U(tear)us

Oh great withered bag of Satan,
Why must thou torture so,
In so much as pain to inflict,
What doth thou profit?
Like a snake thou rests,
Eager for thy time to shine,
Shedding thyself in glory
A sadist’s pride, an imposing whine.
Must thou make thy existence known
With such pride and painful joy?
Must thou be so punctual some,
And despicably tardy in other climes?
Must thou shed so dirty a skin,
In a gargantuan flood of slime, grime?
Must thou cramp, cringe, clench so?
Oh, it must be decreed a crime!
Thou manner deceives thy intent,
Noble thou is certainly not,
Cruel, creepy, controlling be thy virtues
The genius of neurotransmitters to use,
And inflict the mood swings thou choose.
Abusive, this relationship, I must say,
I try always to do right by thee
Thy manner though, seldom forgiving
Thy punishment severe, and demeaning.
Long has it gone on, and must I allow it,
Long will it go, ’til I wither, old, haggard,
Unless I tear thy parasitic touch apart,
To give up the blessed curse thou promise.

Science and Faith

“You won’t find faith or hope down the telescope, you won’t find heart and soul in the stars.”

The Script makes a pretty good point, don’t they? These last few decades have seen a major shift in the way science is viewed by both, the community and the rest of society. The emergence into the limelight of the so-called flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, HIV deniers, Coronavirus deniers, etc., and the sheer speed with which these movements have gained traction is fascinating. Aided by various social media and therefore better ways to communicate, these growing movements have, in my opinion taken a quite dangerous turn.

In the face of climate crisis, waste management crisis and a global pandemic, all of which have been meticulously studied by scientists, the denial of science itself by such a growing population is quite unsettling. Seeing these issues used (and sometimes misused) as a part of political debates, used to spread a party’s propaganda, making poorly researched decisions that will impact generations to come, protests being held against very basic hygiene practices when a new virus is at large – watching all these events unravel makes me fear the situation we are in.

We always had people denying the Darwinian Evolution Theory, where a ‘theory’ based on mere observations clashed with the faith of many. But somehow, I feel like these two co-existed, and people just chose what they wanted to believe. This however, wasn’t exactly life threatening and therefore not a cause for concern for the scientific community. But issues raised by anti-vaxxers can be directly linked to the rise of hitherto rare diseases like whooping cough, measles, etc., claiming the lives of children, most noticeably in the United States of America.^*

The denying of man-induced climate change by the former US President, Donald Trump was followed by the exit of the US from the Paris Agreement, the opening of previously shut down coal mines, and a big welcome to the petroleum lobby to whom the rising awareness about the dangers of fossil fuel use presents the maximum business risk. I vividly remember attending a National Service Scheme (NSS) convention as a teacher-representative with five of my students at the Bisleri Factory in Mumbai, a company that has been selling bottled water for ages. The company had chosen plastic-waste recycling as their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) contributions under the campaign name of ‘Bottles for Change’ initiative.

The idea that this corporation supported plastic recycling of even single-use plastics made me really happy. It is my strong belief that the waste-crisis can be effectively dealt with when corporations collaborate with the government and come up with solutions, so that these solutions actually have the legislative and financial backing to make a difference. However, Bisleri’s strategy was to first propagate the idea that we have it all wrong about plastic! Plastic is not the enemy, we can never reduce plastic use, we must learn to use it responsibly – I paraphrase the essence of their argument here. To hear the common man, powerless against global environmental phenomenon is one thing. To hear a profitable corporation try to sell it as a gimmick to young students of the community is a completely different level.

My attempts to explain to the speakers there about the true harms of plastic, and the absolute need to curb its use were shot down by other teachers at the convention! At least they are doing something, and something is better than nothing – I was told. That a corporation that sells 500 mL of bottled water priced at Rs. 10, where minus the profit margin, the majority of the remaining money is for the bottle itself, I can totally understand why they needed this convention to influence youngsters against the ‘dangerous’ thought that plastic is bad, so to speak. It wasn’t really even that subtle, however the crowd response was affirmative. The rationale of the company is clear, but why were the students and teachers at this convention unable to read between the lines, I wonder? This incident intensified my fears about the larger problem here, which is the attitude of blatantly dismissing meticulous evidence in favour of more optimistic and simpler explanations.

When the argument was about the theory of evolution, the stakes were just not that high. And yet, we were presented with the genius of Pastafarianism by Bobby Henderson, a parent’s sarcastic plea to bring some objectivity into the teaching of science. At the risk of inviting the wrath of His Noodly Goodness, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, I wonder if this strategy actually worked. That parodying a concept can change people’s stance on something is questionable, and I feel like it defeats the entire purpose of what we’re trying to achieve here. Jimmy Kimmel’s recent ‘Listen to the Doctors’ sketch tried the strategy of making fun of people hesitant to take their Covid vaccines bringing in Doctors and medical professionals to deliver the (cringey?) lines.

In my opinion, I don’t think any good can come out of demeaning the anti-science movements and its patrons, other than sporadic laughs from the other side. And we aren’t laughing about the Measles comeback, are we? The need to explore the roots of these movements and treat its proponents with respect is, in my opinion, justified. A platform based on mutual respect for the discussion of these beliefs makes much more sense, as the more we talk about these issues, the more knowledge can be shared. But every platform I see is divided on these issues, the subreddits for pro-vaccine people is completely separate from that of the anti-vaxxers. Trespassing into foreign territory is unwelcome, will lead to anything between a bunch of downvotes to getting banned from the subreddit.

Safe discussion platforms aside, I have been trying to identify the other causes for the widespread lack of ‘faith’ in science. Science and faith being two separate, non-overlapping entities is clear to some, but not everyone. I wonder if this is because of the way science is taught right from the school level. We all learnt the Newton’s laws of motion when our teacher told us to. We rote learned it, solved some problems involving moving objects which gave us a grip on how to apply them, we even learnt exceptions to these ‘laws’, and so on. But (at least not in my time) we never understood why these laws were drafted. That it was observation and evidence that lead to the framing of these laws was not made clear to us.

The entirety of science is based on evidence, explanations of phenomena come after thorough understanding of what we observe. For instance, the idea that climate-change is partly man-induced comes from years and years of evidence collection, from before the Industrial Revolution to this day. When we factor in as many of the variables as possible and try to account for them, and then realise that a massive increase in greenhouse gases released post-Industrial Revolution era could be the cause of this, then we come up with a correlation. These correlations and hypotheses need testing, we need to design some way to show that the correlation is real. So today, after much scientific deliberation we can say that almost certainly, climate change is man-induced.

I bet these last few lines must have been frustrating to read? Absolutely no conviction whatsoever, just correlations, and maybes, and probabilities, and possibilities. However, this is the language of science. No self-respecting scientist would ever speak in absolutes! In the words of a popular YouTuber, Dr. Rohin, “…uncertainty is not necessarily a bad thing. It means we’re continually challenging our own beliefs.” They’ve directed this video towards quacks in medicine, particularly Gwyneth Paltrow’s successful enterprise – Goop, which relies on ‘healing’ methods that do not have backing of evidence and scientific rigour.

The reason for people to throng towards such alternative ‘healing’ could be the conclusive and definitive statements made by them. I guess the conviction in their words is reassuring to many, and more than sufficient to place their trust, and money (mostly money, unfortunately) in such practices. As an Indian, I am immensely proud of Ayurveda and its achievements. If such an old method is still relevant today, we can hazard a guess that the treatment methods have evidence-based backing. And yet, the rising attention in India nowadays towards gaumutra, or cow urine and the number of definitive statements made about its wonders in the treatment of Covid-19, many of these by Government officials is frankly, disturbing.

I find such statements reduce the impact of Ayurveda as a ‘proper’ branch of medicine, and centuries of research towards this end has become somewhat trivialised by sudden proclamations of wonder-medicines that have shown no (and I mean, credible) evidence of working! And yet, these so-called wonders are accepted by a large chunk of the population fairly easily. It is here that I doubt the gap between science and anti-science is amplified by a poorly designed education system that has failed to drive home the fact that nothing is absolute, ever. Absolute statements should spark curiosity, if not suspicion. If they don’t, we have a problem here.

Our education system definitely (Aha! A definitive statement!) needs sprucing up in terms of how we communicate how science (or honestly, even the humanities, or any other branch here) works. Evidence-based nature of the sciences must be very clear to young students, and encouraging critical thinking is crucial if we intend to deviate from the factory model of education. Do we really want to push graduates after graduates who can follow procedures word-for-word and execute a robotic style of adherence to instructions, or do we want some free thinking and questioning in our youth?

On the subject of academia, I must add about the failings of this world which could have contributed significantly to the rising misinformation. I need to pay substantial amounts of money to access some of my own work, and any further literature survey I wish to pursue is locked behind unaffordable paywalls. Scientists don’t make money publishing their work, and I am yet to meet a scientist who doesn’t wish their research is freely available. Moreover, to the layman out there who wishes to learn about, say, the link between vaccinations and autism, other than the widely publicised (and later, retracted) Lancet article hinting at this correlation, they may struggle to access published work that argues the contrary.

Alexandra Elbakyan’s attempts at eliminating these boundaries and putting an end to the scam that is academic publishing today through Sci-hub, has been met with severe criticism from publishers, including court cases, one of which ensues right now with an Indian court. To add to the problem, a lot of scientific work is written as a heap of technical jargon that can be decoded properly and relatively easily only by people working in the same field. The communication gap persists and how! On this bleak note, I am actually really happy to see so many scientists, engineers, medical professionals, etc., on YouTube, TikTok and other social media presenting difficult ‘science-y’ stuff in digestible and entertaining pieces. I hope this grows!

While discussing this topic with my brother Devdan, who graduated from the Humanities, he brought up a factor here that I failed to notice. The sense of alienation from this world of rigour can push people towards these alternative worlds where they can feel a sense of belonging. This needn’t even be about science, take a religious cult for example. If an individual can feel a sense of being an actual part of a world that places them somehow above the rest of the people, now wouldn’t that be magical? So many cults rely on this feeling of being left out, luring vulnerable people and essentially brain washing them about the wonders of following this religious leader/symbol/practice.

A comment (on social media) on a meme which involved Dr. Anthony Fauci gives some perspective.

“Science, with a capital S, really has become the God of authoritarians. If you looked at it from an atheistic perspective, They [sic] worship it as blindly or with as much zealous faith as religious people worship God. Now, I believe in God, but at least my belief in God doesn’t demand that the government force other people alter their lives or behaviour”.

It is obvious that people are upset about mandated vaccinations and Covid restrictions, I am too. But their inability to see the logic of vaccinations and the restrictions is dangerous. What can be done about this, I wonder?

And now that I have rambled on and on, making this blog post as unreadable as any research paper out there (my apologies), I can give you a TL:DR right here – I just think we need to take this seriously. We cannot joke about it, not anymore and we shouldn’t have to begin with. Its too dangerous to ignore the public rejection of science, as small or large as it may be. Root level action is absolutely essential and I hope things are kick-starting to this end.

*Capurro, G., Greenberg, J., Dubé, E., & Driedger, M. (2018). Measles, moral regulation and the social construction of risk: media narratives of “anti-vaxxers” and the 2015 Disneyland outbreak. Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 43(1), 25-47.

Gender norms affect us all

With time, I find the purpose of feminism to be quite misunderstood as an exclusive and even harsh approach to addressing some of the most fundamental problems faced by our society. Feminism is anything but exclusive! Simply put, feminism calls for an end of political, economic or social discrimination on the basis of the sex or gender identity of the individual. Bettina Aptheker, renowned activist, emphasizes the application of such ideals to racial prejudices, homophobic practices, as well as and very importantly, those that are unaccepting of gender identities of another. In the context on India, the discrimination faced by lower-caste and gender non-binary individuals is less documented, and away from the limelight. Feminism recognizes this discrimination as unjust, and calls for amends. More often than not, the mere mention of being a feminist, or talking about the patriarchal nature of our society is off-putting to some people. In one of the arguments I had with a loved one, I tried to explain the broad nature of feminism, only to be told that the ones with a voice on this topic are the ones who define the word itself! So here is my small voice with my understanding of the scenario as things are.

In the world of social media and the accompanying ‘call-out culture’, where is the room for improvement without judgement? Is it really so difficult to have a rational conversation about ideals without shaming? Does shaming someone for what they believe in actually solve the problem under discussion? In teaching pedagogy (only because I am a teacher!), shaming (of students) is looked down upon because of the million insecurities it gives rise to in the mind of the student. It is a sure-shot way of alienating the individual from what can be a rewarding learning experience with the subject itself. By extension, the public shaming of a person for their beliefs often only results in their dismissal of the subject itself and sometimes a deepened conviction in their own, perhaps flawed beliefs. Jameela Jamil, actress known for her role in the Good Place, calls herself a feminist in progress in a televised interview, identifying that she can be wrong and always leaving room for improvement. We could all be humans in progress too, with the acceptance that no one is perfect but we are always getting better and better at being a human.

That said, the misandry version of the feminist movement sparks curiosity. Misandry cannot be a part of feminism, just like misogyny cannot, in that it goes against the very ideals of an anti-discriminatory society. But the question is what drives this movement? Why is there a latent hatred for the male sex? Is it simply a reaction to centuries of subjugation? The misguided nature of this movement tells me the need to establish the actual limits of the problem we have here. The patriarchy affects all, be it a baby, why even a foetus, women, trans persons, non-binary persons, people of all races, people of all castes, and also – albeit not that spoken about – it also affects men. The rising reports of gender dysmorphia is proof to the pressure put by societies via many hegemonies. I feel like it is these rigid gender-specific norms that gives rise to toxic masculinity, and the feminist movement’s continued battle against it. What if there weren’t gender-specific norms?

In her excellent essay entitled “The Legacy of Slavery: Standards for a New Womanhood”, Angela Davis¹ makes a very interesting point, that in the hands of a master, the slave faced equality in oppression. I quote from her essay – “They transformed that negative equality which emanated from the equal oppression they suffered as slaves into a positive quality: the egalitarianism characterizing their social relations.” The slave family had no place for a man’s superiority or a woman’s subjugation when in the face of their white oppressors, they were both treated (in certain ways) same. For a slave owner, both the negro man and woman represented equal opportunities of labour, the woman was only considered a ‘woman’ when sexual pleasures were sought. So, the division of labour in their own quarters was not gender based, with men often doing housework and women joining hunting expeditions! In contrast, the gender roles for the white family was well defined. Angela attributes the unrest in the mind of the working white woman of those times, confined to a misery of disrespect, that sensitized them to the problems with slavery (weirdly enough!).  Indeed, one of the loudest voices calling for abolition of slavery was of the rising feminist movements.

Which brings us to a pertinent point – and I hope we can agree on this – sex determines the reproductive ability of the individual, and not much else. According to Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens,² the differences in early males and females was intensified when humans became bipedal, because the resulting constriction on the female cervix prevented pregnancies from being carried to term, meaning that human babies could be said to be inherently and evolutionarily premature, needing constant attention and care until they achieve some degree of independence. So, childbirth now accompanied with a few years of round-the-clock care affected the female’s independence in a way that has carried forward to this day.

Over time, I imagine that this divide was also accompanied and sometimes enhanced by other non-biological restrictions on the female. Today, gender stereotyping begins at the foetal stage! The colour of cake at a baby shower can be decided by an unborn kid’s sex. That is the extent of societal pressure. Popular comedian, Trevor Noah made an interesting comment recently about gender reveal parties, drawing attention to the absurdity of this custom. He said, “… celebrating a baby’s genitalia is starting to feel a little outdated. Like given everything we are learning about gender, gender-reveal parties should only happen when the child is old enough to know their actual gender”.

The child’s sex may or may not coincide with their dispositions towards playing (dolls or cars?), clothes (blue or pink?), sexual orientation, career choices, objects of interest, movies, games, sports, and so on. Here enters the idea of gender as a social construct. What a person likes or does not like, cannot be defined by their sex. Social constructs dictate that a girl must like dressing in frocks, playing with dolls, have a sweet and unassuming disposition, carry oneself with grace, and a million other things. It also dictates that boy must be stoic, unemotional, dress a certain way, enjoy sports, and another million things. This self-same society with its neat little compartments made no such provisions for the divergents!

A well-known YouTube personality, Anthony Padilla, described his struggles with being divergent from the manly-man expectations of society as a seven-year-old child! He talks about how his favourite purple lunch box with a Mickey Mouse on it was labelled ‘gay’ by another classmate, which led to a conscious battle against using anything that could even remotely be tainted by its ‘gayness’! That’s not to say that the other kid here was a homophobe, I do remember by childhood where the word ‘gay’ was used flippantly for anyone that acted differently from the conventional ‘boy-behaviour’ or ‘girl-behaviour’. We cannot begin to describe how this must have affected the closeted gay children, along with affecting someone like Anthony’s difficulties in hiding how much he really liked the colour pink, or that he loved to indulge in some hair-care. For Anthony, it all came to a moment where he no longer cared enough about this and began to actually enjoy doing the things he likes to do!

If you have to hide your interests from the world, even your closest friends for fear of ridicule, when do you get to be yourself? Men, who must be macho all the time, must never be vulnerable, must pay for the dinner always, must be the initiators in all things romantic, must be ones showering compliments – but are rarely complimented, and I could go on and on about the pressure on men that’s seldom spoken about. Landon Wilcock (who was a student at Queen’s University) delivered an inspiring, yet heart-wrenching TEDx talk about his experience in dealing with rape. I quote from his speech – “My struggles were compounded by what felt like this constant and deep pressure looming over my head. This pressure was the result of an image I had of myself as a guy’s guy”.

As a victim of rape, his need for help and support after this horrifying ordeal confused him about his identity, and he locked himself in a world of hurt – all alone. It took a different kind of bravery for him to even admit to his family and friends about what he had been through, the kind of bravery that his years in sports or working a physically demanding job and generally being the macho type of guy – did not afford. Today, he is an active advocate of speaking out against sexual assault, encouraging others to accept help – the very thing that had once paralyzed him in fear. He, and many like him work towards bringing an end to this ‘toxic masculinity’, trying to find the peace and security in just – being!

Could you imagine a life without gender as a social construct? A society that would not care about your likes and dislikes, and definitely not try to correlate it with the genitalia you were born with? In this world, there is no room for gender-based discrimination. There is no need for men to hide their tears, fears and emotions; women to embrace masculinity as a means to be taken seriously; or the so-called deviants from hiding their identities to avoid persecution, or even a race to face domination – simply because where or how you were born must not affect how you are treated. This is what I believe feminism should be aiming for. This is why, everyone really should be feminists. Feminism does not place undue blame on society but instead calls for reforming it, recognizing that we are all members of this same society, and therefore we must not let it stagnate in the wrongs when there is so much scope for improvement.

1. Davis, Angela. “The legacy of slavery: Standards for a new womanhood.” Women, Race, and Class (1981): 3-29.
2. Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. Random House, 2014.