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A little while ago, an article on  Youth Ki Awaaz  caught my attention. " 'My Kindness And Personality Didn't Matter. My Breasts Did': Guest Lecturer, IIT Roorkee" Inflamed headlines are a regular part of click-bait but I had a feeling there was more to this than a cry for attention. I spent 5 years at IIT Roorkee myself, and I'm dismayed to admit that this didn't surprise me. My first thoughts on reading the article was that it is poorly written. There are several male dominated spaces where it is enough to say " woh r**nd hai yaar " and the man is instantly believed by a large group of people. But it is not enough for a woman to write ~300 words about her personal experience on a public forum, to be believed. The public hate ensued: " hahah its happen when you hire incompetent and useless guest faculty with no knowledge and feminist ego....its the fault of IIT administration .....thanks god this women was mere a guest faculty...

This is a brand of sanitary napkins that provides 8 pieces at Rs. 25 (as is visible in the picture). That's about Rs. 3 per napkin. From my (little) experience, I think a packet of 8 napkins can be expected to last a woman through one period. Let's remember this while we engage in a conversation that can be slightly distasteful to some. Men, stick around. You don't get a period if you read about it. I am a PhD student at IIT Kanpur. Our hostels provide us with free cleaning services, a maid is allotted to each block. I met Sunita didi several months ago and I'm ashamed that I had a meaningful conversation with her only a few weeks ago. I asked her how she dealt with her periods. She said she used cloth. With all the acumen of a city girl with a fancy education, I decided to tell her about the disadvantages of using cloth. After all, information is the privilege of the educated and I felt highly noble while sharing it. It turns out that a woman who has been usi

Previously we discussed Part I : Domain Eukaryota --> Kingdom Animalia --> Phylum Chordata Part II : Class Mammalia --> Order Primates Part III : Family Hominidae I recommend you go through Part III if you'd like a recap. Our report card says we've successfully filtered our genes down to the tribe Hominini (which is why we're called hominins) which is then divided into 3 subtribes: subtribe Panina (who we've outsmarted), subtribe Australopithecina (who we've outlived) and subtribe Hominina (that's us). After this long-winded journey that weened out trait after trait that wouldn't do, we arrived at the genus Homo. HOMO A lot of us are aware that the we belong to the species Homo sapiens . What is not common knowledge is that all species belonging to the genus Homo are technically humans. Homo, in Latin, means 'human' and it's obvious that when this genus was named so, we didn't expect to find remains of ot

A friend of mine had an interesting conversation with her father. It started with he telling her that the family was looking for a suitable partner for her elder brother, and a little while later, it got to a point where he said, "Yes, nothing wrong with working women, but what is the need after all? Your brother is competent enough to provide for both of them." If you're a feminist, your first reaction might be one of disgust or fury. But if you are a rational thinker, you would admit that there is nothing factually incorrect about the statement (I presume we can take the dad's word for the potential bridegroom's competence). If one partner can provide for the family, both do not need to work. [The keyword is "need".] I seek to be both, a feminist and a rational thinker. Indeed, the two go very comfortably together. Feminism does not have to be a struggle  or a fight  with one's own self. It's usually a struggle only with othe

In case you want to go back to Part 1 or Part 2 . (But you don't need to!) No, you absolutely don't need to revise or remember anything from the previous 2 posts. Here's where we left off: And all you really need to remember is the key words at the bottom of the image. We're all eukaryotes => have an advanced cell structure We're all animals => have the ability to "move it!" We're all chordates => we have a convenient nervous system We're all mammals => we have mammary glands and hair We're all primates => we have complex brains and grasping hands MOVING ON So, with the advantages of several ancestors, we made it to the group of advanced primates which are divided into the tarsiers, the new world monkeys, the old world monkeys and the apes. The last 3 (Happlorhines minus the Tarsiers) are also collectively called the simians or anthropoids. Humans fall under the Superfamily Hominoidea , and hence are a

Go back to Part 1 . Or continue anyway, I'll give you a quick recap. *Free* If you have stayed with me through Part 1, I assure you, things are going to get easier now. One big reason is, we're now zooming in closer from all life to our particular species and it will be a lot easier to relate to whatever the classification system describes to us. Colored words in each list show where we fall. The bottom bar reminds you of the important stuff, so you don't need to memorize anything. It also acts as sort of a progress bar which shows how deep we have reached in the classification system so far in the post. This is where we left the last post at, and for a quick recap let's remind ourselves that thank god, we belong to the: Domain Eukaryota : I can't be too sure, but I'd miss my nucleus, mitochondria and a bunch of other stuff that doesn't exist in prokaryotes Kingdom Animalia : the other options were to be a plant, a fungus, a protist, or a m