OMG... How dare a woman tell us not to stare at her body parts!

I’m not going to set a context here. It’s a controversy you should know about. Why? Because a reputed national daily (TOI) thinks being lewd is perfectly normal. Because TOI thinks it’s perfectly normal for sensationalist journalism to break free from the clutter in a digital world. Because a paper can’t harp about women’s rights and dismiss them whenever it deems fit. Because a bully needs to be shown his place.

1. This is NOT a silly trivial issue. We’re so inured to championing women’s rights, it’s a sick twisted joke.
2. When Dhanush in the movie ‘Raanjhanaa’ says that he will follow a girl day and night until she is forced to love him, and the audience laughs at it, we know how badly we have regressed us a society.
3. You can’t tackle rape culture by telling rapists not to rape and behave themselves. Why do women insist on eradicating the thought of ‘she asked for it,’ from our minds? Because that’s a start. A basic thought process that has to change.
4. Similarly, this is not an issue where India’s most read paper can say, she ‘shows her cleavage anyway,’ so what’s the problem? It’s about the minor details, changing the thought process.
5. “OMG! Deepika’s Cleavage Show” is NOT a complement.
6. Look around you, see how many people on twitter and online forums think Deepika is a ‘slut’ for ‘exposing’ so much. I mean, what does “SO MUCH” even mean?
7. Something I wrote on FB – A bunch of us seem to think Deepika Padukone was 'irrational' and trying to 'publicize' her movie by lashing out at Times of India. Why would she want to have India's most widely read paper against her? Nobody stands up to TOI. Everyone just lives with their bullshit for fear of antagonizing them.
8.  “She’s a celebrity, she’s stupid and dumb” – Sure, you guys rejected NSA and have the average IQ of a gazelle. (That was offensive to gazelles. Sorry.)
9. The fact that people think Deepika is wrong in itself indicates how women’s rights are being squashed and laughed upon every damn day.
10. You can chose to ignore this altogether, but don’t ever say that women are on the same footing as men. They’re not, because in this country, when a woman takes up an issue, she’s branded as ‘bossy,’ and in couple of months, a ‘whore.’

Yup, that rant had to be made.