Textbook Compares Housewives To Donkeys

[The Straight Story]

Textbook Compares Housewives To Donkeys

POSTED: 6:39 pm EDT April 4, 2006

NEW DELHI -- A textbook used in western India compares housewives to donkeys - and concludes that the pack animals make more loyal companions, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

"A donkey is like a housewife," declares the Hindi language primer approved by the state of Rajasthan, according to The Times of India newspaper. "It has to toil all day and, like her, may even have to give up food and water."

"In fact, the donkey is a shade better," continues the text meant for 14-year-olds, "for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master."

The book, reportedly used in Rajasthani schools, has sparked protests from the women's wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which controls the state government and approved the text, the Times reported.

http://www.local6.com/news/8468752/detail.html

pretty damn insane in this century.

[beam me up scottie]

1. Can you imagine what it must be like

to be a young girl and have to read that?

[WhiteTara]

3. yes, and I feel

sickened :puke:

[The Straight Story]

5. I have a 5 yr old daughter

And will tell her people that say such crap are insane and never to listen to them :)

[beam me up scottie]

7. Perfect.

That's exactly what my parents told me.:)

[The Straight Story]

9. I know we often clash on some threads :)

But here we can agree!

And as far as religion and all this, I would point out to her the people in the bible who did the best were women - men kept running things and F*ing them up. The most evil and sinful folks were men.

We might be different in some levels, but we are equal in what we can do. Women and men are both awesome and terrible equally. My daughter can be better than anyone if she desires it, and god gave me her and not a male for a reason (although I have 3 sons in previous marriage, long painful story - just email when bored and will tell you all about it).

Arrogant bastards who belittle women are hurting my little girl, and as far as I am concerned they can leap off the nearest bridge to their doom. Not to mention my mom, now passed - one of the best people I have known my whole life.

When people seperate those with vaginas and those without and treat one as lesser than the other they are telling me my mom and daughter mean less. Fuck them.

[beam me up scottie]

12. Bravo!

Why can't everyone be so enlightened?

My brothers kept trying to equate affirmative action with discrimination.
They couldn't understand why I would get so angry at them for calling it "discrimination".
I explained it like this:

They are telling you: "Sorry, we can't hire/place/promote you because we have to hire/place/promote a minority."

They are telling me: "Sorry, we can't hire/place/promote you because you're not qualified/smart/promising enough."

Oh, and I love the good old "Gee, I wonder who she had to sleep with to get her job." :mad:

Once you've heard that a few times you learn the difference.

[The Straight Story]

13. I know a higher up who is a woman

And very capable, but also really pretty - and I have heard things before like 'I wonder who she slept with' (well, I wish it was me!). It's like you cannot be smart and pretty at the same time.

My wife is a beautiful red head (as is my daughter) and she used to be a counselor. She met me after she was layed off at her job (her company lost state contract) at enron in California.

She would walk into work and men would be whistling at her and trying to get her to go on dates, including her boss. She started hitting on me, the lowly geek, and we fell in love. Soon after word got out her boss started being mean to her as did others. They all wanted a chance to 'be with her' and now she was 'taken'. I went to HR and she with me and ask them to put a stop to it all, and the lady there (who had been there many years and knew all these folks) just shrugged it off and said she was reading too much into it. We both just quit and left that hell hole.

Now I think about my daughter getting older and working, and wonder what she will face - will she be just a score or eye candy to these vultures, and seen as 'competition' to the other women there? Why not value her for her ability to do a job?

Enron was more messed up then I can go into here, but sexism ran rampant at our location. I find it sad that people (both men and women in position of power) let their own sexual desires dictate so much. Why is it so many want to be surrounded by 'toys' instead of caring about the beauty of the mind??

I have three women who report to me, not a one of them 'hotties' as people call them. But I have more damn respect for them than most my male engineers. They are smart and kick ass. I look at my mom, not a beauty queen, but the best damn person I ever met. So damn sad to me that so many want a trophy near them (as my wife always referred to herself around the men she was with - they all wanted the pretty woman to be with them because it made them feel important).

Sexism just makes me sick. It is an insult to the people I love the most in life. My mom, wife, daughter, are all (or were in Mom's case) great humans I feel great to have known - for who they are. Mother Theresa did more for people than Paris Hilton, but she was not a 'hot chick'.

My daughter is not a piece of ass to anyone - she is a human being with hopes and dreams, and if anyone dares to treat her as a piece of meat I plan on kicking their pig asses :)

[The Straight Story]

15. PS - My wife is a 'housewife'

Though I am not sure that is a good term for it (but accurate I suppose).

She stays at home raising our daughter, while I am out at work with other adults.

While I am at business lunches, she is here making my daughter lunch.

As I sit in meetings discussing billions of dollars a day in transactions and how they relate to our set up, she is teaching my daughter to write her name and the alphabet.

While I get weeks of vacation and sick time, she sits at home sick and still gets up to make my daughter her lunch.

I have a corporate credit card, I can and have moved up in position, and I influence decisions which affect centers we have all over the world.

She has a little girl who looks up to her as though she were god, and is totally dependent on her love and her being there.

My job is nothing, means nothing, compared to hers. I talk to adults all day long, she to a 5 yr old. I have it easy compared to what she has day in and out.

Housewives have the most important jobs in the world. I am an income, she is an influence in the life of a tiny little kid.

I can make the lives of millions hell by bringing down atm networks and such, but she has the entire life of a human in her hands.

I am but a drop in a huge pond of life and work, my wife is the rain that fills that pond for our family. I bring in money, she shapes the future.

I make over 80k/year, she makes our future. I contribute little to society, she contributes all she can.

Housewives are the backbone of our future, us corporate folks are just stooges for 'the man'.

I respect her more than I do myself. And I hope others can do the same. She is not an income, she is a teacher of our future. She is our hope.

[beam me up scottie]

17. Wow

That was beautiful.

I hope you show this to her.

And save a copy for when your daughter's old enough to appreciate it.


My mom was a stay at home mom too.
It's wonderful that you can afford to do this, I've known so many who have tried and couldn't make it on one income.
The neocons have it both ways, they criticize working mothers while making sure they will never be able to afford to stay home.
Throw in the "fact" that feminists ruined this country and we've got our own little misogynistic version of India right here.

[kestrel91316]

2. Oh, well. I didn't really think India was COMPLETELY in the

20th century yet.

Give them a few hundred more years and they will be just fine.

[azurnoir]

4. The publishers of this book have nothing to

worry about. Even if they remove the book from schools in India, if they throw na couple of Jeebus comments they will have plenty of sales with parochial schools in Kansas, Missouri, and So. Dakota to name a few.:sarcasm:

[BlooInBloo]

6. Small world - Georgia's just the same...

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/05/06/bizarre_sex_habits_of_the_extreme_rightwing.php

"Last night, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic was an interesting one - whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however, Colmes asked Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex.

At first, Horsley laughed and said, "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."

"Is it true?" Colmes asked.

"Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."

AC: "You had sex with animals?"

NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."

AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."

NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"

AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"

NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..." "

[rpannier]

8. You know...

you can't make up funnier stuff. Real life is much funnier than stuff people make up.

[The Straight Story]

10. More sad than funny

Damn shame how people treat the wonderful women in our lives. Shame on them.

[rpannier]

11. I agree

with you. But, at least for me, it has that Twilight Zonish bizarre-o world atmosphere to it. It just amazes me that people still think that way.

[The Straight Story]

14. And that is what is so damn shocking

That in this day and age people still think this way.

America may have it's faults, but we are no where near as backwards as some of these hell holes on the planet :)

[clyrc]

16. I read this story yesterday in my local newspaper

and it's thoroughly depressing. My best response, for now, is to let my daughters know that men are not better, or smarter than women. Sometimes that is a little challenging in the part of the world I live in, although my girls do get to see women in all sorts of jobs outside the home, as well as moms like me who stay home with the kids.