India is so complicated, in terms of sexual politics

and people are seeking to make a buck off something so awful. sheesh:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080918062030.n6tjt4fb&show_article=1

Internet giants Google and Microsoft have pulled adverts for sex selection products and other services considered illegal in India after being threatened with legal action, activists said Thursday.
India's Supreme Court had last month asked the two companies plus Yahoo to respond to a complaint that they were illegally advertising do-it-yourself kits and expensive genetic techniques to find out an unborn baby's gender.

Activists said the products -- which have not been scientifically proven to be accurate or safe -- damage efforts to stem mass abortions of girls because of a traditional preference for boys in India.

"Sponsored links in Google have come down considerably. They have disappeared from Microsoft India search," activist Sabu George, who filed the petition, told AFP.

A random search for "gender selection" on Yahoo, however, produces links to resources and clinics offering to help people choose the gender of their child.

Yahoo India was not immediately available for comment.

There are 927 females for every 1,000 males in India compared to the worldwide average of 1,050 females. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) says India loses 7,000 girls daily through abortion.

Google said it will "review the petition carefully."

"In India, we do not allow ads for the promotion of pre-natal gender determination or pre-conception sex selection. We take local laws extremely seriously," the company said in a statement.

India -- the world's second most populous country -- has the highest number of births, with 27 million children born every year, making it a lucrative market for gender selection products.

"As of now, not a single product has been scientifically proven but they will become accurate sooner than later," said Puneet Bedi, a gynaecology consultant at New Delhi's Apollo hospital.

"Eventually, they will be misused for sex determination," Bedi told AFP.

Most Indians prefer sons, who are typically regarded as breadwinners, while girls are seen as a burden because of the matrimonial dowry demanded by a groom's family and the fact that their earnings go to their husband's family.

Currently, the most popular way to know the gender of a foetus is through an ultrasound test, which costs as little as five dollars, and is banned in India for that purpose.

Activists say abortions of female foetuses shot up dramatically in the 1990s once ultrasound tests became widely available and affordable in India.

"What ultrasound did for female foeticide in the 1990s, these new products have the potential to do in the next few decades. We have to be one step ahead of them," said activist George.

No estimates were available for the number of Indians using gender determination products.

"If the advertisements are there, people must be buying them," George told AFP.

In a similar legal row in Britain, Google agreed this week to change its policy on abortion-related advertisements by religious groups after a pro-life Christian group challenged the company in court for refusing its advert.

"This is an important issue of free speech and religious liberty," the Christian Institute said in a statement on its website after the legal proceedings were "settled on amicable terms."

 

interesting... i had no idea.

i looked up the abortion laws and it looks like it would take a lot of work to get an abortion after finding out the sex (generally 16-20 weeks by ultrasound). they either have to get it done illegally or find a doctor who will say that it's for their health. well maybe it's not that difficult... for something high in demand there's got to be ppl to do it.

 

no doubt, there's people to do it. the dowry system they have is pretty freaky.

 

i was just reading some articles on it... just wow, 'complicated' was a good choice to describe the whole system.

it sounds like the government is trying to help by outlawing things, but the tradition is SO deeply rooted that the laws aren't helping in most cases

 

I've spent serious time in India, and I don't think their sexual politics are more complicated than those of the US.

Abortions can be had, and obviously are had, because the sexual selection trend couldn't exist otherwise.

The government simply recognizes the demographic implications too many single men without enough marriage material available to go around, and is acting to try to stem the trend.

I think a more accurate term than "complicated" might simply be "foreign". It's very different than an american experience, but not any more complex. I find it simpler in many ways.

Just my 2 cents.

 

i read that sons being preferred has caused a marriage crisis in china. no brides.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23767432-5007146,00.html

 

i was with an indian guy for nearly ten years. complicated is a perfect word for it, regardless of being foreign.

 

Indians guys are WEIRD. I used to always end up being practically harassed by them, because they thought I was Indian too (when I wore my hair straight) and they were gonna marry me! That's usually how the first conversation went.

Now on the article that you posted that's just insane and normally I wouldnt agree with the government restricting people from finding out the gender of their baby, but in this case it seems like the best thing to do, even though people are gonna get what they want, no matter how illegal it is. It's hard to say what could be done in this case, when the mentality that a boy is better than a girl it's so rooted in the mind of everyone and in the whole way the society works, for things to change, the people need to change.

 

you frequently see those pictures of fat, healthy little boys and neglected little girls. it's just wierd. i mean, giving birth to the child is no garauntee that theyr'e going to take care of her.

 

That's true. I wasnt thinking of that, even in places like DR there's a strong favoritism for boys, not how it's in India, but I've seen families were the boy is treated like a god and the girl is just you know, the other kid.

 

yeah, it's sad.

 

What a racist/culturalist thing to say! You bigot! I am so highly offended! Your icon and the fact that you said Indian guys mistook you for Indian imply to me that you are "black." Only a ****** would say something so intolerant as "Indian guys are WEIRD." Hate monger! [Only so that I don't get a bunch of hate mail, I will point out that this paragraph was all sarcasm (totally shouldn't be necessary, but everyone that isn't me is an idiot.) My use of "the n-word" was especially sarcastic and hopefully clued in at least someone that the paragraph was sarcastic.]

As for Indian guys being "WEIRD," they totally are! I talk to this Indian guy online,--he's a cyber acquaintence-- and he is just so .... "out there." He and I have a lot in common as far as beliefs and philosophies, and we sometimes have really interesting conversations about all kinds of things, including cultural differences, which interest me a lot, because I'm an anthropology buff. But the intelligence conversations I have with him are rare. He usually just wants to talk about sex, and he asks me all kinds of creepy questions like if I've ever wanted to do my dad. And he's serious. It's fucked up. He's got a lot of the same beliefs as me about politics and philosophy and such, and that's especially impressive to me, since he was raised in a culture that ... makes it a lot harder to be as unconventional as we are. But it's like I'm the first woman he's ever met that isn't ashamed of sex, so he seems to care very little about anything else, and I think that the other topics are more important. Especially considering that he lives in Kuwait right now, and it's not like we'll ever meet or talk on the phone even, let alone have sex.

And, in my contact with him, he saw my name as being Karma, which is a nickname of mine that I have saved as my name in my email, so that that's how it shows up to people recieving email from me. And when we first started talking, he said something like, "Are you Indian? What's your nationality; Karma sounds like an Indian name" and was all excited to think that the person whose profile he read on some website and apparently really liked might be Indian. I think if I would have said yes, he would have gotten on a plane to Chicago to propose to me.

And in my experience with Indian-American guys and/or Indian guys that are living in America, they all seem to be ... well, what I'd call "perverts" if they were American Americans or Europeans or Asian-Americans. I've gotten the marriage proposal in the first contact. They think I'm pretty, and that's grounds for marriage. And they'll still persue it even if I tell them something ridiculous like, "I'm strung out on smack, and I've got hepatius, genital warts, and brain parsites. My place or yours? I live in that alley back there where you see the big pile of rabid rats and dirty needles." They'll believe that fatuity and still stick to their conviction and choice for me as their mate.

Have you considered that maybe wanting a boy more than a girl isn't that bad of a problem? Personally, I'm okay with it. I don't think the Indian public (or Chinese when they "had" the issue with killing the baby females) feels this way for the "right" reasons, but I think the world is overpopulated, and since more males than females means fewer new babies being born, I'm down. In any other way of looking at the issue, though, it's totally wack to be sexist and not love a girl child or to kill a baby just because it wasn't the baby you dreamed of. That's no more okay than if my parents would have decided to kill me when I was 12 or so and decided to stop being a Christian and stop eating meat and stuff.

Even though I don't agree with the way society is working in India regarding female abortions, I don't know if you or I have any right to say "the people need to change." We can't even begin to understand their culture or why their minds and societies work the way they do. Personally, I'm for us (um .... "us" meaning like "Westerners" or something i guess) either leaving everybody else alone and letting them be as crazy as they want, because it works for them and we don't have to understand it and only stepping in when they start like bombing us or something.... either that, or just naming me dictator of the world and brainwashing everyone to believe what I do/what I want them to and having the world fuction on that.

 

Are abortions legal in India? That doesn't matter. The sexual selection trend can only occur through abortions if the parents have any way of knowing the sex of a fetus. The Indian government may be trying to use this as an excuse for anti-abortionism, but really I think that the underlying issue is that they don't want so many more men than women. (Idiots.)

The only thing that the ban on ultrasounds and these things that Google had advertised for finding out the sex of a fetus would do is cause more infanticide to occur instead of abortion. If the parents can't know the gender of the fetus, they will be less likely to kill it if they want a baby, and they've got a 50/50 (well depending on their knowledge about how many of the father's sperm carry a Y chromosome vs. an X, which is probably limited to just keeping track of how many boy babies this guy's produced vs. how many girl babies he's spawned, which I'd say average Indian people don't keep track of any more than any other people, and I don't think most people do even know enough to pay attention to that. Maybe people who care more about their baby's gender know more and pay more attention, but I'm doubting that they can get the sperms tested to find out in India. Ha.) So ... back to 50/50, I'm thinking they'll let the baby be born if they have a 50/50 chance of getting a son.

Ergo, the sexual selection trend doesn't entirely reflect that abortions will be had regardless. I'm not disagreeing that they will, nor that the laws aren't exactly more "complicated," just that .... this isn't why.

What are the demographic implications? Simply that there won't be enough women to go around? That matters only in a society where everyone being paired up with someone is really important, and I think India is a place where that's higher on the priority list than in many other countries. So the government there would be more likely to take pervasive actions to "stem the trend" than say Canada would.

On a side note, a world with more men than women would be awesome for the purposes of stemming the population increase that's occurring all over the world. It'd also be awesome for philanderous women like myself. How could a boyfriend get mad at a girl for banging somebody else when most dudes out there have no woman? Up with polyandry!

As for the remaining .98 cents of your post, I agree.

 

Crisis according to whom? It probably sucks for the Chinese women, though, because they're probably practically or literally being forced to marry, and they aren't free to stay single.

 

Ouch!

(j/k)

 

yeah what crisis? from my way of looking at it more guys than girls means more guys for the girls to pick from and less competition from other girls. Hooray for us!!!
being a gender minority isn't always a bad thing

 

men without women to marry end up very cranky.

 

it's not sad, it's just different. being exposed to a culture very different, we base it on our standards.

even here in the West, sex is complicated. Peoples differing definitions of whores, college culture, unready teenage pregnancies, sleeping around freely, the view of virgins, sexual expression in everyday clothing, music and respect for women, (belief in or lack thereof) marriage/intermarriage/high divorce, no nudity in public generally, multiple cultures with multiple views, etc.

In India, sexuality is seen as a private thing, although in Bollywood and such, they make it a dreamy art form. Traditionally, sex was seen as beautiful, but when we look at tradition, those views don't entirely apply to today... then it was innocent, they may see it as. They are exposed to the Western views of culture but they don't understand it like we do. That's why when American girls go there, they feel like they're being violated by sexually-repressed weirdos. They see it as lust/love (or developing love).

I find it difficult to believe how we as Americans find it so hard to believe that there are things out there we just cannot fathom and instead we deem it weird and backwards (why negative?)