A Place Where Women Rule

In a small state in India, women rule, with property, wealth and last names passing from mother to daughter, instead of from father to son. In reaction to this, instead of a feminist movement, there is a men’s movement.

In BBC News, Timothy Allen quotes one of the movement’s advocates as saying that they "do not want to bring women down. We just want to bring the men up to where the women are" (This sounds familiar to Western women!)

Life in Meghalaya is, in many ways, the direct opposite of life in many Middle Eastern countries. Allen quotes one of the women there as saying, "Most men in our village leave school early to help their fathers in the fields. This is a great detriment to their education."

He quotes one of the men there as saying, "If you want to know how much the Khasis favor women just take a trip to the labor ward at the hospital. If it’s a girl, there will be great cheers from the family outside. If it’s a boy, you will hear them mutter politely that, ‘Whatever God gives us is quite all right.’ "

The same is true of many of the nouns in our language. When something becomes useful, its gender becomes female. A tree is masculine, but when it is turned into wood, it becomes feminine."

Here’s something feisty and feminine that’s useful to MEN too: Anne Strieber’s famous diet book "What I Learned From the Fat Years." Using scientific principles, she devised a diet that helped her to lose 100 pounds and YOU CAN TOO (no matter WHICH sex you are!)