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Historical FictionNovel recommendation: The Weight of Ink
Sisters, a book recommendation for those in need of a good, female-focused novel.
I just finished The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish, and it was wonderful.
It’s about a 17th century woman from a hard life who, despite her sex, becomes a scribe for a blind Portuguese rabbi in London.
She has an incredible mind, and her scribing gives her access to things. She comes up with some ideas that are heretical to the prevailing views at the time, and could get her exiled or killed, but pursued them anyway. (This part felt like an apt metaphor for our own opinions in these times).
It goes back and forth between her time and an older woman and an arrogant grad student in modern times trying to piece together her story from clues and fragments.
It’s a beautifully written, well crafted piece of literature, female focused, and just the right balance of tragedy and redemption.
I cried as I finished it.
The cruelty and viciousness of reported rapes in India are absolutely horrifying. They want to inflict as much pain and suffering as they can on innocent women. It is a national emergency.
I've read these murders and rapes become top searched terms on the porn sites there when they are wildly publicized too. It's never an individual problem
For real. Rape on its own is horrific. But the cases in India always seem to involve extra sadism and violence. Its a cultural problem that country desperately needs to address
Indian society is deeply misogynistic at a level that is difficult to comprehend when you live in the west. Some of the things friends of mine have described which are every day events there are just shocking.
This is why I have such a hard time with, and will always argue back against, the bizarre claim that whites invented oppressive patriarchy and the world was a feminist, transgendered, rainbow utopia before colonialism.
There is so much horrendous violence against women throughout the world and there always has been, there's bad and then there's worse.
I fully support these woman and I hope they are able to fundamentally shift their culture's treatment of women and girls.
This is why I have such a hard time with, and will always argue back against, the bizarre claim that whites invented oppressive patriarchy and the world was a feminist, transgendered, rainbow utopia before colonialism.
Ditto. This noble savage myth needs to die. POC men oppressed their women LONG before any of them met a White man. There was never a time when hordes of genderqueer brown people danced naked in the flowers all day with no care or knowledge about the difference between males and females. That is Tumblr fiction
“This is why I have such a hard time with, and will always argue back against, the bizarre claim that whites invented oppressive patriarchy and the world was a feminist, transgendered, rainbow utopia before colonialism.”
This drives me crazy because it’s so obviously, blatantly untrue to any adult or person who has left their privileged western life.
I see posts every now and again about women backpacking in Pakistan or India alone and I'm just like...did human trafficking write this?
As someone originally from Pakistan, those posts make me laugh.
Technically, they are safe, because in Pakistan at least, most white tourists will be going around with security. If for nothing else, but image. But if more people go, of course they will face a hundred problems, it's not safe for women to go out who don't stick out, let alone people you can tell from afar are different.
Even if you exclude rape, anyone who is white is a prime target for kidnapping in a country like Pakistan, because people are poor, and someone white is very obviously rich. Without security, rape, kidnapping and more will definitely occur, because you would stick out like a sore thumb. Now, of course, this is even more for those backpacking tours, because in cities or even in villages with lots of people, people will ensure you are safe, especially if they know you're alone. But if you are alone and backpacking.....
Now, it's different if you're a local, because you're at risk of one (Which you can mitigate to some extent) but not the other, because no one's going to specifically look to kidnap someone looking like the average person
A woman I waitressed with long ago once told me how she was raped in the ocean in India. They waterboarded her to control her before the word waterboarding was common. It was a terrible story.
This is why I have such a hard time with, and will always argue back against, the bizarre claim that whites invented oppressive patriarchy and the world was a feminist, transgendered, rainbow utopia before colonialism.>
Agreed. I have issues with the related idea that the world we be a paradise as soon as men of color are in charge of everything. India is only one terrible example. Horrific rape is also a thing in Central Africa. South Korea is the birthplace of the 4B movement. Afghanistan. Just a few examples. Dear goddess how do these poor women face each day?
SAME!
I don't know the veracity of it, but there is a report going around of a young Pakistani TikToker who was recently assaulted and brutalized by hundreds of men during a celebration in Pakistan, and it's so horrifying I'm having a hard time even thinking about it.
I've seen the posts you have and it's so hard to even wrap my head around. Like, what is going on here?
It can depend on the region and city. I've heard some places afford female tourists space and some don't. I've had older women say they did trips there decades ago and had a good time, so perhaps the internet has had a negative effect on men's attitudes.
After a gruelling 36-hour shift, she had fallen asleep in a seminar room due to the lack of a designated rest area.
The next morning, her colleagues discovered her half-naked body on the podium, bearing extensive injuries. A hospital volunteer worker has been arrested in connection with the crime.
This woman worked nearly TWO DAYS STRAIGHT helping the sick in her community. And her reward for this was being raped to death when she tried to take a nap in the hospital.
India needs to get its shit together
A doctor raped and murdered in a hospital. Men will destroy the world.
I'm so shocked. I thought she'd be on her way home.
She essentially passed out after a 36 hour shift & was murdered.
Men are destroying the world. This story is so awful that words pretty much fail me. Everything all of you said and more.
Except to agree that allowing women to flourish and have a real hand in making society would make life better for all of us.
I heard this on BBC News a couple of days ago.
The doctors actually went on strike to protest the rape and murder and then the cover up of the murder by local police.
8,000 doctors went on strike. That's some solidarity.
Just read the article - the majority of the protestors appear male. They seem to be complaining of extreme workloads in hospitals, and violence in hospitals generally; they don't seem to be focusing on the fact this was male violence and perversion that ultimately caused this.
It may have been a catalyst for the protests, but sadly I don't think they particularly have solidarity with the victim. Maybe as a fellow doctor who slept at work after a 36 hour shift, but not as a victim of male violence.
That's too bad. When I heard it on the BBC World Service it sounded as if they were protesting about this rape. There's probably more truth to your take on it.
"Extensive injuries" Is a grotesque understatement. The details of what they did to her are horrifying.
I was surprised to see some liberal feminists complaining about being called bigots for posting about this. Almost like they realized the Left doesn't really support feminism after all.
Hopefully that causes a few libfems to wake up. Sadly, too many left wing women I know are still in the sunken place and refuse to acknowledge that women of color in foreign countries experience misogyny. Because its better to stay quiet about the slaughter of women in India and the middle east than to admit that some men of color are shit and some foreign cultures are objectively worse than American Christianity
It doesn't, and the sooner women figure it out, the better. We in the USA are caught in a vice grip of misogyny. Lack of birth control, abortion and bodily autonomy vs porn, prostitution, surrogacy, men in women's prisons and destruction of women as a sex class.
Oh God, I looked it up. The monsters who did this should be thrown into a lions' den. The details are so awful they will haunt me forever. I cannot imagine how painful and terrifying that doctor's final moments were.
Her name was trending in searches because so many men were searching for a video of the assault and photos of the corpse. This has happened with previous high profile gang rape cases. Women do not escape sexual exploitation even after death.
In the 1970's my mum was in her late teens and a trainee phlebotomist. Her job was to take blood samples by sucking it out. She was 5'2" and slim.
She was cornered in an empty room one day by two male doctors who attempted to sexually assault her. She miraculously fought them off by charging at one of them like a ram and headbutting his waist which sent him flying, and in the chaos she was able to flee.
She soon had to quit her job however, because whenever they saw her after that they would intimidate and threaten her, and she spent half her time hiding in the hospital building, surveilling for them in the distance, and ducking and dodging in the corridors whenever they appeared.
Some male hospital staff see their work place as a stalking grounds to hunt their female colleagues. It's a thing. I do think this was worse in the 1970's in the UK when women wouldn't ever be believed or have any recourse, and male doctors were seen as God and their word would be gospel over a young trainee girl.
If the culprit in this case was a hospital volunteer, I suspect he was massively jealous of the female doctor and took his opportunity to inflict his violent inferiority complex and perversion on her. (Edit: I've just read that he was a police volunteer, so presumably he was the hospital's security? It wouldn't surprise me if he took this role specifically so that he could have access to vulnerable, incapacitated women.)
It's so sad that she was working herself to the bone in her job caring for others, curled up somewhere she thought was safe and private for a nap, and then was tortured and murdered as a result of her hard work for others making her extra vulnerable.
If the culprit in this case was a hospital volunteer, I suspect he was massively jealous of the female doctor and took his opportunity to inflict his violent inferiority complex and perversion on her.
According to Wikipedia,
Following an investigation, the police arrested Sanjay Roy on 9 August, a civic volunteer with the Kolkata Police disaster management force and a member of the police welfare association whose Bluetooth headset was found on the crime scene. He is a trained boxer and close to few officials at the Kolkata Police. He had been posted at the police outpost near the medical college and would act as a middleman for few patients who were close to him. He was married for 4 times and has been described as a womaniser and domestic abuser. According to the Kolkata Police, he had confessed to the crime. The mother of the accused however, defended her son and claimed that he was being framed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Kolkata_rape_and_murder_incident#Arrest
That Wiki page reads like the most perverted horror story. And then you think, this literally happened. It's not some vile, depraved fantasy. That poor woman, my heart aches for her. 💔
The mother of the accused however, defended her son and claimed that he was being framed
How unsurprising.
One day I'd love to see a proper case study that's specifically focused on women brought up in extreme patriarchies (which I liken to cults, because well). I've zero reason to believe that this woman isn't absolutely sincere in her belief, but I'm very keen to know how broken your mind must be to think this way. And it's not just one woman, the mother, who often thinks like this. It's a lot of women. Even in less misogynistic regions.
They can't face the truth that their offspring would do something this horrible.
Makes me never want to have sons.
Glass shards from her spectacles were found in her eyes and that’s the least upsetting detail.
Indian rape culture is worse than any horror movie.
I really hope that these misogynist mindsets don't become increasingly more common in more socially progressive countries. The fact that rape and misogyny is so widespread and tolerated in countries like India is truly terrifying. I feel so awful for women who have to live in such countries, and am always worried it's only a matter of time until women have to live a similar reality over here. I already see a lot of awful stories coming out of Europe and the UK, I mean look at the recent story about the Australian woman in Paris. Such men are the scum of the earth.
That poor woman, I hope whoever was responsible gets a truly deserving punishment for such a despicable act.
Archive: https://archive.ph/9HFa6
Tens of thousands of women in West Bengal state marched through the streets on Wednesday night in protest against the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at a state-run hospital in Kolkata last week.
The Reclaim the Night march was the culmination of nearly a week of frenzied protests ignited by the brutal killing of the 31-year-old at the RG Kar Medical College last Friday.
After a gruelling 36-hour shift, she had fallen asleep in a seminar room due to the lack of a designated rest area.
The next morning, her colleagues discovered her half-naked body on the podium, bearing extensive injuries. A hospital volunteer worker has been arrested in connection with the crime.
No murder is okay. But statistically, especially in developing, high crime countries, femicide is an enormous cost to society. This woman was a doctor, so it doesn't get much more costly than that.
Although more men are murdered, a good chunk of the murders are criminals killing other criminals. Especially in high-crime countries. Again, it doesn't mean they deserve to be murdered, and the psychological trauma their families endure is certainly a consequence to society. Still, these are men that contribute almost nothing to society while they're alive, and are less likely to be involved husbands, fathers, caretaking sons, etc.
Women who are murdered are more likely to be caretakers for children, husbands, and other family members. They are more likely to be employed, even if it's menial work. They are less likely to be involved in crime, and if they are, at lower levels than men. No, lurkers, I don't need your predictable list of exceptions like Ma Barker or Sandra Ávila Beltrán. The majority are contributing to society in some capacity.
This particular woman was a doctor who was in an especially high-needs area of Kolkata. For those that don't know, that area was previously known as Calcutta, one of the most infamously impoverished places in the world. Doctors in India already leave for greener pastures all the time. Forget leaving Kolkata for Goa; they leave India altogether. I don't even want to know the number of people in Kolkata that die avoidable deaths or have their conditions worsen for lack of medical care.
If anyone believes that "feminism is for everyone" this might be a genuine example of that claim.
Misogyny absolutely prolongs misery in a society. No, men don't live in a highly productive paradise where they can enjoy their creative pursuits and self-fulfillment while their women rub their feet. Especially in modern technology, you need women to do more than be servants. These societies rob themselves of a better life, just like Afghanistan is doing right now.
Well said. A society where a woman cannot safely take a nap in a hospital is not good for anybody. This is why so many Indians who have high status/skill jobs like doctors or engineers get the fuck out of India as soon as they can. The Indian government doesn't seem to care about solving this problem