I was heartened to read this piece: http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20090325/818/tnl-no-votes-for-moral-cops-say-bangalor.html
Even though I do find sleeveless t-shirts a bit lowbrow, with the usual intent of showing off the "guns" to the relatively unmuscled public. Unless it was a Def Leppard t-shirt, in which case, I believe sleeveless is the desired configuration. This may then help explain the abjectly low number of women walking around on Brigade Rd and the surroundings on a Saturday afternoon. I'm not fooled -- with 1.3 billion people, and women the gating factor for birthrate, they have to be somewhere -- even if sequestered underground in some Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fashion. Not that I have any salacious intent that's being foiled -- I condemn accosting anyone, women or men (for example, I don't want to take a damned 20 rupee one hour ride around the city where the driver drops me at some shopping place that he [I've never seen female autorickshaw driver -- are there any?] get kickbacks from so they can hard/guilt sell me some crap so please stop following me for 2 blocks relentlessly, necessitating I be rude with you to get the message across. Nor do I ever want to engage a woman in such a fashion that she has to be rude to me to get the message across. That's just troglodytic.) -- it was just starkly noticeable and strange to me. For so many vegetarians who thought it'd be such a sausage-fest. Then again, when I heard about the rave and the of the 100 people arrested, how it was such a disgrace that 22 were women, I completely agreed. You've got to have a 50/50 ratio at least. I'm sure that was the reason for the outrage. (But to be fair, they bust raves in the US all the time -- for illegal drugs and unlicensed liquor serving and such -- fair enough, they are breaking the law -- but "obscene dancing?" That said, there are conservative nut-groups in the US who want to ban school dances and such, as being immoral, so one can hardly argue the US is wholly progressive... But if one hosted a party for young people in much of the so-called "Western World" with 78 guys and 22 women, the host ought be prepared to be harangued for months about it... unless it was like organized by the single women or a gay party or something, in which case I think one would be rightfully lauded.) I don't think there's any ethical way to stop women from self-actualizing, even if it bothers one for whatever reason. Better we accept this. (I'm no lothario but I've learned to subjugate my anger at this ineptness the respectable way -- with bitterness and alcohol :-). Given the number of 6-foot tall Valkyries in Scandinavia, they had to succumb early, lest the men be soundly beaten, physically. However, there is the "bored young men with too much testosterone and retarded inter-gender social skills cause trouble" theory. Even without some demagogue to hand down rationalizations, you've got well-armed gangs in the US, frat boys, etc. I can only hope that one day there will be compassion and perhaps treatment for that tragically afflicted legion with age-related testosterone poisoning. I recall it wasn't an easy time.
