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from India Insight:
No consensus on sex, violence and censorship in Bollywood
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)
Getting directors, producers and activists into a room to figure out Indian cinema's connection to violence toward women, rape and crudeness in society can be like a family gathering. People shout, get angry and fail to solve fundamental problems because they can't agree on anything.
The Siri Fort auditorium in New Delhi recently presented the latest forum for the debate. India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting held a six-day festival there to celebrate 100 years of moviemaking, and there was little agreement on how much responsibility Bollywood and the film industry bear for the poor attitude toward women that many people evince. It was perhaps a more pressing discussion than usual, given the name of the three-day workshop, "Cut-Uncut," which dealt with official censorship in India, the role of sex and violence in movies and the influence of films on society.
To be fair, it's a question wit
h no apparent answers. Indian films are wildly popular. Storylines and songs become part of the thread of everyday life in a way that's different than nearly everywhere else in the world. They also reflect a strange prudishness when it comes to love scenes with dance numbers as a substitute - strange because the dance numbers can seem infinitely more erotic than any kiss on the lips or lovemaking scene that they're supposed to be representing.
from India Insight:
Should India ban Internet porn?
(This commentary reflects the thoughts of the author. It does not reflect the views of Thomson Reuters Corp.)
Neighbours China and Pakistan do it. Guyana in South America and Egypt do it. Even South Korea, where 81.1 percent of the population is online, does it. Should India make Internet pornography illegal too?
from India Masala:
Bollywood and sex education
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily of Reuters)
A couple of weeks ago, I watched a Marathi film called "Balak Palak" (Children and Parents). A new crop of film-makers is portraying the burgeoning Indian middle class with its own set of problems and "Balak Palak" is no different.
from The Human Impact:
Slavery beyond the sex trade
In Haiti, it's the little girl who is kept home from school and forced to clean her sister's house or else be beaten with electric cables.
Thousands of miles away in India, it's the shy, young woman left at the mercy of an agent who finds her a job as a maid but takes her earnings. In Bahrain, it's the Filippino domestic worker who, abused and exploited by her employer, cannot leave.
from The Human Impact:
London Olympics: The sex-trafficking event that wasn’t
Media reports predicting that London would be overrun by women trafficked to Britain to service spectators with sex during the Olympics reinforced negative stereotypes and diminished the complexity of trafficking, an expert has said.
Georgina Perry, who manages Open Doors, a service for sex workers in London run by Britain's National Health Service, said fears the Olympic Games would create a surge in sex trafficking were unfounded. The hype around this issue also drove vulnerable sex workers from health care services out of fear they would be treated as criminals, putting them at risk, she added.
from The Human Impact:
“Rampant feminist” Cindy Gallop tackles love, sex, porn
Easy access to hardcore pornography on the Web and a general lack of sex education for youth is changing attitudes about lovemaking, according to entrepreneur Cindy Gallop.
“I date younger men – they tend to be men in their 20s – and in dating younger men I encounter the real ramifications of the creeping ubiquity of hardcore pornography in our culture,” Gallop, 52, said during an interview at London Web Summit, where she gave a presentation.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Nine ways to lose weight and live forever
People say to me all the time, "Bob, your blog is SO stupid, how do you get people to read it?"
These folks don't understand how online journalism works. You can write anything you want, and if you put a good headline on it people will read it. Especially if you hint at immortality, easy weight loss or better sex.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
You feelin’ fertile, Myrtle?
Blog Guy, I'm hoping you can help answer a question for me. Where do babies come from?
Er, uh, you should probably ask your parents about that.
They told me to ask you, then they went off to work in their haberdashery.
Oh. Well, when a a man and a woman love each other very much, they pick up the phone and order a delivery from the Sperm Bike, which pedals over with a gallon of baby-starter.
from Felix Salmon:
Don’t ignore Tim Cook’s sexuality
Tim Cook is now the most powerful gay man in the world. This is newsworthy, no? But you won't find it reported in any legacy/mainstream outlet. And when the FT's Tim Bradshaw did no more than broach the subject in a single tweet, he instantly found himself fielding a barrage of responses criticizing him from so much as mentioning the subject. Similarly, when Gawker first reported Cook's sexuality in January, MacDailyNews called their actions "petty, vindictive, and just plain sad."
But surely this is something we can and should be celebrating, if only in the name of diversity -- that a company which by some measures the largest and most important in the world is now being run by a gay man. Certainly when it comes to gay role models, Cook is great: he's the boring systems-and-processes guy, not the flashy design guru, and as such he cuts sharply against stereotype. He's like Barney Frank in that sense: a super-smart, powerful and non-effeminate man who shows that being gay is no obstacle to any career you might want.
from FaithWorld:
Preaching good sex, Muslim-inspired Obedient Wives Club spreads in Asia
(Newly-wed Ummu Honey Lokman Hakim, 19, a member of "The Obedient Wife Club", bows to her 23-year-old husband Mohd Syurahbil Amran, during a mass wedding ceremony in conjunction with the club's launch in Kuala Lumpur June 4, 2011/Samsul Said )
Indonesian Gina Puspita traded a career in aircraft engineering for a mission to preach Islam and help young women build happy marriages through good sex. The French-educated mother of three hosts religious programmes through the Obedient Wives Club which is based on the belief that a fulfilling sex life is the cure for "Western-style" social problems such as divorce and abuse.
