautious as she usually is. And it's not on either of us. It's not on us that some people can't be bothered to ask for basic permission. That they don't understand that they shouldn't do anything without EXPLICIT PERMISSION. that if someone keeps saying no, or slow down, or is PRETENDING TO SLEEP while you keep feeling them up, then they should just stop right there. If someone says no to sex without a condom, then that means n...

MeToo came to my college (current students only, ha-ha-ha). The air is thick with allegations, and once again I get to see the kind of behaviour I am all too used to. A cognitive dissonance wherein people trained in the art of logic completely lose the plot, lose their heads, and go on a rampage. I read somewhere today (Jessica Valenti?) that male rage has taken center stage of late, and that's completely right. Not male rage at being victimized, or at losing a battle in the war on patriarchy. Just plain ol' male rage at having their positions of privilege threatened even a little. Reasons for why a female survivor shouldn't be believed that I have heard today include: (a) she changed the terminology she used to describe the incident in the few years since it happened; (b) she was friends with/ may have had some sort of relationship with the accused and (c) she's been accused of inappropriate behaviour in the years since. Literally NONE of these reasons excuse sex...

#MeToo is making a comeback on my Twitter, thanks to KavaNope in the US, and a comedian named Utsav Chakraborty in India. All the chatter about Utsav points to a consistently misogynistic personality - one that doesn't come through in the videos he acts in, or in his public persona. Since then, person after person has been coming out with their stories. Of young men, of older men. Of colleagues and bosses. And yeah, none of this is surprising but it's still surprising and exhausting. Yesterday a friend said something about how I'm really into 'the whole #MeToo thing,' and today somebody else said it and they still don't seem to understand how much these things affect us and everything we do. How much they take for granted. How I sort of don't have a choice about "being into the whole #MeToo thing." My college roommate and I encountered this dude who also briefly attended the same college, and there were some professors and stuff we all knew...

It's been a long day without you, my friend And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again We've come a long way from where we began Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again When I see you again Damn, who knew? All the planes we flew Good things we've been through That I'll be standing right here talking to you 'Bout another path I know we loved to hit the road and laugh But something told me that it wouldn't last Had to switch up Look at things different, see the bigger picture Those were the days Hard work forever pays Now I see you in a better place (see you in a better place) Uh How can we not talk about family when family's all that we got? Everything I went through you were standing there by my side And now you gon' be with me for the last ride It's been a long day without you, my friend And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again (I see you again) We've come a long way (yeah, we came a long way) f...