My brain is brimming with blog posts but I have to deal with this 2 and half year old.
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I prefer to keep my offline life, offline, but thought I would make an exception and talk about whats been happening to me lately.
Saw Inception , after being depressed about the ending for couple of days, decided Cobb's guilt would have got him out of the dream. Guilt is more powerful than Love.
Read few days back, the three books in the Millennium series, by Stieg Larsson. Felt the original title of the first book "Men who hate women" was more apt than "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". There are not just men who hate women, but even women who hate women. My most recent encounter, a maths teacher who said, women can't compete with men when it comes to cooking. (I couldn't resist pointing out, that perhaps, men focussed on taste and were more liberal with oil salt etc, while many women who cook regularly think of their husband's cholestrol bp and are moderate in its usage.) Five minutes later, she said, girls were stupids who had to slog and study everyday but boys could study at the last minute and still be brilliant. And continued to admire boys. I didn't argue on this one. Even if I had pointed out few girls who studied at the last minute and came up with good marks, she wouldn't have admired them. I just pitied and prayed for the girls in her maths class. I simply gave up on the conversation. And for the record, I think its stupid to generalise that one gender can cook better than the other. On maths, even if the brains are different, the ALL boys and ALL girls is a bit too much. After reading the book, I thought about her and others like her (men and women) who hate women. And wondered if there were men and women who hated men. And for a whole day I was stumped. There are different standards for men and women. If Hilary Clinton behaved liked Bill, she wouldn't have got away with it so easily.
I tried to think of atleast one woman or one man whom I have met, who hated men. And I couldn't come up with the above teacher's equivalent. Till I thought, under what circumstances will the above teacher hate men? And the answer is so simple. I have a feeling she would hate a man who decides to be a homemaker or a man who wears skirts and lipsticks occasionally. I don't know if its true. But in my mind, I have restored the gender neutral balance.
I lost few files. One of the files was an excel file a daily planner which mentions what each member of the family had and will be having for the next month, for breakfast lunch dinner and snack. What me and my kid wore, the anniversaries and the expenses and whether I walked or had fruit. And the chores I did. And a 2do list. No I am not an organised person. I have that file, precisely because I am not organised. I have shopping lists, packing lists, 2do lists because I know I am stupid and liable to make mistakes. I believe in being a wise donkey even in real life.
Now I am busy typing in all the databanks. (The Shopping list, The Packing List, The Dinner Menu List, The Dress List etc and of course the Daily Planner till December.) So that I rotate all the clothes, and recipes and don't spend too much time on trying to remember if I have forgotten something.
Unknown, if you are reading this, I didn't win or get a mention in the Freedom Contest. Didn't pout this time, just shrugged and moved on.
It might not be a coherent blog post, but just wanted to update. Rachna's comment acted as the Kick. And I have been back to mention I will have to go back for 3 more days on a short trip. Then I hope to blog till October 10th before leaving on a one month trip. And somewhere in between I have to shift my house.
I have kicked myself many times over choosing the online Identity wise donkey. (Try to tell that name to a group of bloggers in a blog meet). But now I am think thats better than Parents who think their children's kindergarden and primary school marks are a reflection of their Identity.
I have to catch up with many blog posts. Hope to catch up with them by Tuesday.
On Ayodhya, Would like to recycle Path of Ram
first of all welcome madam.. u see am ur blog neighbour..always peeping wats going on here :D..
ReplyDelete..about hating men n women..one doubt.. admiring one doesnt mean hating the other right :P..I'd loved to attend her class..some morale boost :D.. hehe jokes apart..but seriously.. teachers shldnt be biased on gender..I dont know about u..there may be other girls..who wld have turned into some radical feminists..after that experience...ok that was in a school..u wont believe in post grad also..there were instances..where we used to give up on grades of some girls..and used to hate the bias by some 'male' profs..[now as per ur blog..I can say I have shown u a man who hates men]
..and about the award..u won hearts of people who read ur blog..those awards are kids..and u r too big for that..in fact u shld be jury :)
and about ur name.. u r wise "DON"
unknown, i had a feeling you would be first 2 comment.
ReplyDeletenow that u mention it, i have seen men who hate little boys but not hate men(!). re the prof, i think the bias would have existed for a certain kind of girl. not all girls. anyway i just thought hate has more to do with people and concepts fitting into their idea or not rather than just merits. but i wonder if the prof who gave certain girls more marks would think they are better in all aspects, if he would accept a female colleague's promotion thinking, she is a female, she is probably better than me. (somehow i doubt it, but a woman hating woman, wouldn't think twice about assuming a man is superior to her just because he is a man).
no admiration is not the opposite of hate. but i didn't have time to write down everything from the conv. but it went along the lines of men do everything better.
no i am really stupid but like i said earlier, i am like unknown, i had a feeling you would be first 2 comment.
now that u mention it, i have seen men who hate little boys but not hate men(!). re the prof, i think the bias would have existed for a certain kind of girl. not all girls. anyway i just thought hate has more to do with people and concepts fitting into their idea or not rather than just merits. but i wonder if the prof who gave certain girls more marks would think they are better in all aspects, if he would accept a female colleague's promotion thinking, she is a female, she is probably better than me. (somehow i doubt it, but a woman hating woman, wouldn't think twice about assuming a man is superior to her just because he is a man).
no admiration is not the opposite of hate. but i didn't have time to write down everything from the conv. but it went along the lines of men do everything better.
no i am really stupid but like i said earlier, i am like the tortoise who still likes to participate in races.
if i started writing a post to prove how stupid i am, no one would believe, i have been this stupid, and would probably think i am writing fiction.
i have lived in my wrapped world for a long time, and i must say blogging has made me wiser:)
hahaha... it took sometime for me to understand the comment ...
ReplyDeletehey the prof used to be biased on all girls..we used to fight to get into some girl's group for projects so that we manage better one..[first of all the girl pop used to be low]..so he a man who hates men... or may be he is an exception.. also during job interviews i have seen the so called 'good looking' girls[ i mean the general perceptions...so pls dont take me wrongly here] do make it with lil/no efforts into the top jobs..and most of the recruiters being guys...I've experienced it personally..when an offer with a leading Ibank was turned down..they had to chose one.. between me n a girl...when I heard that thing from a representative..i just walked off cos I knew what it would be..
you :O stupid :) if u know this.. "fools never realize that they are"..
yes shld agree that blogging makes one wiser..thats writing and reading others'
..I wrote something similar to this in my "About Blog" ---"learning from others' experience makes you wiser"..
better one- i mean better grades
ReplyDeleteunknown will reply in detail later.
ReplyDeletebut when i try to talk about hate, its something like what one feels towards butterfly vs cockroach. its tough to think they both are just insects and its not about the prettiness. if a cockroach gets dipped in paint and is rainbow colored, somehow one is still going to dislike it..
on girls getting. well its not just gender these biases exist for same community etc. but on girls getting to top i am little suprised. there are some corporations where equality exists but in many i think its token appointments, they want to hire women to show they are equal,but yeah they don't include "ugly" women in the women category. spare a thought for the"ugly" women. but then i still have more sympathy for a hetro who wants to wear eyeshadow:)
some are metaphors.
one of the things i learnt while blogging , never ask back a guy if the prejudiced he expressed for women applied to his mother also. its again the same butterfly vs cockroach rule. :)
ReplyDeletebtw do u think the prof would have accepted a promotion of a female colleague over him, very easily? thinking she was female and therefore superior to him in all ways?
unknown if the recruiters you mention were gay do you think good looking guys who are not gay, would have stood a better chance compared to pretty girls? just wondering..i am not saying what u say doesn't exist. all kinds of silly stupid biases exist..
ReplyDeletei think in the end its always about how you make the other person feel.
and if there is one thing you should not make the person feel, its guilty.
btw on how u make other feel. once a manager in a different division advised me secret to success is to make small mistakes so that the superior points it out and feels good about it:D
i couldn't digest it at that time. thought why would i make a small fool of myself in front of my boss, but later on i realised that there was some validity in it.
Ah haa the 2year old is keeping someone on there toes :) good going young one for some reason i cant see the Picture
ReplyDeleteAAAAAAAAAA still havnot seen inception..
he he heeh i like the point you made on the BP and cholestrol..
It indeed is silly to generalise, I beleive that it depends what one loves doing, for a point, I love cooking i dont mind spending an hour or more in the kitchen preparting what i love eating, and its a good feeling but that doesnot mean the ladies in my house are not good cooks..
someone who hated Men oh boy I can give you enough names who hate me so yeah there are people who hate men too
I am not sure about the different standards ..
Thats like me , my phone is full of reminders and lists as you point out, but beleive me I still make mistakes.
Wow you have a busy schedule so much happening, All the best in everything .. and shifting of house PHEWWW admire you doing that, I would hate to do it again.. its a nightmare...
All the best ... C you
Phew...zooming in to your question 'do men ever hate men', I've been trying to think of instances, but in vain! Even if they did, I guess they don't go about telling the world...so nobody knows.
ReplyDeleteok one by one...
ReplyDeletethe job intvws yes agree to that.. its a wrong example cos there the biases exist in other categories also like community etc.. there were times where recruiters without any hesitation ask the representatives.."get some candidate from this community"..some even say "we want some presentable[read good loooking] girls"..and this scene is in every campus intvw...I dont want to say more on this..will send a dm@twitter
dint get the prejudices on women n mother..as u said in the later part..there could be all kinds of biases..I think for mother/sis its diff bias..
prof sacrificing promotion no way..and am sure ur teacher in school also wouldnt sacrifice
gays.. dont know cant comment on it..may be..
and yea nice tip to success..some ego boost to the boss..in this process of making small mistakes shld be careful ..cos later that shouldnt be reason for lower appraisal :)
and Yea..u have to let us know ur offline life a bit..so that we know that u r also a human like us :P
i think women like making list.. my sister used to make a list of songs that she liked..
ReplyDeletemay be she is write may b men are gd at cooking why else would almost all cooks would be men.. maths i dont know i m bad at maths..
bikram do u think they hate you just because you are a guy, and would not hate you if you had been a girl.
ReplyDeletethere are men who hate men of course (like saddam and bush etc, but there is a difference between just hating someone because they belong to a gender or hating someone for a diff reason but they happen to be in that gender)
actually i don't follow the list all the time, but i love the framework and structure a lists and databases give me. otherwise i would be too lazy :)
unknown,
ReplyDeletethis teacher i know would be more ok if a man beat her to the job than a woman. (forget herself) but the prof that you mention, i am not sure he would prefer a female boss to a male boss. i am in no way suggesting that no guy would prefer a female boss. i think for many people ultimately its about competence.
but i just wanted to point out that, while you saw only one spectrum of bias, in a diff spectrum the prof might have a different bias. if the same girls whom he supported, graduated and became his colleague and then later his boss, he is not going to view them with same kindness. but he might have been kinder if u had become his boss:D pure speculation:)
whatever his pref, any bias is bad news. sometimes it creates more bias. for eg, if that prof had been a bengali and if the students had less exposure with bengalis, next time they see another bengali prof, they are going to be more suspicious.
will check twitter
rgb i am pretty sure men will hate men who Want to be homemakers.
ReplyDeleteWDM,
ReplyDeleteA few days on twitter I had pointed out that in peak hours in Mumbai locals, women travel quite comfortably, whereas men have to literally risk their lives by hanging by the bars, windows and the footboard. Even within the car, I wouldn't be surprised if someone gets suffocated. So I pointed out that one coach less should be reserved for women, so that the overall risk to men's lives decreases. My basic premise was that a man's life is more precious than a woman's comfort. Then, I also pointed out that in the BEST buses, reserving 12 seats for women is too much! The only instance where women are disadvantaged compared to men is when they are pregnant, and certainly the proportion of traveling-by-bus pregnant women is not so high that 12 seats should be reserved for women! But I was confronted quite aggressively by a Pakistani woman and one male had argued against my points. I don't know if you would term it as generalized hatred for men.
In my school days, most teachers used to be partial for girls. Even when the answer written would be absolutely same, girls used to get better marks (perhaps, because of better impression or handwriting). Also, in MBBS, girls were always assessed more leniently, and that too almost by male examiners. Female examiners used to be neutral in my opinion. Of course, this might not qualify as hatred of men, but discrimination against them. But perhaps it's difficult to separate discrimination and hatred/love? :)
Boys do significantly better than girls at IIT-JEE. But girls do slightly better at board exams and medical entrance exams. So, it seems truly girls and boys possess different skill sets. But to generalize would be foolish! ;) There are girls who enter IITs and there are boys who top board exams and enter the medical field.
In my online interactions also, those argue the best and analyze issues the best are more commonly men. E.g., Harmanjit Singh, http://2nd-son.blogspot.com/ Quirky Indian, Stupidosaur, Matt McCormick, Alfonzo Fyfe, Atanu Dey and many such. But despite having gone through easily more than 1000 blogs, I have found significantly fewer women who I admire for their ability to apply logic and argue. One might suggest that there might be a selection bias, but perhaps there is none (18 females, and 21 males - this is for the first time I have counted sex-wise those on my blog roll, so there was no attempt to balance out things gender-wise). Yet, the number of females and males are comparable, which means, there is something about female thinking that is less possessed by men. Women are more perceptive of subconscious feelings in my observation. My physiology teacher had told that females have more cone cells in the retina (so they appreciate colors better, i.e., can identify more number of frequencies than males - though, haven't verified this). So, it should not come as a surprise if we find men and women significantly different. :)
uncommonsense
ReplyDeletebikram mentioned he makes list . i think its just another thing.
on cooking, more women cook than men. but more men get paid to cook than women:D
anyway i know many men who are better at cooking than women. but what i object to is the statement "ALL men are better cooks than women"
ketan ok:)
ReplyDeleteNice to have you back, wise donkey :). Yes, I have come across so many people who generalize -- men are like this, women are like that blah blah blah. About women being better cooks. Well, everyone longs for their mom's food, but the best hotels have male chefs. Girls being better at Maths. Well, I always topped my class in Maths, and even the boys from my schooldays will vouch for that :). So, generalization is a bunch of crap.
ReplyDeleteI particularly agree with this line of yours that men and women have different standards on which they are judged. It happens all over the world, it happens even amongst the most progressive. Hey, that maths teacher must be her students' nightmare. Especially for maths, one needs a good teacher :).
about your filing, man, that's pretty amazing.
And, did you realize that your blogger friends would just not allow you to take a short hiatus in peace :). Love your posts, and this I say, seriously.
rachna, i don't think you have any idea, how much your comment in the previous post meant to me. it thrilled me to the core. i haveto go on short trip 2morrow and so much to clear do etc, but because of the comment wrote this post. (even though its not a good post)
ReplyDeleteHow much you lighten and brighten my day, only i know.
haha WD is correct: men will hate men who Want to be homemakers.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I am touched!
ReplyDeleteWhen do men hate other men? One situation is when a man is trying to woo over his girlfriend/spouse :-P
ReplyDeleteGross but true. They hate the other man like hell.
I was wondering about your absence. Good luck to your Daily Planner.
wow..that teacher is something uh? So deep..:P
ReplyDeleteBP ka thingy was nice..:)
I never understood wise donkey in any way.From which angle does it make more sense..wise or donkey?
Your post was very good! :)
ReplyDeleteIt gripped me throughout as I was waiting for more then more and even more. :D
Magnetic, even simple things in life are described nicely.. :)
Regards,
hate is too strong a word for me...but yes we cant generalise..as everybody knows that most of the good chefs are men, so any can excel in anything.
ReplyDelete"Potty training" or "read the morning papers while in there". Which one? Good pic
ReplyDeleteAnd about the post. All of us love self and adjust with others, the sex of the being is no in question.
Gender differences are there on how we use our intellect and what kind of a pressure we have to study, cook or remember things.
Ramesh:D
ReplyDeleteRachna, seriously you will never realise how much your comment meant to me:)
Madhu, i am wise when the donkey in myself i recognise
Tanvi, well really????
Samvedna oh really!
Holy lama even if something is from the way we are structured, its so stupid to generalise