Ritika Ruminates

Image source- Healthline Period stains are something that are still stigmatized. Girls and women who bleed are excluded already (especially in small towns and rural areas), and when they get a period stain, people look at her and at the stain with disgust or laugh it away. Irony I find is that in a action scene where there would be quite a representation of human blood with all the action, we just watch the scene with interest. But when it comes to menstrual blood stains that a female gets on her clothes (or even blood in sanitary napkins ad), we get disgusted.  Instagram handle named Feminist has uploaded a social experiment reel where a teenager got her pants stained and people just walked away looking at it, not bothering to let her know or give her help until a girl in the ends does it by giving sweatshirt to tie around the waist. Though this was most probably staged, but this is reality of a lot of girls.  There was also this video long time ago where boys ar...

While filling any application forms, be it of some government forms (with some laws across India and some states to include transgender), any educational institution or private institutions- how often do we see more gender options other than male and female? There are a lot of genders that aren't listed on the forms.  To start with, there is actually a difference between sex, gender and gender identity. Sexuality is another different part but not relevant to this blogpost. Sex : It refers to the biological sex that is assigned at birth, usually on the basis of external anatomy. Based on the sole criterion of production of reproductive cells, there are two and only two sexes: male and female. Though there is another sex called intersex, which is an umbrella term used to describe people with differences in reproductive anatomy, chromosomes or hormones that don't fit typical definitions of male and female. Gender : It is often defined as a social construct of norms, behaviors and ...

Image source: New Indian Express Honour killings. One of the worst crimes that have been taking place in our society. Honour killing is killing of a relative, especially a girl or woman, who is perceived to have brought dishonour on the family More often than not, honour killings kill women more than men (men in case one's daughter married a boy from 'lower' caste) and it mostly happens in the cases of inter-caste or inter-religious marriage, or when girls/women do not obey the strictest of rules laid down for them by the patriarchal society. To logically think over it, there is no honour in honour killings. You are murdering someone, over stupidest of things. Caste, religion or patriarchal rules set up (for females) matters more than someone's life🙂. When it comes to inter-caste marriages (or even inter-religious), often the accused is girl's family. Even more so when the boy is from 'lower' castes. But mostly do not have an issue if their girl...