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Showing posts from November, 2017

Protective Mothers or Rape Deniers?

Who else can teach a young boy about the meanings of 'consent' and 'harassment' better than his own mother? (Image credit: Pixabay) I came across an interesting article in The New York Times last month about a group of mothers defending their sons who had been accused of sexual assaults at college campuses. In the U.S., the guidelines on campus sexual assaults had been pretty stringent so far. However, these guidelines have been blamed to presume the accused students as guilty, who are usually suspended or expelled from the college campuses for a certain amount of time. Needless to say, most of the accused are men.   These mothers are on a mission to save their sons who, they believe, were “wrongly accused.” As protective mothers, they had compelled the college authorities to relook into their sons’ charges. Some of them consider themselves as feminists and hold opinions that how girls today have misconstrued the definition of sexual assault.  

The Unfamiliarity

A new destination, a new road.  (Image from Pixabay) Through out my life, I have always been on move; never sticking to a place for long and trying to adjust to new surroundings. So when I needed to move to Irving, Texas in early 2016, I just packed my bags without any thoughts. After all, I had lived across six states in India while surviving through different schools, colleges, and jobs. "It’s no big deal," I said to myself. I was wrong. The moment I came out of the airport, it took me a while to realize that the cars on the road were driving on the right side. Back in my country, we drive on the left side of the road! Right there, I froze. It was definitely not love at the first sight. Whenever I start residing at a new place, I try to look out for some elements in my surrounding that were common at the places I lived before. Funny as it might sound but it brought me some comfort on staring at a tall, rusty, dimly lit streetlight standing next to the