On Tuesday 10 Mar 2009 11:51:23 pm Radhika, Y. wrote: > I personally believe that the law in every country needs to go from > offering protection to offering futures for women. Yes, it must protect > women from marital rape, domestic abuse and where the spouses have > irreconciliable differences, they must be allowed to seperate. But the law > of a country should also not tolerate any discrimination - under our > fundamental rights no seperate law is needed to ensure that women who are > divorced or married get equal opportunity and liberty to pursue life (the > pursuit of happiness i find a bit silly since it seems to arrive when we > are not looking for it!).
Off topic - but Bonobashi (IG) has sent me a very interesting book that I am still reading. The book basically tears down generally accepted dates for the development of writing, science and math - and uses available arceological evidence to push back dates to a surprisingly distant past - 40,000 years or more. One of the interesting hypotheses that seems to be emerging (I have not yet read the whole book) is the establshment of male-dominated societies at some time in the past from what might possibly have been societies that were much more fair to the woman. Here's (slightly vulgar) titbit from the book. There is list of very ancient words that have possibly been in existence from the beginnings of language and one of the words happens to be "puti" - referring either to a hole or the vagina. It appears that the Punjabi word "phuddi" (for vagina) is one of the oldest words in existence. I got a big kick out of that because that Punjabi word has been known to me as a curse-word from my schoodays. But the use of the word "phuddi" as a curse word is itself an indicator of male domination. As is the word "aurat" for woman - with "aurat" being synonymous with "shame" and "female genitalia". In some circles there has been a move to relace the word "aurat" with "naari" for this reason - although that does not mean much for women in any tangible sense. shiv
