What is really infuriating about this is that we’re not talking about being able to fix things by providing a bath house and cheap hygeine supplies; we’re dealing with ingrained cultural ignorance.
That especially pernicious pig-ignorance that isn’t imposed for the sake of exploitation or hegemony . . . it is just plain insufferable, unjustifiable ignorance and superstition.
My favorite part was the woman who was actively experimenting to prove to herself and others that the superstitions were false. She would pretend to be on her period and then touch her mother in law so she could watch the mother in law go into convulsions because of the exposure, but then, when actually on her period would do the same thing and nothing would happen. But even this woman was going out to sleep in the horrible little hut because she felt like there was nothing she could do about it.
I’d hire that lady to run the reeducation campaign.
Next experiment: Put dozens of used tampons in a mesh bags. And red-inked ones in other bags. Young women run through the streets whapping men and older women on the heads. “Contaminate” every single damn person in the city. Watch people try to figure out whether their hex is real or not.
Echhh.
By way of an antidote, here’s an article about a gentleman in India who went from relative ignorance, to inventing a machine that allows women in rural India to manufacture their own sanitary towels. Overcoming taboos, improving health and creating jobs. Also includes the line “If you get rich, you have an apartment with an extra bedroom. And then you die.”
Makes you wonder if what they need is more Han Chinese settlers not less.
This quote is gold:
“Imagine, I got patent rights to the only machine in the world to make
low-cost sanitary napkins - a hot-cake product,” he says. “Anyone with
an MBA would immediately accumulate the maximum money. But I did not
want to. Why? Because from childhood I know no human being died because
of poverty - everything happens because of ignorance.”
Muruganantham is my hero of the day.
Those boys need some edyucashun.
On a side note - it really doesn’t make sense, if you consider your women chattel, to leave your goodies in an unlocked shed that everyone knows about.
Topic aside, that is one amazingly well written article.
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