#Indian Mass Media

[insightfultake]

Indian Mass Media Lacks Credibility and Transparency

According to science, all living organisms thrive on others. One’s weakness becomes a source of success for others. It appears to be absolutely right in the case of mass media in India. Out of 1.4 billion people, 77.7% are literate. Being literate in India means one has to know how to write his or her name. In such a scenario, one-third of the population is illiterate, 80 crore people survive on government aid, which is popular in the name of ration, and huge unemployment could be understood by the fact that 38% of IITians are unemployed this year. The Indian mass media is capitalizing on these resources by doing gossiping in support of the government 24x7. The market size of the mass media industry combining electronic and print media will amount to a thousand billion Indian national rupees.

[blorbingqls]

I would like to add two movies that i loved for the Indian Queer Media context (i am a tamilian queer brought up in UP, India) :-

Cobalt Blue (its based on a book by Sachin Kundalkar) - available on netflix (not sure if its there for international audience)

Geeli Puchi (its a great exploration on caste and queer identity in India - part of an anthology called Ajeeb Daastaans) - also netflix

I don't think i have links for the same or else would have added - you can search on google and find it! (you may also need VPN tho)

The Absence of India in Discussions on Queer Asian Media

So, yesterday @lurkingshan tagged me in an ask she got from @impala124 about the absence of India when we're talking about queer Asian media. I was intially just going to reblog it with my thought, but as it kept growing I figured it'd be best to just make my own post. Please read the ask linked above first so this makes sense.

*cracks knuckles* this is going to be the most fun I've had writing a post in ages. (For a little background, I'm a queer Indian, born and raised)

So, this is a very interesting question on a subject I've been rotating in my head for the past several months. There's a lot of different variables that contribute to the noticeable lack of discussion on Indian and South Asian queer media in general, so I'm just going to talk through the ones I've noticed a little randomly.

Talking about Asian media in general, it's well known that the mass popularity of kpop and anime has contributed massively to the increase in popularity of Asian media. If you've been in the Asian media fandom for any amount of time at all, you'll have noticed that media from Korea, Japan, and China gets by far the most attention from international audiences; all East Asian countries. There may be several reasons for this, but in particular, it's no secret that the fetishization of East Asians is a massive proponent in the popularity of media from these countries, while there's no such interest in South Asians. If we shift our focus to queer media specifically, media from these three countries is still extremely popular, with the addition of Thailand and the Philippines to some extent; both South East Asian countries. From what I've seen, there's very little international interest in media from South Asian countries (although, if we're talking about India specifically, I can't exactly say anything. Bollywood has not been good lately). If we talk about queer South Asian media, the scope of interest falls even further. If you'll notice, MyDramaList, one of the most commonly used websites for finding and tracking Asian shows only allows for East and South-East Asian shows. So, that's one reason—there's just not much international interest in Indian media in general. As Shan said in the initial post, it's partially because of a difference in priorities. Korea is notorious for using media to gain global standing, the role of the 'soft power' of Thai bls in the recent bills for equal marriage in Thailand has been widely discussed, the list goes on. Could racism also play a part in the massive gulf of interest in media from East Asian versus South Asian countries? Probably. But I'm not going to get into that too much.

Moving on, there's obviously a massive lack of queer media in India. I think this is greatly exacerbated by the fact that it's very hard to support the people making queer media beyond buying and/or streaming their work. The majority of people engaging with Indian queer media are queer Indians, and a lot of us have to do so in secret because of the society we live in. This means that creators that have to push through several obstacles to publish their work often receive little incentive to continue doing so because of the lack of engagement. Because of the lack of media, international fans are less likely to become interested in queer Indian media, and the cycle continues.

I will say though, contrary to what Shan said, I think Indian media, particularly anything that came out post 2019 might actually be on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to access. This may simply be bias, so forgive me if I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen, a lot of queer Indian shows are in fact available on streaming sites, and at most you'd need a vpn to access them. I think the two main things that actually hold back queer Indian media from becoming more popular are a lack of noise and it's relatively lower quality.

The main way we find out about new shows in this space is through either word of mouth (well actually, post) or because we follow production houses known for producing media. Because of the sparse nature of both the media and the consumers, there's very few people who learn enough about the media to want to give it a shot. For example, there's a film on netflix called Badhaai Do (hindi for Congratulate Us) that I've been meaning to watch for a while. It centers around a lavender marriage and I've heard a lot of good things about it, so I was slightly surprised to see that most of the people on tumblr I interact with who have been engaging with queer media for far longer than me had never heard of it. There's also a, Indian BL from 2017 called Romil and Jugal that I've written about before here, and I would've never learned of it's existence if not for a friend hearing about it from another friend of hers.

Because there's so little queer indian media, it's natural that the quality leaves much to be desired. The main issue is, because the queer asian media market has become so saturated lately people are becoming a lot more selective with what they watch, and for good reason. This means that queer media from india is simply unable to grow and improve over time, leaving it stagnant. Back in 2016-2018, the overall dearth of queer media from Asia meant that a lot of people were willing to watch shows that were average or even worse. Thailand particularly seems to have benefitted from this, being able to grow and evolve its queer media due to the successes of shows like SOTUS, 2gehter, TharnType and more even recently, KinnPorsche. Queer Indian media will have a much, much harder time with this because of all of the factors I've talked about and more, meaning that it is much harder for queer media to evolve. Honestly, though I haven't been able to watch/read much queer media from India, the stuff I have seen is really quite decent, it's just that it tends to fail in comparison to some of the brilliant stuff we're seeing from other countries. A while a ago, I bought four queer books by Indian authors, and of the three I've read so far, I'd genuinely recommend two, albeit one with quite a few reservations (I'll be writing about them sometime in the future, just haven't found the time yet). While talking about this with @neuroticbookworm, she brought up the excellent point of how Indian media in general has just been of fairly poor quality lately. It seems to me that a lot of it is catered to more conservative audiences, which results in people like me becoming disillusioned with Indian media and simply moving onto things from other countries. It has been a long time since I've watched anything worthwhile come out of Bollywood. So, it becomes even harder for queer Indian shows to be found at all; a majority of their target audience has already forsaken Indian media as a lost cause.

So, those are a bunch of reasons because of which there's not a lot of discussion about queer Indian media in fandom spaces like Tumblr. Something else I'd like to point out is, it's very hard for queer shows in India to gain much traction whatsoever. Live television slots are ruled by the infamous Indian serials, the majority of the audience being people in their late thirties and older, particularly women. And while homophobia is just as prevalent amongst the youth of India as it is amongst older generations, younger people are far more likely to be engaging with queer media, in India at least. This means that it would be near impossible for queer shows to air on live television the way they do in countries like Thailand and Japan. The majority of Indian youth use global streaming services to watch shows, hence the greater concentration of queer shows on service platforms. (Romil and Jugal is something of a dark horse here—I don't believe it was ever aired, but it was produced by a producer who has a few decently popular serials under her belt and is available on an Indian steaming service—another reason I'm determined to research how tf this show ever came into existence) If we talk of movies, the industry is limited by the iron fist of Bollywood, another reason it's very hard for queer movies to be produced and why they're generally found on streaming sites.

There's just not a lot of people who have the balls it would take to make a queer Indian show/movie and push it to the Indian public beyond a streaming service. I mean, we're all seeing what's happening with the Love in The Big City drama right now, and believe me, public backlash in India would be the same, if not much worse. And if no one in India is watching these shows, why would anyone in any other part of the world? There's barely any public figures that would be willing to participate in such a project, so queer media stays underground. Currently, Karan Johar is the most popular—and one of the only—out celebrities in Bollywood, and, well, he's treated as something of a laughing stock by the public. He has one or two queer adjacent shows under his belt as a producer, but once again, they're barely known and available only on Netflix. There was a movie called Dostana in which he played a straight guy pretending to be gay but, well, that speaks for itself. And well, I can't exactly blame him for it, knowing how the Indian entertainment industry is.

To talk a little more about the specific comparison between India and Korea, I think you're fairly accurate in saying that the two countries seem to be roughly on par in terms of homophobia, although that's an extremely vague statement that's rather hard to either prove or disprove. While the difference in international attention towards Korean and Indian media is certainly a major component of the difference in discussion about the queer media from these countries, there's obviously other things that go into it as well. There's this video I watched some time ago on the progression of queer representation in K-dramas that's quite well researched. It's an hour and a half long, so in case you don't have the time to watch it (though I do recommend it), it basically talks about some of the dramas with queer rep that have aired on Korean television and their impact. While it's hard to gauge the level of impact of these shows on the availability of bls and gls in Korea, they certainly had an effect, if only telling the queer population of Korea that they are seen and heard. To my knowledge (although I may be mistaken), no such queer rep has ever aired on Indian television, meaning that there's nothing to push creators to put queer media out there. There have been old movies and shows that depict queerness, but none of them ever reached the sort of the scale where they may have some sort of impact on the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the widespread popularity of K-dramas (and k-pop) does make it easier for creators to make queer media since there's a much higher chance of the shows being successful thanks to the international audience. Bringing back Love In The Big City, the success of the book abroad and the high probability of the show being well received internationally is probably one of the reasons it was able to be produced amongst domestic backlash.

Now, I've been talking a lot about how it's difficult for queer Indian media to gain any sort of international recognition with domestic attention. However, it's not necessarily the case. Here's where I start rambling (I say, as if this post isn't verging on 2k words). It's been proven that the presence of the international market allows for greater creative freedom in spaces beyond television. The best example comes from Korea's very own 'soft power'; K-pop. There's a K-pop group called Dreamcatcher that debuted in 2017 with a rock sound and horror concept that was extremely rare in kpop at the time. They succeeded mainly by focusing most of their promotions to the foreign market, knowing that their concept would not be well liked in Korea. And they succeeded. Today, Dreamcatcher has a sizeable fandom and has even been growing in popularity in Korea, with the Korean public warming up to their genre and having influenced other girl groups to try out similar sounds. We've already talked about the lack of international attention for Indian media, but there's also the issue that the producers of queer Indian media aren't marketing to foreign audiences, which remain ignorant.

That's all I have, this is so long good lord. All in all, there's a bunch of factors that feed into each other creating a cycle which means that, unless there's a break somewhere, queer Indian media will remain unrecognized. I'm excited to see what other people have to say, because this is a topic close to my heart and I'd definitely enjoy seeing more discussions around it.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Yemen’s armed forces threatened on 22 April to expand military operations against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea, Arab Sea, and Indian Ocean following the discovery of mass graves in Gaza’s Nasser Medical Complex. “For the seventh month in a row, the genocidal crimes of the Israeli enemy continue, the latest of which is the brutal massacre in the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis,” the armed forces said via a statement on Yemen’s Al-Masirah channel. The statement continued, “the genocidal crimes that the Palestinian people are facing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank reflect an unparalleled level of Zionist hatred and crime.” The statement by Yemen called to “escalate their operations in the Red Sea,” adding that Sanaa continues its full support for the people of Gaza. On Sunday, over 200 bodies were found across two mass graves located in Khan Yunis’ Nasser Medical Complex. Gaza’s Government Media Office announced that about 700 victims are expected to be found. “We found in the Nasser Complex corpses without heads and bodies without skins, and some of them had their organs stolen,” the media office said. “The occupation executed dozens of displaced, wounded, sick, and medical staff.”

[timetravellingkitty]

KASHMIR MASTERLIST

Background

History of Kashmir from 250 BC to 1947 [to understand Kashmir's multi religious history and how we got to 1947]

Broad timeline of events from 1947 to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in 2019 (BBC) [yes, BBC. hang on just this once]

Human Rights Watch report based on a visit to Indian controlled Kashmir in 1998 [has a summary, background, human rights abuses and recommendations]

Another concise summary of the issue

Sites to check out

Kashmir Action - news and readings

The Kashmiriyat - independent news site about ongoings in Kashmir

FreePressKashmir - same thing as previous

Kashmir Law and Justice Project - analysis of international law as it applies to Kashmir

Stand with Kashmir - awareness, run by diaspora Kashmiris (both Pandit and Muslim)

These two for more readings and resources on Kashmir: note that the petitions and donation links are from 2019 and also has explainers on the background (x) (x)

To read

Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? - about women in the Kashmiri resistance movement and the 1991 mass rape of Kashmiri women in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora by Indian armed forces

Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir - a compliation of writings about the lives of Kashmiris under Indian domination

Colonizing Kashmir: State Building under Indian Occupation - how Kashmir was made "integral" to the Indian state and examines state-building policies (excerpt)

Resisting Occupation in Kashmir - about the social and legal dimensions of India's occupation

On India's scapegoating of Kashmiri Pandits, both by Kashmiri Pandits (x) (x)

Of Gardens and Graves - translations of Kashmiri poems

Social media

kashiirkoor

museumofkashmir

kashmirpopart

posh_baahar

readingkashmir

standwithkashmir and their backup account standwithkashmir2 (main account is banned in India wonder why)

kashmirlawjustice

kashmirawareness

jammugenocide (awareness about the 1947 genocide abetted by Maharaja Hari Singh and the RSS)

To watch

Jashn-e-Azadi: How We Celebrate Freedom parts 1 and 2 - a documentary about the Kashmiri freedom struggle (filmed by a Kashmiri Pandit)

Paradise Lost - BBC documentary about how India and Pakistan's dispute over the valley has affected the people

Kashmir - Valley of Tears - the exhaustion with the conflict in the post nineties

In the Shade of Fallen Chinar - art as a form of Kashmiri resistance

Human rights violations (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Land theft and dispossession (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

A note: I know annoying Desis are going to see this and go "Oh but Kashmir is Pakistan's because-" and "Kashmir is an integral part of India because-". I must make my stance clear: Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiris, the natives, no matter what religion they belong to. Neither Pakistan nor India get to decide the matter of Kashmiri sovereignty. The reasons given by both parties as to why Kashmir should be a part of either nation are bullshit. The United Nations itself recognises Kashmir as a disputed region, so I will not entertain dumbfuckery. I highly encourage fellow Indians especially to take the time to go through and properly understand the violence the government enacts on Kashmiris. I've also included links to learn more about Kashmiri culture because really, what do the rest of us know about it? Culturally and linguistically Kashmir differs so much from the rest of India and Pakistan (also the amount of fetishization of Kashmiri women...yikes). This is not just a bilateral issue between these two nations over land, this actually affects the people of Kashmir. And if you're still here, thank you for reading

[odinsblog]

Henry Kissinger's victims:

3 million + Vietnamese

2.5 million + Cambodians

200,000+ Laotians

3 million + Bangladeshis

10,000+ Indians

10,000+ Pakistanis

15,000+ Egyptians

3500+ Syrians

6500+ Cypriots

40,000+ Chileans

30,000+ Argentinians

10,000+ Zimbabweans

60,000+ Mozambiqueans

900,000+ Angolans

11,000+ Guinea Bisseauans

300,000+ East Timorians

1,000,000+ Indonesians

20,000+ Western Saharans

1,100,000+ Iraqis

and so so many more

“…it is very possible that Henry Kissinger has played a role in the mass murder of more people than anyone else in human history.”

Henry Kissinger was a vile, evil man through and through. And while good people are justifiably rejoicing at his long overdue death, please never forget that his evil brand of warmongering, unending “defensive” wars, and colonialism lives on in far too many media pundits, Hollywood + media influencers, and powerful politicians.

Kissinger is dead, but his cruel, cold-blooded, sadistic brand of militarism still lives on, and that is what we must bring an end to.

[fatehbaz]

Regarding this post going around:

Recommend checking out an article by Kasey Keeler and Ryan Hellenbrand, published at Edge Effects in 2021, which, aside from addressing the Ojibwe story about the Nanabozho fighting against logging, also describes the origin of Paul Bunyan as an icon of clear-cutting timber industry and, later, as a symbol of the advent of the US federal government’s “German-style” forestry management.

Some quick tidbits from their article:

- References to Bunyan appear in local print media from the 1890s onward, but Bunyan became more widely known in 1916 after a scholarly publication about the folklore. In the same year, 1916, an important mass media pictorial representation was made in a promotional pamphlet by the marketing team of a major logging company as a move to give them a folksly and “local” charm as the corporation expanded from Minnesota to California.

- That same logging company had owned the land that would become both Paul Bunyan State Forest and Chippewa National Forest.

- The first national forest created by act of Congress rather than presidential proclamation was actually Chippewa National Forest, which has been described as “a laboratory” to solve “the Indian problem” and discipline/contain Ojibwe people.

- Paul Bunyan was a sort of icon of German folklore in the region. Ironically, even though Bunyan was originally associated with clear-cutting, it would in fact be "German-style” forestry policy that (in Minnesota and later across the US) replaced the original clear-cutting industrial extraction methods with a "modern" and "sustainable" management approach meant for "sustained yield" (which still just treats forests as a resource to be extracted for profit).

---

Anyway, some images, captions, and text from the article [all text below is excerpted from the article]:

Across the Northwoods, a geography that spans the U.S.-Canada border, stories are used to make and claim space. [...] Throughout northern Minnesota, legends of Paul Bunyan, the fictional giant lumberjack, have been used to claim space. [...] Bunyan has been credited with creating Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, the Mississippi River, and the Grand Canyon, while simultaneously logging millions of acres of forest. [...] Together, we juxtapose the history of two forests -- the Paul Bunyan State Forest and the Chippewa National Forest -- to reveal how German settlement, logging, and forestry have contributed to placemaking narratives, and how [...] nostalgia links past and present. Paul Bunyan’s literal and figurative imaginings advance American Indian erasure narratives, leading to the invisibility of these same communities today. [...] The Northwoods have been popularized and imagined as America’s version of northern Europe. [...] Across Minnesota, towns like New Ulm, New Munich, Heidelberg, and Luxemburg bear witness [...]. More recently, Native scholars Michael Dockry and Christopher Caldwell have examined [...] “the Menominee people’s profound sense of place and their intimate relationship with place.”   [...]

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Ojibwe dispossession, well underway by the late nineteenth century, is not told in any Paul Bunyan story. [...] The "heroic labor" of logging formed a significant portion of Great Lakes region economies [...] on the heels of, and entangled with, Ojibwe dispossession. [...] Formally established in 1908, the 1.6-million-acre Chippewa National Forest (CNF) lies nearly contiguous with the Leech Lake Reservation. [...] [T]he CNF was the first national forest created "for the benefit of [American] Indian people." [...] In 1902 came the Morris Act. Authored by [a] Duluth congressman [...], the act "created the first forest reserve established by congressional action rather than presidential proclamation." The act established the 225,000-acre Minnesota Forest Reserve as a “compromise,” a way to tackle the “Indian problem” while allowing for timber harvest. Here, Ojibwe homelands became “a laboratory for the first comprehensive forest management plans undertaken by a federal agency.” In 1928, the forest was renamed the Chippewa National Forest, as it remains today.

---

While the Chippewa National Forest forces us to consider the many ways logging and forestry has usurped American Indian peoples’ access to land, the nearby Paul Bunyan State Forest encapsulates the material legacy of symbolic myth. [...]

Officially recognized in 1935, the Paul Bunyan State Forest evolved from the site of the Red River Lumber Company sawmill. Founded in 1884, the Red River Lumber Company (RRLC) directly participated in and contributed to Ojibwe dispossession. By the end of the nineteenth century, he RRLC had purchased most of the land that comprises the present-day Pual Bunyan State Forest, milling millions of board feet of lumber at the company town of Akeley. [...]

The expansion of RRLC to California precipitated another key move: using Paul Bunyan in their marketing. William B. Laughead (pronounced Log-head), advertising manager in 1914 and a logger himself, spun another Paul Bunyan tale for the promotional booklet “Introducing Mr. Paul Bunyan of Westwood, Cal,” which included Bunyan’s first pictorial representation. This marketing campaign relied on the new and growing nostalgia for the grand logging days in the Great Lakes to keep the transcontinental corporation rooted in place.

With logging long established throughout the Great Lakes region, the ecological damage was clear. To remedy this, in the mid-1930s (German) forestry was introduced to manage timber on a sustained yield base. This, then, is the irony of the Paul Bunyan State Forest: named for an American legends who is said to have literally cleared the path for settlement, forest management now proposes to maintain the integrity of the forest. [...]

Though Paul Bunyan narratives dominate the landscape of the Northwoods, if we look closely we can see the ways Native people resist the legendary exploits. Indeed, a lesser-known Ojibwe oral story reminds us that the Anishinaabe people, their culture, and their histories will always prevail over dispossession and logging. In the story, Nanabozho, an Ojibwe trickster or cultural figure, confronts Paul Bunyan, who had already logged off most of the northeastern states before making his way to Minnesota. Nanabozho tells Paul to leave, to not log any more timber. A fight ensues, and [...] Nanabozho swings a Red Lake walleye at Paul, knocking him off his feet. As Paul stumbles, Nanabozho pulls at Paul’s whiskers, making him promise to leave the area. This is why, today, Paul Bunyan does not have a beard and why he is facing west at the statue on Lake Bemidji, as he prepares to leave the region.

This is also why we have the Chippewa National Forest, because Nanabozho and his Ojibwe kinsmen saved it from being logged. It is this contemporary narrative that highlights the complexity of Ojibwe storytelling [...].

---

Images, captions, and text as published by: Kasey Keeler and Ryan Hellenbrand. “Paul Bunyan and Settler Nostalgia in the Northwoods.” Edge Effects. 2 December 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks added by me.]

[rotzaprachim]

one of the things that’s so grotesque is like, never in my life have I ever felt people en masse really cared very much about Jews or wanted us to be safe, and that includes Israelis. They don’t care about us but we can be used to justify so so much mass death on people who never hurt us at all. I spent four years living in a horrific Antisemitism Country, a now “neutral” Western European power which killed Jews, expelled jews, banned Jews for hundreds of years. There were large Eastern European and middle eastern diasporas there and I was almost always the First Jew anyone had ever met - or that had admitted to being Jewish. People regularly assumed jews controlled the world media. I got harassed for - yes- the idea of Zionist infiltration, for being one of the evil Zionists people knew controlled the world. One time I left shule with a friend who had forgotten to take his kippah off and a group of drunks coming out of a bar physically shook us as we walked by. To get to Jewish events I walked over the literally former “Jewry” where Jews had lived in the medieval era but were expelled and which had me ember been rebuilt or returned to Jews. When I was in university the most famous fascist family in the country donated money to one of the most famous universities in the country in order to have a building named after their fascist family name and people agreed to it! In university someone gave off a long Hitler impersonation at a general event and the manager of the event refused to end it or call him out. We always always looked over our shoulders. My friends who were Israelis, who came from Iraqi and Indian and Persian Jewish families, described racial and ethnic harassment that occured to them all the time from people who saw Brown people and decided it was time for racism. Even Ashkenazi Israelis I knew were harassed for being Too middle eastern, too foreign, their language Hebrew too strange. We just lived with it all. relatively speaking this is small stuff. *minor.* it’s not like what’s happening in Gaza and it never will be. But what it was was years of accumulated pain, and the understanding that the country did not love us and was unwilling to do much but the bare minimum to let us live. And then three weeks ago the leader of that country got up and declared support for the state of Israel because of his support for the Jews. And he’s stood by that. He’s stood supporting the state of Israel as they’ve killed over seven thousand people, including thousands of children. My safety wasn’t important enough when I lived in *their* country to be much worth doing anything about, anything that might slice into the rind of how awful and alienating and antisemitic that culture was, but it’s also important enough to be worth the violent murder of thousands of children. NO ONE EVER FUCKING ASKED ME WHAT WOULD MAKE ME SAFE, BUT THEY DID DECIDE THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN NEEDED TO DIE, and they decided they needed to put my name to it. I’ve gotten to watch world leaders pull off a “the people of yisrael live” over and over again these last three years ago to justify arming a right wing dictator I never voted for in a country I never set foot on kill thousands and thousands of people. And I’ve gotten to see the hordes screaming for my death in response. Because it’s in our name and we asked for it and after all we do run everything. I’ve yet to get the feeling that western powers like Israelis all that much. The coverage really isn’t like us and uk based terror attacks. But they certainly don’t like Jews at all. No one cares about Jewish lives but they can collectively be used to justify non stop murder of a civilian population. The leader of that country I lived in will support all this forever. There’s no horror greater than that.

[ramayantika]

as a dancer yourself, how do you think the stigma against male dancers which makes them labelled "gay" and female dancers which makes them labelled "prostitutes", can be dispersed?

This is something which even I think of and to be honest I do not have a good definite answer.

But, firstly, people need to be educated on the cultural history. History books mention about wars, dynasties and politics. There are very vague and meagre mentions of india's cultural history especially of the performing arts.

When I see the young masses talking about hindu culture and worship, the same barely know how many classical dance forms are there in India.

Exposure of the general audience to indian music and dance shows will actually help. I believe that the new gen dancers and some veteran dancers too have actually begun conversations about the history of dance, especially about female performers and their role in shaping the performing arts of india. Those need to be popularized especially through social media, because our generation uses a lot of it, so why not support viewership of the classical dance forms? That way even male classical dancers can be seen by non dancer males.

We have watched DID and other dance reality shows. Not everybody has enrolled in a dance class (neither western nor indian) but somehow we still accept western dance forms easily especially by males but sadly there isn't enough recognition for male classical artists. People talk about bharatiya sanskriti and sabhyata, will talk (and romanticize) wearing outfits from the vedic period, but will swiftly call the male dancer slurs even though he is portraying shiva and parvati.

When dance and music forms an integral part of indian culture, it is disappointing to see the general indian society be alienated from it. They are aware of it only through Bollywood which now does a shit job at portraying indian dance forms (folk dance is rarely seen. Folk is well another topic)

A good starting point would be to first read about it or watch classical dance shows and productions. Many of them are available on YouTube for free.

No one's asking to start learning dance and music, but if you can appreciate contestants on other dance reality shows with no knowledge of hip-hop, contemporary dance etc , then certainly you can also begin with indian dances.

I also need to add that good changes are happening. They are slow, but I am seeing appreciation for male dancers too. The stigma exists but the essential conversation about gender roles and art is taking place. It will take time, but it is happening.

As for female dancers well.... I do wonder when will the sexualization of the dancing body stop. Sensuality has been celebrated in India from a very long time, and there is a thin line between sensuality and vulgarity. Sadly, we as a society see sensuality as something impure.

A woman who is free and in control of her sexuality and sensuality must be tamed, turned demure and controlled. That is the general view. She is attractive, desirable but then when won/conquered/possessed must be tamed. The dancer too I think is seen as the same.

Stigma and stereotypes never completely break. But like I said previously, dialogue and debate is needed. Conversations need to happen. Female dancers too need to speak up and be vocal about it, about our history of women performers, because all of this exists due to them.

This was a long answer and I don't really have a definite solution(s) but I hope I could provide a few insights.

Also thanks for the question, I was writing in my journal about my dancing experience and the male gaze, I kinda vented it a little here too.

[girlactionfigure]

🟡 ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

Morning Report - Tuesday

▪️A HERO SOLDIER HAS FALLEN.. Yehuda Geto, 20, from Pardes Hana-Karkur, fell in battle in Tulkarm, Samaria.  May his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem, and may G-d avenge his blood!

.. a bomb exploded on a Panther APC that stopped and unloaded in Nur al Shams, Tulkarm.  There was the driver and a commander from the Duvdvan unit in the vehicle, the rest of the fighters unloaded before the explosion.  The Panther was parked in an area where there was no fear of explosives (that is, there was no intelligence information about suspected explosives) and therefore the road was not scrapped by a D9.  The driver was killed and the commander was seriously injured.

▪️GERMAN PAPER SAYS - WAR WITH LEBANON IN 2 WEEKS.. According to its sources, the German newspaper "Bild" (the most widely read newspaper in Germany) reports that Israel will launch a full-scale war against Hezbollah in the second half of July if Hezbollah does not cease its attacks.  (( I always rely on foreign media for knowing when a war will start. ))

▪️US QUIETLY THREATENS.. The US military released photos of the Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group together with the USS Wasp amphibious attack ship and the British Navy ship HMS Duncan in the waters of the Mediterranean.

.. Related: Houthis threaten to attack US carrier strike group coming to replace the Eisenhower in the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden area.  "Any aircraft carrier that enters the Red Sea will become our main target.”

▪️TEL AVIV RELIGIOUS CONTRAVERSY.. The Municipality of Tel Aviv responded negatively to the request of the Hotam organization to hold a segregated outdoor prayer on Rosh Chodesh (the new Jewish month) in the exact same place where Israeli-Arab Muslims were permitted for an outdoor segregated prayer session.  

▪️PEACE POLITICS.. MK Ayman Odeh, chairman of Israeli-Arab party Hadash Ta’al: "the peace camp is waking up and calling with all its might to stop the war immediately."  (( Nobody wants war, but we want our children burned to death and women raped to death less. As long as the enemy is committed to slaughtering us and trying to do so, peace is not an option. ))

▪️US ARMS DELAYS - AGAIN.. Israel submitted a request to the Americans to purchase combat helicopters, but the administration is delaying the request.  

▪️DRUG DANGER.. wave of hospitalizations: young people seriously injured with 1 death by using fake vapes that pretend to contain cannabis but in fact contain dangerous synthetic drug "nice guy" synthetic cannabinoids.  Symptoms: convulsions and agitation.   These fake vapes are sold in Israel mainly through Telegram and are illegal. They are packed in colorful packages impersonating well-known brands. False claims such as "contains 78.5% THC" and "Made in the Netherlands" appear on the packaging.

▪️ISRAELI AID.. Electricity returns to Gaza: operation of a sewage and water desalination plant "directly from Israeli electricity”.

▪️HIGH COURT HEARING TO REQUIRE MEDICAL TREATMENT IN ISRAEL FOR GAZANS.. Yesterday at the hearing on the introduction of a population that supports terrorism and is holding our hostages into medical treatment in Israel, the audience in the courtroom shouted ‘shame! shame!’ The judges shifted uncomfortably.

♦️IDF firing artillery shelling in Nuserat.

⭕ HOUTHI MASS SHIP ATTACK CLAIM.. The Houthis claim to have attacked four ships associated with the US, UK and Israel - in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.  No confirming reports, particularly about the Mediterranean.

[insightfultake]

Indian Mass Media Lacks Credibility and Transparency

According to science, all living organisms thrive on others. One’s weakness becomes a source of success for others. It appears to be absolutely right in the case of mass media in India. Out of 1.4 billion people, 77.7% are literate. Being literate in India means one has to know how to write his or her name. In such a scenario, one-third of the population is illiterate, 80 crore people survive on government aid, which is popular in the name of ration, and huge unemployment could be understood by the fact that 38% of IITians are unemployed this year. The Indian mass media is capitalizing on these resources by doing gossiping in support of the government 24x7. The market size of the mass media industry combining electronic and print media will amount to a thousand billion Indian national rupees....read more

[tamlindudley]

I am going to "Indian" up the Palestine genocide coz by god, majority of the people in India do NOT get it. And it feels like there is so much false and especially Islamophobic propaganda pushed to the masses, it makes my blood boil.

Israel = Occupier & Palestine = Occupied. What does this mean? It means like how British came to India and occupied our land, Israel is occupying Palestine. Palestine was a colony of British in 1917 but after WW2, British backed out of Palestine just like it did with India. We were lucky that we didn't have multiple occupying forces colonizing us. Palestinians weren't so lucky. When British left in 1948, it went from one colonizer to another. The Zionists who came from Europe swooped in like vultures and named the place Israel and has been masquerading as a country. And just like we fought for our freedom, Palestinians are STILL fighting for their freedom.

This is not a religious issue, this is a land issue. The actual issue isn't about Jew and Muslim hatred. It just so happens that Muslims are the majority in Palestine. Its like how our majority is Hindus and we have BC, OBC etc. Palestine majority is Muslim but there are Christians and Jews too. And before the Zionist intervention they all resided together harmoniously. But the Zionists love to push the religion angle and make it sound like a religious conflict for their own benefit. Because if people think it's a religious conflict, they will hesitate to speak out. But dear fellow desis, I swear, it's okay to support Palestinians even if you are Hindu, Sikh, Jain or any other non-Abrahamic faith you follow. Because this isn't about supporting Muslims, this is about supporting people who are colonized.

India does NOT support Israel. OK listen, I know what the internet looks like. But India's official stance is in support of Palestine. It always has been. Granted, under the current government, it doesn't look like it but just google it up. India was the first non-Arab country to come in support of Palestine back in 1974. Don't let media confuse you about this. Learn about this. Talk about this. Show your support. We got our independence in 1947. They are still fighting. Getting killed in masses. We are literally the most populous nation in the world and our support has not been loud enough. I beg you, as a fellow Indian, use your voices and support Palestine.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Up to 10 informants managed by the FBI were embedded in anti-pipeline resistance camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at the height of mass protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The new details about federal law enforcement surveillance of an Indigenous environmental movement were released as part of a legal fight between North Dakota and the federal government over who should pay for policing the pipeline fight. Until now, the existence of only one other federal informant in the camps had been confirmed.  The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions.  The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement.

[timetravellingkitty]

But isn't the military occupancy to keep militancy under control?

whatever reasons aside, there really is no justification for torturing and raping kashmiris and shutting down social media in the state (do read up on the mass rapes of women in the kunan and poshpora villages in 1991. february 23 has since then been labelled kashmiri women's resistance day. report about the use of torture in kashmir by the caravan)

also the instrument of accession was signed by an immensely unpopular ruler. maharaja hari singh was a dogra rajput he wasn't even kashmiri. like, this is the same guy who abetted the 1947 jammu massacres (this one is actually not nearly talked about as much). kashmiri muslims overwhelmingly disliked him

besides, kashmiri separatism and the groups that adopt its ideology came around because of indian domination and because there was no plebiscite held to call for kashmir joining either india or pakistan. the jklf and its leaders have stated that they want an independent, secular kashmir free from both india and pakistan. yasin malik himself refers to pakistan as an occupation power

[livelaughlovechai]

I saw that video of tucker carlson or wtv the fuck his name was and some other random bitch saying that the british “civilised“ india and made us what we are today like honey did you guys skip history or what the indus valley was there before yall’s ancestors could wear clothes and if india wasnt here say goodbye to half ur hygiene and development including this dear social media u luv sm

I have actually never loved being indian more now then ever when south asian hate is at its highest. Anyways stay safe and keep on jamming to marana mass and zinda banda/vandha edam bye ty lysm💋💋💋

[latinotiktok]

latinotiktok!!! idk if you've heard but what with twitter currently imploding, in the last few days brazilians are migrating EN MASS to the Koo app, which is an indian social media that works almost exactly like twitter but with the plus of having a name that sounds a lot like the portuguese word for asshole (cu)

the memes have of course been priceless

also I just thought the latine community might appreciate the heads up since koo's developers are currently working on a way to migrate your twits to koo ✌🏻

MEU KOO ESTA SENDO USADO POR MILHOES DE BRASILEIROS

fuertes declaraciones

[ravensvirginity]

I won't lie, even as an atheist i am always completely confused by antisemitism in superhero fandoms. We most definetly wouldn't have modern superhero media without jewish men, while they were not perfect (it was the 40s-60s afterall, alot of stuff related to women and characters of color didn't age greatly), these days they make so much of modern pop-culture...it'd propably help if the movies (mainly Marvel) would stop ignoring characters jewish identity (Fantastic Four and X-men movies by Fox), toning them down as much as possible (Moon Knight) or christian-washing them (Scarlet Witch).

yeah, Jewish men literally made the comic book industry but of course their legacy hasn't really been honored. Modern comics in general are so soulless and any Jewish rep is there just to tick a box, at least in my opinion. Like in the Teen Titans Christmas special this year when they had a shot of the Tower decked out in Christmas decorations and then they had 2 tiny Hanukkah banners there just for no reason. Like why are they there?? As far as the comic presents, none of the Titans are Jewish, and the decorations didn't feel like a real Hanukkah decoration at all. It was just a diversity tick with no thought put into it.

I definitely agree that I wish comics would stop ignoring Jewish identity, and it would be great if there were just more Jewish characters in general. And if they do a Hanukkah special or whatever it would be awesome if they hired someone Jewish to write it.

Raven I think is an interesting example of comics being created by Jews - Marv Wolfman is Jewish, and though Raven is primarily Indian coded (mostly in an 80s cultural appropriation way, but I digress) she's also got some things about her that feel Jewish. Arella is an unconventional spelling of a Jewish name (Erela) and Rachel Roth (tho Wolfman isn't the one who gave her that name) is incredibly Jewish.

In the 80s comics Wolfman wrote, Arella's religion before coming to Azarath is unclear. Her birth name isn't Arella, but we don't know what it is beyond that. Raven is a character with a very strong conviction in her fictional, but very non Christian religion. In a way, she's both an antichrist and a Christ allegory (she dies for Trigon's sins, and is resurrected purified of evil to destroy him). She's just a mix of so many different things, and while I do think some of it could be more ironed out (like making her actually Indian instead of a white woman who's very clearly been inspired by Indian culture) I think for the most part these elements work together.

20 years later, Raven gets a reboot, and much of this is gone. Arella's birth name is Angela, and it's now canon that she joined a demonic cult to escape her Christian family. Raven still has a connection to Azarath, but this gets less and less prominent and in the current run, it's completely gone.

I think that even though the cult of Azar is not a real religion, so it's not like anyone was being represented by it, it's very frustrating that they got rid of it in favor of making Raven vaguely culturally Christian (and even outright Christian in the 2018 live action show). Christian homogeny comes for literally everything, even this comic book character's fictional religion that was once a central part of her character.

The weirdest part is Marv Wolfman's modern Raven solos only further reinforce her new Christian backstory, having her stay with her very Christian aunt's family and even having a storyline about pushing her to go to Mass on Christmas, despite him being Jewish himself. It's unclear how much of this was his own writing choices and how much was an editorial mandate, but it's weird.

This got kind of rambley but my main point is modern DC flattens out it's characters to insane degrees, and that includes things like unique religious practices, fictional and real. Everyone is just vaguely culturally Christian with no further thought given to what makes sense for the character, and any religious diversity (in the comics I have read) is almost entirely there just to tick a box with no real thought or depth put in.