Gender Policing Handcuffed.

We are proud to present,our next guest writer, the cheerful, charismatic and intellectual Tanvi Jadhav!

Gender policing is the imposition or enforcement of normative gender expressions on an individual who is perceived as not adequately performing, through appearance or behavior, the sex that was assigned to them at birth (see gender performativity). Gender policing serves to devalue or delegitimize expressions that deviate from normative conceptions of gender, thus reinforcing the gender binary.
Wait! What on Earth was that complex definition you ask? Don't you worry people I shall explain that with easy examples. 

Gender policing is when a relative says "You have to cook the food,you are the girl of the house" or when the neighbour says " Son,can you come help me with the car? You are like the son I never had". Simple everyday sentences uttered by people in passing too can be classified as Gender Policing. So basically gender policing is devaluing those actions or behaviour of a person that do not neatly conform with our expectations of what is gender appropriate.

In the past,I have heard many people passing  nasty comments on ones behaviour,attitude,dressing sense with respect to their gender. I believe judging people with respect to their gender is a big  drawback of our society. This is what the internet in technical terms calls Gender Policing. 

I think  Gender Policing  is affecting our society badly as it sets gender as an influential marker and this happens to be like  an inconsequential choice has been made for us based on our Gender and how society expects us to act.

                

I strongly feel that gender policing can be stopped only if the members of the society that is if all of us change our attitude pertaining to certain things like , if we believe that it is absolutely fine if a guy likes pink or a girl loves to play football and most importantly if we stop punishing a man or woman for not acting true to their gender or rather not acting according to the expectations of society.

-Tanvi Jadhav

Its a Geeky Story

Ahem, ahem. Ladies and gentlemen put your hands together for the geekiest, nerdiest, smartest girl in the room (drum roll please) Poornima Ramesh aka. Vaishali's sister!  We are glad that she readily agreed to guest write for Prolix this week. Without further ado, let's see what this wonderful person has to say.

A few weeks ago, Vaishali wrote a post about how hard it is being a Humanities student. Well, it's not a bed of roses for the Science ones either. Everyone expects you to be nerdy, boring and wear spectacles all the time. Despite that, being a science geek has definite advantages. So here's my list of why I love science:

1) You have really great excuses:

If you get in trouble with your parents or if you're in a situation that you'd rather avoid, science provides you with the most amazing escape routes. For example, let's say you've broken the TV set by throwing your remote control at it (because that's what you do every time HBO has the gall to run one of the Twilight movies). And your mother is spitting fire at you. This is what you should say: “According to the Third Law of Thermodynamics, every system in the universe prefers to be in a state of disorder or increased entropy. So you see, mom, I didn't really do anything wrong. The TV wanted to be broken!” And voila! Problem solved!

2) You can be an annoying-people-repellant:

If you're in the company of someone who is just plain irritating or if you have a low socialization threshold, then spouting scientific jargon is an awesome way to get rid of them. Here's a demo: So did you hear about the new breakthrough in evolutionary theory? It seems that the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was just an alternative to the Red Queen hypothesis and basically, all population curves ultimately tend to settle into stable Gaussians even though they can go through Poisson, binomial and Boltzmann distributions....are you zoned out or have you left the room? Yeah, so you get the idea.

3) Movies and advertisements become hilarious (or woefully depressing, depending on your point-of-view):

Did you know that Surf Excel has vibrating molecules? What's so funny about that, you ask? Well, this company is marketing their product based on something that's true about...let's see....pretty much every single thing in the entire universe. And have you seen that movie where Rajnikanth swallows a speeding bullet and spits it out in two pieces, each of which then kill a bad guy? That little scene breaks so many laws of physics and biology – the relatavistic laws, Newton's laws, Stoke's law, physiological constraints....I don't think there are enough fingers attached to the entire Indian population to count them.

4) You get to act like, Einstein, Feynman, Curie, Heisenberg, etc were all your best friends:

For example:

You know that Darwin didn't really come up with the theory of evolution on his own right? He sat on it for 12 years before Wallace told him it was right. <shaking my head in exasperation> Poor guy!

And Scrodinger's really macabre. I mean, the guy used dead cats to explain his theory. Dead cats! What the hell!

See?

5) Everybody treats you like you're a genius (if you ignore the fact that they also expect other..(ahem!)....not-so-positive things)

Well, obviously, if you're a science geek, you've had to go through tons and tons of books (each the size of 10 Lord of the Rings books). And if you're an Indian teenager, then you've also solved close to a billion calculus problems and worked out gazillion reaction mechanisms for IIT-JEE or BITSAT or whatever random combination of the English alphabet that you can think of. If you thought Dr. Doofenschmirtz was cool, multiply that by 100 and you get the average science geek!

Hopefully, all of you are now thinking about making a career change to science. Or at least, you agree with what Bill Gates has to say about geeks. Thank you Vaishali and Sanika for letting me write for your blog. And Nikita, I hope I've followed your rules closely enough.

Life Reflections.

We are trying out something new this time,so please bear with us.

I open my eyes promptly at midnight. I know she will walk in any minute and I need to be on my best behaviour.  The lights flicker and they turn on,illuminating the whole world in a pale yellow hue. I squint at the sudden brightness. As my vision comes back to normal.I see her staring at me right in the face. She seems to be having an internal debate. I scream  "Pick me! Me here!". But as usual she ignores my pleas and switches the lights off and my world is plunged into darkness all over again.

I have sat here for almost a week. Yes,I actually counted the days. I have been alive for exactly three weeks,fourteen hours and seven minutes. I have travelled through many places in such a short span. I have seen things way beyond my intelligence and I still (after all this time) wish to be picked up by her.. I,unlike my counterparts,am ready to meet her with a friendly grip. To look her in the eye (or in this case,teeth) and say "I offer myself to you".

Once a week, she will bring in a whole new set of my species. If I am lucky,one of them will be a family member (I have a huge family).

When I was younger and living with my family,none of them seemed to understand my calm acceptance of death. How I could so easily accept that my sole purpose in life was to die. I know that my duty to this world is to serve people to the best of my abilities even if it ultimately leads to my death (quite like a police officer)

A little after one in the night, she enters the room again. The lights come on and she again looks right through me. I have never understood the hatred or the calm indifference she has towards me.  I cross my fingers and hope that she picks me this time.

She looks around and her gaze finally lands on me. I glance around amd notice the practically void room (except for me). All my companions seem to have dissapeared. Was I so lost in my own thoughts that I did not notice them leave the room?

She picks me up and bites into me. I feel the incisors pierce my green skin. I see my flesh in all its glory. And slowly she devours me. This seems to be the end of the tale for a quirky Guava like me.

Did you feel like shouting " Vaishali please write more!" Or
Did you feel like scoffing and rolling your eyes at my attempt at an autobiography?
All kinds of feedback appreciated.

Word of the day:
Chatoyant- something having a changeable or varying lustre or colour.

Quote of the day:
"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." - Winston Churchill

This Title is Misleading.

We are immensely happy and glad (contrary to Nikita's belief) to announce our next Guest Writer,the articulate and well-read Nikita Mujumdar.

When I asked Vaishali why she hadn’t asked me to write a post for her blog, even though she was clearly accepting collaborations, and she grudgingly agreed to let me be a guest blogger, I wondered - what should I write about?

My initial thought was to do a piece entirely about Eleanor of Aquitaine, but then I received a message that read “I have been asked to tell you not to write too much about the royal family.” So I had to, rather unwillingly, scrap that idea and think of something else (Notice that I said something else, and not something better, because Eleanor of Aquitaine led a very fascinating life).

Then I thought: Why not write a guest post about writing guest posts?

[Bear in mind that I am in no way an expert at writing for other people’s blogs. Because I have such few friends, there is no one who asks me to guest write for them, and as a result, I have only done one collaboration, ever. But I have over 2,000 hours of writing experience, most of it from maintaining a private journal that no one is allowed to read, so this should be fun!]

HOW TO WRITE A GOOD(ISH) GUEST BLOG POST

1. Read the blog for which you are going to write. I read all the posts on Prolix as preparation for this and also because I was getting quite bored. And I figured out three things; one, they love making lists (Which is why this is a list! Oh, I’m a genius.); two, they’re always trying to teach you new words; and three, even though their tagline is Spanish for “About everything under the sun,” they obviously don’t write about everything under the sun because there are no posts about the Duchess of Cambridge.

The point of all this is that I now know the theme which I should adopt. The list aspect is one, of course, but if you scroll down, you’ll notice that I even added my own word-a-day thing. And I didn’t write about the Duchess of Cambridge.

2. With regard to the previous tip, if possible, keep the page open on your browser. This way, you can read it as many times as you want, and it won’t add to the number of views that the blog has had. Because you don’t want a rival blog to do better than yours. Besides, it’s cheating to get so many views from one person. The only thing that’s worse is refreshing your own blog a hundred times.

3. Don’t be disappointed if you aren’t getting paid. You probably aren’t so good anyway. But the fact that no money is changing hands, means that isn’t work, and so you aren’t obligated to meet deadlines, and you can talk about Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother as much as you want (Unless you get an explicit message saying otherwise).

If you are getting paid, please get in touch with me, and we’ll talk about the prospects of my working with this website that you write for.

4. Though I grumbled about this rule at the beginning of the post, it’s quite apt. Don’t only write about things that you like. It’s predictable. All of my friends and other people who know me are going to click on the link expecting it to be about Prince George (Well, it’s not, so ha!). Instead, write about something completely out of your presumed comfort zone, and then subtly insert references to your favourite family. You may find it dull, you may find it boring, but no one probably knows who Blanche of Lancaster was anyone, so it’s just as well that you didn’t write about her.

5. Make sure that the people you are writing for know the link to your blog, and also that they include it at the end of your post. Because what is the point of spending 15 minutes on a Saturday evening, which you were originally planning to use to do nothing, writing words for someone else if you aren’t going to get a few views of your own out of it. My blog, by the way, is bloodsweatandtiaras.blogspot.com. Just in case in the editors are negligent and don’t even look at this sentence.

Oh, and have a good conclusion..

Word of the Day: Obsequious - Obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree.

Quote of the Day: “Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”

__________

Figments of my imagination

As I close my eyes

an image appears

so serene, so quite

in a field we lay together 

under the moonlight

The stars twinkled 

the night lilies bloomed

their scent engulfed us

it was a field 

so full of our love

Nearby a stream trickled

the sound creating a calm

a lone nightingale sung

as we got lost

in each others arms

There was so need to

fill the silence with words out loud

cause a million unspoken

ones hung around

The feeling was bliss

we were in love

I wished we could stay 

that way forever

That's when a single tear

rolled down my cheek 

bringing me back

to harsh reality

There was no calmness 

anymore

cause you were with me 

no more,

-Sanika Saxena

Word of the day: Razzmatazz meaning noisy and exciting activity meant to attract attention. Ambiguous or meaningless language. 

Quote of the day:
Hold on for more!
Contact us at: vaishali.ramesh235@gmail.com
Contact Sanika at: sanika25saxena@gmail.com
Instagram @sanika.saxena
Instagram Vaishali
@vaishali.ramesh

Feedback and Comments appreciated.