Recently the CDC posted guidelines telling women that drinking too much alcohol can result in violence/injuries, getting STDs, or getting unintentionally pregnant. Although intentions might have been in the right place, a lot of it came across as patronizing and somehow taking away the sense of agency – that women need to be warned to watch out for the unintended consequences for their actions. And it falls under benevolent sexism, something I have written about before. Under the pretext of protecting/saving women, we continue to chain them and/or hinder them. I understand the sentiment of the guidelines, it could have been done in a better way by removing a few points that perpetuates assumptions or gender stereotypes regarding women.

Over the last few weeks, society’s habit about blaming women, and pseudoscience, have been bothering me quite a bit. And I am going to point out how both can be inter-related. Throughout history, women have been burnt and killed as witches, or for bad omen, among many other things – for issues which can today be explained by meteorology or microbiology (paraphrasing from Carl Sagan). Human beings used to be sacrificed to please gods or nature. Women have been blamed, even killed, for having daughters and not sons – when it is the sperm that carries the X or the Y chromosome. Women still get killed for ‘dishonoring’ their families. Women’s bodies, independence, and voices are still controlled – many of it under the ‘good intention’ of benevolent sexism. Heck, women are still seen “unclean” when menstruating. And we as a species have still not grown up about breast-feeding in public. As a 200,000 year old species, I think it is about time we became adults about human sexuality and biology.

Society decides what constitutes a woman’s ‘modesty’ – which is invariably covering up as much skin as possible. Isn’t that objectification of women too? When someone says ‘covering up is modesty’, what does that say about women who do not cover up? Aren’t the societies with that kind of attitude suffering from misogyny and violence against women? Someone can show just their face and still be dressed ‘immodestly’, while someone walking naked might not get a second look. Modesty is subjective, and a woman’s character should not be decided by how much skin she shows, but by her empathy, compassion, and kindness (and intellectual curiosity…for me).

As much as we have lived in a patriarchal society, what I still struggle to understand at the age of 30 is how so many women enforce so many sexist rules and chains on other women. Be it sisters or mothers, aunts or friends, it has been enraging to me to see so many women hold back other women – especially from the culture/world I am from. I have seen mothers threaten to kill their daughters she brings ‘dishonor’ to her father’s name. I have seen brothers prevent their sisters from going outside in jeans because it shows the shape of legs. I have seen fathers call their daughters naked for wearing a skirt and leggings. And in all of this, I have seen women – sisters, mothers, friends – defend the sexism, I have seen them defend the brothers and the fathers. I just don’t understand why. Women getting raped get killed by their own mothers. Little girls getting sexually abused are not protected by their own parents if the abusers are family members – lest it brings dishonor to the name of the family. When we complain about our society, what are we teaching our sons when we always blame or try to control women. If we keep women inside the home because she will get harassed outside (or because women don’t belong outside), how are we teaching the men not to harass? If we allow brothers, fathers, and husbands to have veto power over a woman’s life, what message are we sending our sons and daughters. And it is even more frustrating when I see how many women are the enforcers of these rules.

So what about quackery? I will be writing a different article where I bring the hammer down on pseudoscience, something that has bothered me for last few years. But the level of pseudoscience is becoming too extreme for me to stay quiet. I am going to be writing something like I did with religion and spirituality. The problem with tolerating quacks and quackery is that the same concept of quackery has been used to punish women throughout history. We tolerate a lot of quackery and pseudoscience because we term it harmless. But I absolutely believe that tolerating one kind of pseudoscience allows the propagation of other kinds of pseudosciences. Take the example of anti-vaccination movement. It exists in a society where anyone ‘knows’ science without even understanding the scientific method. Be it the anti-vaccination mothers, or not understanding the placebo effect nor anecdotal evidence, I don’t deny the sincerity of the people. I do agree that the tears of a mother on TV complaining about vaccines are real. But that doesn’t mean she is right scientifically. Over the long-run, these feelings and pseudosciences hurt us as individuals and as a society (take climate change denial as an example). Even societies who have killed women as witches think they are doing something good. As Mark Twain once said – “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled” (because of feelings, confirmation bias, and other psychological reasons I won’t go into here). So it is important to teach people how the scientific method works and how to ask questions so we don’t get conned by quacks. It is easier to prevent quackery when it is trying to take hold than to eradicate quackery. At least in many developing parts of the world, quackery and women’s rights is still a very inter-related issue.